Jeremiah Collins, b. 3/19/1779, d. 8/4/1873

The apocryphal story on Jeremiah is that he migrated from South Carolina to St. Clair Co., Alabama with his young wife and little else. He was so poor that while everyone else had a wagon, he only had a sled. He came into a great amount of land very suddenly. Supposedly, he befriended an Indian who told him of a dream wherein a white man gave him a gun. Jeremiah gave the Indian a gun, and not too long later, told the Indian that he had a dream wherein an Indian gave him some land. Perhaps this is how Jeremiah came into the land. Perhaps not. Jeremiah embraced Christianity late in life at the insistence of his son, a prominent Baptist preacher. It is told that, too frail to resist, Jeremiah was strapped into a chair and dunked in the Coosa River. Some researchers believe that Jeremiah was Cherokee, or possibly Creek. I must agree that the photo bespeaks Native American ethnicity. In Jeremiah's time, it was unheard of for a man not to have a religious affiliation. That he did not embrace Christianity until so late in life also indicates that he converted from Native American Beliefs.