Anna M. Collins was a close friend of the McNitt sisters who moved from Montgomery County to Taylorville, Illinois sometime in 1863. Collins’s letters paint her a sociable young woman, frequently attending social events in the Taylorville community and eager to keep up on news from the East Fork area, where she came to know the McNitts. Collins moved to Ohio around late April in 1864 and maintained her correspondence with the sisters into the 1870s. Her letters depict relationships between women in the Montgomery County community and topics relating to the home front of the Civil War, including family life and courtship.