Rice Woods Collins: Pioneer Farmer and Businessman of Arlington, Texas (1833–1912)
By: Abigail Wright
Published: August 28, 2025
Updated: August 28, 2025
Rice Woods Collins, farmer, businessman, and influential early citizen of Arlington, Texas, was born on December 13, 1833, in Jackson County, Alabama, to Maxwell (Reid) Collins and Archibald Woods Collins. He was the great-grandson of Archibald Woods, a captain in the American Revolution. In 1857 Collins was appointed postmaster of Larkins’s Fort, Alabama. About 1859 he married Martha Elizabeth Gray. They had twelve children together.
Collins fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy. He enlisted on November 1, 1862, at Larkin’s Fork and served as a corporal in the Fourth Tennessee Cavalry. About 1874 Collins relocated to Dallas, Texas. Roughly two years later he moved to a farm near Arlington before settling in Arlington proper. Two brothers, Thomas Benton and Marshall Reid Collins, also relocated to Arlington. In partnership with John W. Ditto, Collins formed the firm of Ditto & Collins, which opened the first general store in Arlington. The Ditto and Collins Land Company, owned by Ditto and Collins’s nephew Archibald Collins, later provided land for Arlington College (later the University of Texas at Arlington). Collins was identified as a farmer in the 1880 census, and he served as city treasurer for Arlington in 1885. He helped organize a joint stock company with Thomas Spruance and William Harrison that built a first-class lumberyard in Arlington. A fire engulfed his elegant two-story residence on January 28, 1890, with an estimated loss of nearly $4,000.
In 1891 he organized a public subscription to fund a public well. The following year the Arlington Mineral Well was drilled at the intersection of Main and Center streets. Collins was elected as a city alderman along with Thomas Spruance in 1897. He acquired large landholdings in Tarrant County, and in August 1904 he was involved in one of the largest land deals in Arlington history when he sold 320 acres of land on Fish Creek to J. W. Martin for $10,000. Collins and his wife Martha gave $1,000 to each of their twelve children in October 1907 with the advice that they “use it that it may be a blessing to you and yours and to the world at large.” He was a director of the Citizens’ National Bank in Arlington and a member of the Baptist Church.
Rice Woods Collins died at the age of seventy-eight at his home in Arlington on March 31, 1912. His funeral was held at the First Baptist Church, and he was interred at Arlington Cemetery.
Bibliography:
Dallas Morning News, April 1, 1912. Fort Worth Record, April 1, 1912. Lea Worcester and Evelyn Barker, Legendary Locals of Arlington (Charleston, South Carolina: Legendary Locals, 2013).
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
Abigail Wright, “Collins, Rice Woods,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/collins-rice-woods.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
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- August 28, 2025
- August 28, 2025
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