Every Family Has a Maverick, Part 1

Every family has a maverick (or two), and one of my family’s mavericks was my great-great-great-grandfather Walter White Collins.  Walter was born in Guernsey County, Ohio, in 1838 and moved with his family to Lineville in south central Iowa around 1855. In 1857, Walter, then 19 years old, married Elizabeth Paul, and settled on a small farm next to those owned by his father and two older brothers. He and Elizabeth had two children over the next few years, and had it not been for the Civil War, that might well have been the end of his story.