Collins Knight House

About Collins Knight House:

In 1825, Edward Zane Collings undertook the construction of a house for himself and his widowed sister, Rebecca Knight, and her children, on farmland north of Newton Creek that he had inherited from his father in 1820. The property had been passed down from his great-grandfather, Robert Zane, an original settler and member of the 1682 Newton Colony. Edward Collings engaged the services of local carpenter John Ireland to construct a late Federal-style home built to imitate early Colonial houses that evolved over time with added wings for family expansion. Between 1825 and 1867 members of the Collings family used the farm for agricultural purposes. In 1868 Edward Collings Knight, nephew of the original builder, purchased the farmland and placed it under the care of another cousin, Richard T. Collings, who developed a gentleman’s dairy farm and fostered horse and cattle breeding. Edward C. Knight also established a real estate firm, bought up neighboring tracts and began to lay out and subdivide parcels into development lots. The result was the creation of the Borough of Collingswood in 1888, its centerpiece being a 100 acre triangle – former farmland in front of the homestead – which he entrusted as parkland for the newly formed Borough.

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