Editing Floyd Collins (section)

==Early life==
[[File:Collins Homestead.jpg|alt=Collins home (left) and 2nd cave ticket booth (right)|thumb|left|Collins home - 1st cave ticket booth - (left) and 2nd cave ticket booth (right)]]
William Floyd Collins was born on July 20, 1887,{{efn|name=bday|Murray and Brucker note July 20, 1887, is the birth date listed on Collins' tombstone but they believe April 20, 1887, "seems to be the most accurate" birthdate based on "scattered family records."{{sfnp|Murray|Brucker|2013|p=306}}}} the son of Leonidas "Lee" Collins (1858–1936) and Martha Jane ([[née]] Burnett) (1862–1915). The Collins family had already suffered hardship prior to Floyd's death in 1925, as his mother Martha died from [[tuberculosis]] in 1915, and his older brother James Collins had died in 1922 from [[Typhoid fever]]. Floyd's siblings included Homer Collins (1902–1969), Nellie Collins (1900–1970), and Marshal (1897–1981), Anna, and Andy Collins. After the death of his mother, Floyd's father remarried to Serilda Jane "Miss Jane" ([[née]] Tapscott), who was the widow of a caver who died in 1915. Miss Jane died in 1926, just a year after Floyd, after which Lee married for a third time.{{sfnp|Murray|Brucker|2013|pp=40–41}}

Floyd Collins was born on the Collins family farm, located approximately {{convert|4|mi|km}} east of [[Mammoth Cave, Kentucky|Mammoth Cave]] near the [[Green River (Kentucky)|Green River]] in [[Kentucky]]. Collins began entering [[cave]]s by himself at the age of six in search of [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] artifacts to sell to tourists at the Mammoth Cave Hotel.{{sfnp|Collins|Lehrberger|2005|p=20}} In 1910 he discovered his first cave, Donkey's Cave, on the Collins farm. In 1912, Edmund Turner, a [[geology|geologist]], hired Collins to show him caves of the region. Consequently, Turner and Collins assisted with the discovery of Dossey's Dome Cave in 1912 and Great Onyx Cave in 1915.<ref name="Images of America" />