My Genealogy Hound

Dr. E. Collins is one of the leading dentists of Little Rock. He entered the profession when a mere boy, and although the average life of the dentist is about thirty years, after a practice of forty years he is still in the vigor of his manhood, and the oldest practicing dentist in the Southwest. He is a native of Ohio, being reared until his sixteenth year in the town of Ripley, Brown County, and is a descendant from sires of some Revolutionary fame. He is the youngest of his parents’ family, the elder of whom is still living at the age of ninety-five years and comes from an ancestry of great longevity. At the age of sixteen, being anxious to adopt some profession, he chose that of dentistry, and left the home of his childhood to enter upon the career of his choice. Going to Xenia, Ohio, he commenced the study of his profession under the guidance of his brother-in-law, Prof. J. Yapt, a gentleman whose genius and skill, and the publication of standard and other works upon dental surgery, have long since obtained for him a worldwide reputation. After completing his preparatory course of three years, young Collins determined to seek his fortune farther west, and left Xenia for Cincinnati. Arriving at that city, he immediately took passage upon a canal boat packet for Connersville, Ind., a town of some 3,000 inhabitants, situated in the beautiful and fertile valleys in the White Water River. In this town and neighboring country he commenced the practice of his profession, and in his leisure moments continued to study his specialty, together with general medicine and surgery. After a year’s residence in Connersville, he met and was married to his present wife, Miss Mary A. Smiley, a lineal descendant of the same Puritanical stock from which President James Buchanan was an illustrious scion. The issue of this union was three children, two of whom reached maturity and still live: one a son (a young man of promise in the medical profession), the other a daughter (the wife of Judge Y. W. Wilson, of Little Rock). Dr. Collins practiced in Connersville and vicinity for about fifteen years, when he was called to fill a vacancy in the faculty of the Ohio College of Dentistry at Cincinnati, the same institution from which he graduated in 1854. This being a time when civil war was convulsing the country, and business of all kinds was at a standstill, save that of carrying on the bloody struggle, he resigned, as the position was not sufficiently remunerative to justify a longer continuance. After a time other fields more promising opened to his view, and he again went westward, locating at Bloomington, Ill. Here he made many friends and acquired a large and lucrative practice, but at the end of five years a change came over the spirit of his dreams; his daughter married and must needs migrate to the city of Little Rock with her husband; hence, in a short time, dissatisfied at having his little family dissolved, the Doctor followed them to the city, landing here on December 15, 1869. He has remained here an honored citizen of this community, serving the afflicted public in a manner commensurate with his superior knowledge and skill; dealing ever generously with the poor and justly with the rich. In former years he has done much with his pen and otherwise to build up his profession, and enlighten the public mind with respect to its merits. He is a deep thinker as well as a bold and aggressive writer upon subjects that affect the public welfare, and has allowed no obstacles, religious or political, to deter him from the exercise of his inalienable rights as a man and citizen. His theology is pre-eminently that of Nature, which he claims teaches that the invisible things of universal nature (God, if you please) can in no wise be known save through and by the things that are seen or tangible to the physical senses, guided by an unfettered reason and conscience. As an inventor, Dr. Collins has conceived several devices, chief among which is the Railroad Coach Heater, which has just been passed upon by the patent-office officials and allowed. This invention is destined to supersede all others for that purpose, as it will be an incalculable saving of property to railroad corporations, and a great source of comfort and increased safety to the life of the traveling public.