Collins Line

A free family of color from the Virginia Piedmont: taxed as “Molata” on the Flat River of North Carolina in 1755, settled beyond the colony’s line on the New River by the 1770s, and carried west through Russell County, Virginia, the Big Sandy country of Kentucky and Clay County, Kentucky, to Indiana, Missouri and Appanoose County, Iowa. Census takers counted the same people white, free colored, slave and mulatto by turns. Mary Elizabeth “Polly” Collins married into the Bruner family in 1850, and her line runs on through the Bruners and the Cliffords to the Holbrooks.

The line walks up from Mary Elizabeth Collins through her father. Her mother’s family, the Reeds, is a line of its own.

The line at a glance

Thomas Collins “Molata” (c. 1700 - c. 1770) > John Collins (c. 1736) [or his brother Samuel] > Meredith Collins (c. 1760 - 1841) > Jesse Collins (c. 1804 - 1847) = Mary Reed > Mary Elizabeth “Polly” Collins (1827 - 1887) = Eli Woodruff Bruner > Mariah Emma Bruner = John Marshall Clifford > Jessie Lorene Clifford = Capt. Richard Blackmer Holbrook Jr. > Richard Clifford Holbrook > Frances Fairchild Holbrook

The weakest links

• John or Samuel > Meredith (possible either way): no document names Meredith’s father. The book Molata leans to John, whose son Lewis stood beside Meredith on McDaniel’s company list; Heinegg groups most of the New River men under Samuel. Thomas is Meredith’s grandfather either way.
• Thomas > John (probable): Heinegg’s probable son. There may have been two Johns.
• Meredith > Jesse (probable): no record names Jesse’s father; his age, Meredith’s 1810 household and his brother Hiram’s witnessing of his consent note make him Meredith’s son by Polly Holloway. The older chain Meredith > Bradley > Jesse is withdrawn.
• Jesse and Mary Reed > Mary Elizabeth (the research calls it resolved): no record yet seen names her parents.

Where the line ends

It stops at Thomas Collins. Nothing is known of his parents, and the FamilySearch graft onto a Thomas Collins of Hampshire, England, is rejected.

Open questions

• Meredith’s father: a Montgomery County tithable list of the late 1770s showing a teenage Meredith in someone’s household would settle it.
• The wives of Thomas and of Meredith’s father; whether a daughter of Moses Riddle was Meredith’s mother.
• Meredith’s first wife, mother of Bradley.
• Eula Conley’s DAR application and its 25 supporting documents.
• Jesse’s and Mary’s graves in Appanoose County, and the 1850 marriage record of Eli Bruner and Mary Elizabeth.