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Family is a rare luxury that a lucky few possess but most go wanting. When we are young, our siblings, parents, grandparents, cousins, and various aunts and uncles make up our families. As we age, we begin to lose those who helped shape who we are, but gain those in need of shaping. As the years begin to pass, the wind blows us apart like so many shattered fragments of a beautiful, broken vase. Some say that we will meet them again in a life to come; others say that we see them still in the faces of the young. I say that wherever they may lie or whatever plane they might still exist on, they are still and will forever remain family.
The Collett family herein transcribed is not a family of exceptional note or renown, for you will not find many references in the pages of history, but they are my family. Their legacy stretches across oceans and around the globe, reaching back through the sands of time, extending to the present day and into me. In the United States you will find that Collett is a mildly common name, though it extends back to the time before we gained our independence from England. We know this for certain because my five-great-grandfather, William Collett, was born in North Carolina by 1762 and fought with the North Carolina Regulars in the America Revolution. In Europe you will find many derivations of Collett in nearly every country, like Colet and Collet in the north and west, and many variants with vowels at the end, like Collette and Colletta in Italy and other southern European countries. It is believed that my heritage finds its origin in England, where it both precedes the invasion of William the Conqueror and follows alongside his conquest of Britannia. Different sources tell a different tale, as little paper trails exist prior to the invention of the printing press by Guttenberg in the 16th century, as all previous documents were handwritten.
This site is my tribute to all my ancestors following the War of Independence who stayed and fought as subsistence farmers in the harsh, mountainous terrain of the Appalachian Mountains, while others moved on to greener pastures further west. The history of these tough mountain people is the history of toil and hardship that few know of now and even fewer can remember in times past. The land given to my ancestor as pension for his involvement in the war brought him to eastern Kentucky where my family has lived and died for over two hundred years and where his descendants, beginning with his grandson Pleasant Lee Collett, began a tradition of family that continues today. America was built by the axe and plow of stubborn, determined folk like these, and though a few still call these seemingly impassible mountain passes home, we must never forget those who left their homes in the East and blazed the unbeaten path into the untamed wilds in wagons and on the backs of oxen and mules.
