William Franklin Collings (1828 - abt. 1913)

I agree with most that you say. Groveland, Lake, FL does exist. It had a population of 470 in 1930 and now is a rapidly growing town with over 20,000 population.

I agree that William Collings would not have moved there. Florida then as now was a popular vacation spot and many non-residents die there. So I cannot exclude this. Each of William's wives are buried in a different cemetery and he does not have a grave marker in any of them. Florida did not keep death records until 1915. I have not found any death certificate or obituary for him. I completely agree that the certified statement makes no sense. I cannot imagine that the whole family actually move9 to Florida.

The sole unfortunate evidence of William Collings having died in Florida in 1913 is from “The Collings, Richeys, and the Pigeon Roost Massacre” (the pages are attached). A Lois Powers obtained a certified statement from Neil Collings that William died at his parents’ home, that he attended the funeral, and that William was buried in Groveland, Florida. That ‘certified statement’ is not included in The Collings, Richeys….”

The problem is: In the 1910 Federal Census for Terre Haute, Vigo, Indiana, William Collings/Collins was listed with his youngest son John, John’s wife Alice, and the newly adopted “Henry Dinkle” whose name was changed to Gerald Neil Collins. Henry was listed as 3 years old. ‘Henry’/Neil would have then been 6-7 years old when William died, and he would have known his adoptive grandfather for just a few years.

In 1910, Neil’s father John, at South 8th Street, had a mortgaged home, and worked as a self-employed plasterer. William Collings was not employed. In 1920, John was at the same home and same employment. But Neil is listed as 12 years old which would make him 5 years old when William died. It simply does not make since that John, Alice, Neil, and the at least 82 years old William would have travelled almost a thousand miles from Terre Haute to Florida, to then have William die in a town “which does not exist now” (image 1), and then for John and family to return to their same mortgaged home in Terre Haute. And why would William have left his other five living children, none of whom had moved to Florida; and Catherine’s children, who had ranged in age from 17 to 4 when he married Catherine, and none of whom had moved to Florida.

William’s last wife, Catherine Sherman Frantz (or France) Collings died in 1900 and she is buried at Dunlap Cemetery in Dennison, Illinois with most of our other Collings, she is not buried at Woodlawn with her first husband and the father of her possibly eight children.

Collins-21520 and Collings-273 appear to represent the same person because: same parents and dates