Bradley Collins

The full opening of the General Index to Marriages, Clay County Court. Jesse Collins and Mary Reed are the last entry in the left column, with the later note “of James” beside her name: the clerk’s cross-reference to her father’s consent. Across the gutter are Hiram Collins’s two licenses to Elizabeth Reed and Bradley Collins’s three marriages. The right-hand page alone is also in the Gallery, as “Clay County Court marriage register, the C entries.”

The whole sheet, both sides, with the two Collins households circled. On Bradley Collins’s line the free white columns were filled in and then zeroed. Both households were entered in the columns for free colored persons, with Meredith Collins on the line beneath. Molata prints the two sides separately.

A page of the Clay County Court register of marriages, men’s names A to C in order of license: names, the date of the license, the date of the marriage where the certificate came back, and the file box of the loose papers. The Collinses of Jesse’s generation are here: Hiram’s two licenses to Elizabeth Reed (the first never returned, the second married 8 December 1829), Abraham’s to Christina Poulston, Bradley’s three marriages, William’s to Sytha Powell, Andrew’s and James’s. Jesse and Mary’s own marriage of 1827 is on the page before.

A hand-coloured map of the United States and the West in 1847, with Oregon, “Upper or New California” and Texas, an inset of Mexico, and a shield with the population of the states. Molata uses Harper’s map of the same year instead.

The country in 1847, with its canals, railroads and stage routes, insets of Oregon and the cities, and the counties’ populations from the census of 1840. Iowa had become a state only the December before, and the Collinses and Bruners were gathering in Appanoose County on its Missouri line. From Molata, chapter eight.