Thomas Collins

The earliest proven ancestor of the Collins line. Presented in the Louisa County, Virginia, court in 1745 for failing to list a tithable, “who was probably his wife” in Heinegg’s reading, and separately on 26 November 1745 for profane swearing. Sold 184 acres on Turkey Run, south side of the South Anna River, to John Powell in 1747, near Gilbert Gibson, Thomas Gibson and Sam Bunch. On John Wade’s Granville County, North Carolina, tax list in 1750; a Granville grant on the Flat River at Dial’s Creek in 1752, witnessed by Paul Collins, George Gibson and Moses Riddle.

Taxed in Orange County, North Carolina, in 1755 as a “Molata” on three Black tithes. Chain carrier on two neighbors’ surveys on Deep Creek (Gv985, 1760; Gv897, 1763). His own grant, Gv579, 700 acres on Dial’s Creek of the Flat River, was surveyed by William Churton on 13 April 1761, with George Gibson and Paul Collins carrying the chain, and granted on 13 October 1761. Its warrant (29 December 1760 in Heinegg) came three days after John Brown’s warrant over the community’s improvements on the Flat River.

Heinegg names four probable sons: Samuel (b. say 1724), George (b. about 1728), Thomas Jr. (b. say 1734) and John (b. say 1736). Meredith Collins was the son of John or of Samuel. Some of the family left the Flat River for the New River about 1767; Thomas may have stayed.

His wife is unknown. She was not a daughter of Moses Riddle, as older tradition says: Moses was born about 1715-25 and could not have fathered the mother of Thomas’s sons. The Thomas Collins born 1713 in Hampshire, England, who married Ann Blyth, attached to this family in the FamilySearch tree, is ruled out on dates and records.

Open questions

• Who was his wife?
• Who were his parents? Nothing is known before 1745.
• When and where did he die? Did he stay on the Flat River after about 1767?