John Collier, as appears by a memorandum written by himself in his family Bible, was born December 16th, 1708, at a house called Richard 0' Jones's, in Urmston, near Man chester. His father, John Collier, was a minister of the established church, and in addition to the income derived from a curacy, he kept a school, by which he was enabled to maintain a wife and several children decently. He was the instructor of his own children, among whom John appears to have been considered by him as a boy of superior abilities, and he accordingly educated him with a view of his being brought up to the church. That young Collier profited by the instructions of an affectionate and judicious father cannot be doubted, and to this early initiation in the rudiments of learning may be attributed that propensity to teaching others. Which he manifested even in his youth, and which was so profitable to him during life. His father's intention of educating him for the church was unhappily frustrated by the deprivation of sight, an event which happened to him in the forty-sixth year of his age, and by which he and his family were exposed to subsequent distress. John was then in the fourteenth year of his age; he had been distinguished from his infancy for superior quickness of intellect; but the idea of his advancement by learning was now relinquished, and it was thought expedient by his parents, that he should be instructed in some handi craft art.