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What Ever Happened ... to Mr. Collins?

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Contributed by: Wilma Bertling on 10/4/2009

(Local History) TALES OF SEBASTIAN AND THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED HERE

What ever happened to Mr. Collins?
Was his death really a suicide?

Back in the days when Sebastian and Roseland were close-knit communities, and neighbors looked out for neighbors, there were many questions about how 50-year-old R. E. Collins came to die in his own home.

One woman who gave her testimony at the 1920 Inquest was Mary Etta Ryall Rountree. She and her husband William Oscar Rountree came to the Sebastian area from Georgia after her father, Charles W. Ryall bought 50-60 acres to live in what is now called Roseland. The Rountrees purchased their land from her father.

Mrs. Rountree was a neighbor of R. E. Collins and had several encounters with him during the last days of his life. Although he was surely depressed, based on her account, he may, or he may not, have taken his own life. The six members of the Board of Inquest were divided in their decision, and no further action was taken.

According to the 1910 Census R. E. Collins was born in Florida in 1870 and worked as a farmer and grove worker. By 1920, the year he died, there were nearly 100 people living in Sebastian.

At the Inquest Mrs. Rountree began by saying that it was her custom to check on Collins whenever she passed his house. If she didn't see him when going out, she looked for him when she returned.

On Thursday, November 11th, 1920, she, her mother and their friend, Mrs. Davis, went fishing together. They did not see him when heading out, so on their way back, even though rain clouds were threatening, Mrs. Rountree went around to his back door and called to him. After she spoke with him through the front window he asked her to come in.

He was sitting on his bed, said he had sprained his knee and was bathing it with liniment. She first asked whether she might do anything for him. Could she contact someone to help him? There was no one he wanted her to notify, but he did have a favor to ask. He already had the ingredients for a cake he wanted to have for Thanksgiving. She agreed to make it for him, and she would visit the next day to pick up the supplies.

On Friday, she rode over on her bicycle with a pie she had already made. He was lying diagonally across the bed and did not get up. He asked her to put the pie on the dresser and sit down. She asked how he was feeling, and whether his leg was getting any better. He said, "Yes," and that he was getting around with a stick and was still bathing it with liniment. She wondered what kind of liniment it was. He showed her the bottle and added, "The best I ever saw. The little Turner boys in Miami had mailed the rattlesnake oil to me." Without her glasses, Mrs. Rountree was unable to read the instructions on the bottle. We do not know whether he had contacted the Turner boys to report his fall? Or whether the liniment was already in the house.

Collins asked about Mr. Rountree's "Uncle Billie" with whom he used to go camping and hunting. "Who did he marry?" he asked. When she told him that Uncle Billie had never married and that he lived alone, Collins called out "My God!," turned his head away and began crying.

Mrs. Rountree changed the subject by talking about others in the community. Then he began talking about the trouble he had with his eyes.

He had written the Government, asked for help, answered a hundred questions, and was told that nothing could be done for him. "This is just between you and me, the reason I will never see any better is because my father and mother were first cousins. They told me it causes blindness, insanity and deformity. You know my sister is insane. I am blind," and then he cried again. "I am not going to live this way much longer. I am going to a poor farm."

Seeing him crying again, she said, "I wouldn't do that, Mr. Collins, we will miss you. Has anyone else stopped in to see you?" He again said "No," and that she shouldn't call anyone. He was getting along just fine.

She wanted to sweep up the floor for him, but that was declined. "I don't want you to think that I do not appreciate what you do for me, for I do." "I don't want you to think that I do not have enough to eat, for I do. I had English peas for dinner. I like them better than anything. Mr. Braddock comes up and gets my list and brings me my groceries."

He thanked her for the other dishes she brought, and said, "I am going to eat that cake, and if it makes me sick, I shall blame you for it." Then he laughed, and she knew that he was feeling better. "Well," she said, "if it makes you sick I will come and take care of you." He laughed again.

He told her to put the pie on the table where she would find some plates. Getting around with his stick, he moved to the kitchen and asked if she might bake the cake the next day. He wanted it sooner than Thanksgiving. "All right, I will bake you one tomorrow, and one for Thanksgiving, too."

There was a box of groceries on the table. He began handing out the ingredients to her, including a bottle of vanilla, saying that was the flavor he liked best. He told her to take all of the butter, all of the flour and all of the eggs as he would not need them anymore. Besides he had two hens laying. She asked if he sweetened his coffee, and he said, "Oh, sometimes."

She asked what kind of cake he would rather have --- plain cake or layer cake. He said he preferred cocoanut cake better than anything. "Any kind of layer cake, except chocolate, which he said he did not like.

Then he wanted to know WHEN she would bring the cake. Her answer was "sometime in the afternoon on Saturday." She continued on toward the gate, and he asked again what time she would be there. "In the afternoon," she repeated.

Saturday afternoon, about four o'clock, Mrs. Rountree took the cake to Mr. Collins. She went to the door and knocked several times, and called to him. There was no reply. She looked in the window, and at first, could not see anything, as the window was closed. She put her hands up to the side of her face, and then she could see him lying on the bed. She knocked again, and called to him, but still no reply. She returned to the window and looked in again. He had his cap off. She had never seen him with his cap off before.

The thought struck her that he might be dead. She could not see him breathing. She did not know what to do, but then she tried the door. The wind blew the door open wider, and when she entered she saw a great pool of blood on the floor.

She closed the door and stood on the porch waiting for someone to come by. For some reason she was reluctant to leave him there alone. Several tourist cars did pass by, but she did not hail them. Finally, a truck with some boys she had seen before came by, and she called out to them. They stopped, and she told them that Mr. Collins had killed himself, and she wanted them to go inside the house and see him. She wanted someone besides herself to see him.

A few minutes later, she convinced them to go in with her. She opened the door and stepped inside, and the boys came to the door and looked in. One of them asked, "Do you reckon he is dead?" She answered, "Sure he is." They then closed the door and returned to the truck.

She asked if they were heading to Sebastian. When they said, "Yes," she asked if they would take a message there for her. They agreed.

After the boys drove her home to get some paper, she wrote a note, and asked them to give it to Mr. Braddock or Mr. Hardee, and any other older man they might see. The note she wrote was:

MR. COLLINS HAS KILLED HIMSELF AND SOMEONE MUST LOOK AFTER HIM.

At the Inquest she was asked whether she saw any tracks in the blood on the floor, and she answered "I did not look for anything of the kind." Another question was: "When Mr. Collins was handing out the groceries, do you think he could see well enough to distinguish the different ones?" She replied that she thought he could.

"On Friday when you visited, did you notice whether Mr, Collins had recently cut his hair or shaved his face?" She said. "Mr. Collins always wore his cap. I do not know whether it had been cut or not. What I could see had been neatly trimmed, and his face had been recently shaved."

"When you offered to sweep the floor, did you notice any hair on the floor?" Her answer: "I did not notice any. His hair was so thin it would not leave much in the way of clippings."
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For the researchers at the Sebastian Area Historical Society there are so many unresolved issues that remain.

Why was Mrs. Rountree so sure that he had committed suicide? Did he shave himself using a straight razor and cut himself accidentally or deliberately? Was his stick nearby? Might he have fallen and been unable to get further than his bed?

Did someone else enter the house between Friday when Mrs. Rountree left and 4 p.m. Saturday when she brought the cake?

An Inquest held at his residence found that he wa dead by a wound in the neck caused by a razor.

The Inquest panel: W. C. Braddock, S. A. Braswell, T. B. Hicks, R. G McCain, E. B. Sembler, F. C.Vickers. The only witnesses called were Mrs. Etta Rountree and Dr. David Rose.

The panel agreed to disagree, four for suicide, two by unknown hand. The court costs: $7.80 -- $3.80 to M. M. Miller and $4.00 to S. A. Parks.

Mrs. Rountree once worked at the Braddocks Dry Goods store when it was located in the Vickers Building. Later, she and Anetta Ryall operated the Marinet Dry Goods Store in Sebastian. Mr. Rountree died in 1941; Mrs. Rountree died in 1959.

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WHAT WE DO KNOW is that R. E. Collins was buried in the Sebastian Cemetery with a concrete headstone simply marked "COLLINS."

But the mystery remains.

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