Bryant Collins, Murdered by Confederates
Bryant W Collins was born about 1814 in North Carolina. He and his wife, Mary Morgan, lived in southeastern Kentucky and had at least 11 children. At the outset of the American Civil War, his sons embodied the “brother vs. brother” narrative, with three of his sons signing up as Union soldiers and one son volunteering with their neighbors for the Confederacy (another son would join the Confederacy near the end of the war). His murder made his family choose sides more permanently.
Bryant’s background
Bryant was the son of Thomas Collins, who had moved his family from Ashe, North Carolina, to what was then Perry County, Kentucky, about 1835, presumably to escape persecution. They were ‘free colored people” (specifically of Melungeon ethnicity) on at least two censuses recorded while they lived in North Carolina but claimed to be white when it came time for the census in their new home in Kentucky. Though we have digital tools and access to the census records today to trace the family’s movement, at the time this change in identity was common and virtually untraceable.
