Helen Isabel Frazee - 13

HELEN I COLLINS

Helen Isabel Collins was born December 5, 1886, likely near Cave Creek, Arizona where her father, Wilmonte Doniphan Frazee, was the granjero for the Arizona Canal Company, maintaining the canals that fed water to Phoenix. She liked getting out of the desert, though, because she made trips to California during the summers of her 17th, 19th, and 20th years, and in that third trip, she married Arthur Lathrope Collins in Los Angeles, 

Arthur was an engineer and moved the family to El Paso, Bisbee, and Sewell, Chile, but that doesn't appear to have appealed to her because in the World War I draft documents, He lived in Cananea, Sonora, Mexico and Helen and her sons lived with her parents in Phoenix.

Eventually, the family moves to the city of Eagle Rock in the L.A. basin and Arthur works as a civil engineer and construction manager for many of the large buildings going up in Los Angeles County.  Things look great in the 1930 census, but appearances are deceiving, because they were soon divorced. Then, on March 31, 1932 she married his widowed, older brother, Elmo Collins, and moved up to San Francisco, where Elmo was an apartment manager. She took along her teenage son, Arthur Shirley Collins, this ended up working out well for Shirley because he ended up marrying Elmo's next door neighbor, Jannette Maret.

Helen died May 7, 1944. She was predeceased by sister Mary Hugg or Phoenix, and she is survived by Elmo, Richard Hill Collins of Phoenix, and Arthur Shirley (Jannette) Collins of San Francisco, as well as sister Louise Alexander of Phoenix and brother (Will)Monte Frazee of Wildwood, Georgia