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RAY M. COLLINS
Vol. 3, p. 1341-1342

A young man of vigorous purpose and well developed executive
ability, Mr. Collins has become prominently identified with the oil
industry and other business interests in Oklahoma where he
established his residence in 1904, about three years prior to the
admission of the state to the Union and where he had maintained his
residence in the City of Tulsa since 1906, when he here became
general manager of the Bull Dog Oil Company, a position of which he
is still the incumbent, his father having been one of the organizers
of the company and being still its vice president. Mr. Collins is a
scion of sterling New England stock and is a representative of a
family whose name has been identified with American annals since the
colonial era in our national history.

Ray M. Collins was born at Indian Creek, McKean County,
Pennsylvania, and is son of Charles P. and Ida M. (MERRILL) Collins,
whose marriage was solemnized at Petersburg, Lancaster County, that
state, on the 31st of October, 1876. The parents of Mr. Collins were
both born in the State of Maine. Charles P. Collins was born in
Aroostook County, Maine, on the 12th of December, 1847, and his wife
was born at Turner's Corners, that state, on the 19th of February,
1851. They became the parents of six sons and one daughter and of the
number five sons are now living - Burt H., Ray M., Charles L., Samuel
W. and Wallace H. The paternal grandparents of him whose name
introduces this article were Samuel W. and Dorcas (HARDISON) Collins,
the former of whom was born at Calais, Maine, in 1811, and the latter
of whom was born at China Springs, that state, in 1826. The
grandfather was identified with the lumber industry in the old Pine
Tree State during virtually his entire active career and was eighty-
seven years of age at the time of his death. His venerable widow, now
nearly ninety years of age, still resides in her native state. Of
their twelve children Charles L. was the first born and four others
of the number are still living.

Charles L. Collins was educated in the common schools and academy in
his native county, and in 1868, shortly before attaining to his legal
majority, he severed the ties that bound him to the parental home and
the state of his nativity, and went to the lumber woods of Wisconsin.
He passed the winter of that year in lumbering operations on the
Snake River, and in the spring of 1869 went with the log drive down
the Snake and St. Croix rivers into the Mississippi River and on to
Burlington, Iowa. He thence made his way to Pennsylvania, and in
June, 1869, arrived at Shawnee, this state, where he engaged in the
oil business and acquired his initial experience in connection with
this line of industry. He has been prominently and extensively
identified with oil operations in Pennsylvania, West Virginia,
Wyoming and California, as well as Oklahoma. He was one of the
organizers of the Union Oil and Gas Company and the Devonian Oil
Company, of Pennsylvania and Oklahoma, and was vice president of the
latter corporation, besides having become an interested principal in
many other companies engaged in oil and gas production. He came to
Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1907, having been one of the organizers of the
Bull Dog Oil Company, of which he is vice president, as previously
noted. He has traveled extensively and has many capitalistic
interests in South America and Alaska, to which latter section he
made a visit in 1900. He has received the thirty-second degree of the
Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of the Masonic fraternity and is a man
of large financial interests, his success representing the result of
his own ability and well directed endeavors.

Ray M. Collins acquired his preliminary education in the public
schools of the City of Bradford, Pennsylvania, continued his studies
in Manzanita Hall, a preparatory institution at Palo Alto,
California, and completed his higher academic studies in the
celebrated Leland Stanford, Jr., University, at Palo Alto. After
leaving the university he was identified with gold mining in
California about one and one-half years, and in 1904 he came to
Indian Territory and located at Osage, where he engaged in
contracting for the putting down of oil wells. In 1906 he established
his permanent residence in the City of Tulsa, where he became general
manager of the Bull Dog Oil Company, to the affairs of which
important corporation he has since given much of his time and
attention. He is one of the stockholders of this and other
corporations in Oklahoma and in California is interested in the
growing of lemons. In 1900 he traveled extensively in company with
his father, with whom he visited different South American countries
and also Alaska.

In politics Mr. Collins is independent, but he is distinctively
progressive and public-spirited as a citizen and is loyal to the city
and state of his adoption. At Bradford, Pennsylvania, he is
affiliated with the following named Masonic organizations: Union
Lodge No. 334, Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons; Bradford Chapter
No. 260, royal Arch Masons; Bradford Council, Royal and Select
Masters; and Bradford Commandery No. 58, Knights Templar. In Oklahoma
he has extended his Masonic affiliations by becoming a member of
Akdar Temple, Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic
Shrine, at Tulsa.

On the 26th of November, 1912, was solemnized the marriage of Mr.
Collins to Miss June C. HUBBARD, who was born and reared at Bradford,
Pennsylvania. They have no children.

Typed for OKGenWeb by Jack Wood, October 16, 1998.