No. 18 Bowie

Collins & Co.

The Collins Company was founded by brothers Samuel Watkinson Collins and David Collins and their cousin William Wells in 1826. Purchasing a property along the Farmington River in the town of Canton, Connecticut, later renamed Collinsville. The Collins Company line of products would grow over the years to include not only axes, but also machetes, hatchets adzes, brush hooks, picks, shovels, knives, swords, bayonets and plows, making them the world’s leading manufacturer of edge tools. The Collins line of machetes was so popular in Central and South America that they were referred to as a “Collins” and 90% of the machetes sold in these countries were made by The Collins Company. The company operated several manufacturing facilities in Guatemala, Mexico, Columbia and Brazil. Collins bayonets were used during the Civil War, axes and picks and other tools made their way to the California Gold Rush, Admiral Peary brought numerous Collins products on his trek to the North Pole, and Collins tools were used almost exclusively for the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The Collins Company manufactured shovels, picks, axes and machetes for World War I and over 1 million machetes were purchased by the U.S. Military for World War II. 140 years after the inception of the Collins Company, the factory closed its doors in 1966.