I’m feeling a bit drunk from Tom Collins ~ and not in a good way. Seemed like a simple task: make an individual history page for Thomas Collins (?-1722). Yes . . . except there are roughly a jillion Collins people running around Somerset County in the middle of the eighteenth century, and it’s no easy task sorting them out. [Or maybe it is an easy task, and I’m just going about it all wrong. At this point I am not sure.]

Consider this: In 1730 there are eighteen men and women with the surname Collins listed on Somerset County tax lists. Three of them are named John, three are named Thomas, and three are named William. A couple of them are brothers, others are cousins, at least one is completely unrelated. But who is who?

And the problem is compounded when we look at all 32 extant tax lists. My working file has 56 Collins individuals, including eight named Thomas and ten named John. The probate index is similarly overwhelming, with almost 140 Collins entries. It’s dizzying.

Well, I am working on it, albeit slowly. The beauty of the Somerset records is that we can sort out these individuals, at least to a point, and clarify their relationships to each other. It’s a process, tacking back and forth among the probate, tax, court, and land records, sifting through all the clues. The question I’m wrestling with right now is whether the Thomas who died in 1722 (the one who kicked off this little exercise) is a brother of Price Collins (1688-1727) and William Collins (?-1721). Feel free to weigh in on this pressing issue!