SNGF: 100 Words on My Most Interesting Ancestor

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seavers of geneamusings is to write a short 100 word story using the phrase "...the most interesting ancestor I have ..." in 100 words and then share it.

Here's my offering:

Robert Henry Collins is my most interesting ancestor...and my obsession! Born on 6 August 1849 in Benton County, MO to Henry W. Collins and his second wife, Susannah Bartshe, Robert was an only child with 14 step-siblings and another 14 double-step-siblings (children of his mother’s other two husbands). He married Rebecca Jane Campbell in 1872, with whom he had 5 children before she died in April 1882. Then he vanished. From newspapers I know he traveled widely in the West, living in Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Montana, occasionally returning to Missouri. He committed suicide in my great-grandmother’s smokehouse in 1924, age 75.