Frances Martin We know almost nothing of Frances or Fannie Martin personally. Her birth date is said to have been May 30, 1797, in Georgia.(35) That she was the sister of Willis' wife Phoebe and that both were daughters of William Martin, a Revolutionary veteran of the Virginia line, seems to be clear enough, as noted in the marriages section above. William Martin was a Virginian who had moved to Georgia, lived in the Greene County area at the time of the 1820 census, later moved to Marshall County, Tennessee, and when he filed for his pension, used Willis and Henry Collins as witnesses. It seems clear enough they were his sons-in-law, and family tradition said Frances and Phebe were sisters. A separate profile of William Martin will discuss the origins of the Martin family in greater detail. William (c. 1760-1842) was born in Albemarle (later Amherst, and probably in the part which is now Nelson) County, Virginia; had served in the Continental Army during the Revolution, fighting in the b! attles from Trenton to Monmouth; and then later joined the Virginia militia, allowing him to witness Yorktown. So the descendants of Henry Collins and Fannie Martin had Revolutionary ancestors on both sides. We do not know the name of Fannie's mother; William Martin remarried later in Georgia and that wife, Jane Copeland, survived him in Marshall County, Tennessee.(36) Frances was a decade younger than her sister Phoebe or Phebe. As noted earlier, the date of marriage to Henry Collins reportedly occurred May 1, 1817, according to family records. Frances would have been just under 20, and Henry 21. It must have been in Greene or Oglethorpe County, Georgia, though the record was apparently not recorded in either County, and, as we've noted, must have been in the border area. Their earliest children were born in Georgia, and in the 1820 census we find Henry with a son who must be John Collins, born in March of 1819. The fact that Willis and Henry married sisters may have added to the bond between them. The brothers were nine years apart, the sisters 10, and according to Goodspeed's history of their children Willis would be a Whig and Henry a Jacksonian Democrat, but (in addition to the fact that they moved together in about 1826 and that their father-in-law followed) the two brothers seem to have been linked in other ways, and are probably buried in the family same cemetery, though Henry has no headstone. http://www.tamandmichael.com/COLHIST7.htm#Frances ~Wehali Usdi~<Look not at the Eyes but at the Soul>