Daniel Collins

Daniel Collins is fictional character that appeared on the 1960s ABC daytime soap opera Dark Shadows. Initially the character was played by child actor David Henesy during a storyline that has become informally known as the "1795 Flashback". In 1970, the character returned (now an adult) for the "1840 Flashback" storyline, this time played by stage actor Louis Edmonds. Biography Daniel Collins was born 1785, in New York City, to Theodore and Constance Collins, and spent the first ten or so years of his life there. In the winter of 1795, he and his older sister Millicent Collins were invited to the town of Collinsport, Maine and to the estate of Collinwood, to attend the planned wedding of their cousin Barnabas Collins and his then fiancee, Josette DuPres. Daniel and his sister, Millicent, were heirs in their own right to a large portion of the Collins Family fortune (as the only surviving members of the New York branch of the Collins family). Joshua Collins had hoped to consolidate this fortune by arranging a marriage between Millicent and his younger brother, Jeremiah, but neither Jeremiah nor Millicent had any interest in such an alliance. Millicent secretly married naval captain Lt. Nathan Forbes after she had given her share of the fortune to Daniel to prove that Forbes was not after her money. Forbes arranged to become Daniel's guardian and then drove Millicent insane (not a terribly difficult task) and hired an assassin to kill Daniel. Forbes was killed by Barnabas Collins and Joshua took Daniel in as his heir since Millicent never recovered her sanity. Since Joshua's wife, Naomi, and their children, Barnabas and Sarah were all dead (or undead), Daniel became the sole heir to the Collins Family fortune. As an adult in the 1800s, Daniel married a woman named Harriet and became the patriarch of Collinwood. He had two sons, Quentin and Gabriel Collins. Controlling over the Collins estate had made Daniel have more pride, and he became an arrogant and vulgar man abusing his wife Harriet and Gabriel, though he always loved Quentin seeing him as the future successor to the Collins’ estate. Daniel often thought little of Gabriel, and considered him “dead” when he was crippled in an accident, this abuse made Gabriel despise Daniel. In 1830, Harriet died from a mysterious fall from Widow's Hill. It was said that the fact Daniel had murdered her was the "most well known family secret".