Maude Collins, as far as anyone knows today, had a pretty simple plan for her life — fall in love, marry, have kids and do her best to get by. In the rough, hardscrabble Appalachian Ohio of the early 20th century, a hilly land of furnaces, smoke and coal, that might have been the best most women could expect.

Instead, fate, misfortune and weird timing combined to help Collins make history as the first female sheriff in Ohio — in a time when women generally weren’t thought capable of performing such a job. But when the chips seemed to be falling against her, Collins surprised everybody by picking them up and playing them her way, a woman doing a man’s job in what was then very much a man’s world. To read more, click here to subscribe. >>