FIRST PERIOD

I was born near Thorntown, Indiana, August 21, 1834.

My father, James P. Mills, third child of James Mills 2nd and Marian Mills, was born in York, Pennsylvania, August 22, 1808. His father, James Mills 2nd, was born October 1, 1770, and died December 3, 1808.

My father's mother died in 1816, leaving him an orphan at the age of eight. He lived with his Aunt Margery Mills Hayes for about two years, when he was "bound out" as an apprentice to a tanner by the name of Greenwalt, at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Here he was to serve until twenty-one, when he was to receive one hundred dollars and a suit of clothes. All the knowledge that he had of books was derived from night school, Greenwalt not permitting him to attend during the day. His apprenticeship was so hard he ran away when twenty, forfeiting the hundred dollars and the clothes.

His only patrimony was from his grandfather, James Mills I, who, as father told me, sent for him on his deathbed and, patting him on the head, said: "I want Jimmy to have fifty pounds."

After running away, my father went to Geneva, New York, and served as a journeyman until twenty-two. With his inheritance of $250, he and his brother Frank started West in a Dearborn wagon, crossing the Alleghenies. He traveled to Crawfordsville, Indiana, and here, about 1830, entered eighty acres of the farm on which I was born. The land was covered with walnut, oak and ash, many of the trees being one hundred feet high and three or four feet in diameter. Felling and burning the trees, he built his house with his own hands, neighbors aiding in raising the walls.

My father had little knowledge of his ancestors, other than that they were Quakers, but, by correspondence with officials of counties where his ancestors lived, I have learned that the first of his family came over with William Penn and settled in Philadelphia.

My father married Sarah Kenworthy, on November 22, 1832. My mother was born December 30, 1810, at Coshocton, Coshocton County, Ohio, and died on the farm September 4, 1849 (before the daguerreotype, hence I have no picture of her). The Kenworthy family had only recently emerged from Quakerdom, and were known as "Hickory Quakers," so I am of Quaker descent through both my parents. My mother's father, William Kenworthy, born January 22, 1780 (presumably in Guilford County, North Carolina), lived about a mile and a half from our place, and died at Thorntown, August 31, 1854. In North Carolina he married Lucretia, the third child of my great grandmother, whose maiden name was Lydia Stroud, and who was born in 1765, near Guilford Court House, Guilford County, N. C. She married Jacob Skeen, and had eight children: Abraham, Mary, Lucretia, Jacob, Clarissa, John, Sarah and Lydia.

Her second child, my mother's Aunt Mary (Polly), married Benjamin Hopkins, whose death left her with four children in indigent circumstances. With her two daughters, Betty and Lydia, she lived in a small cabin almost in sight of my mother's house. Later these two girls came to live with my mother, picking, carding, spinning and weaving wool into Kentucky jeans and linsey-woolsey, which they made into garments for the family.

My first useful labor, when I was perhaps seven or eight years old, was to "hand in" the warp, thread by thread, to these girls as they passed it through the reed and harness of the loom. The knowledge I thus acquired of warp and woof laid the foundation of my future financial success.

About 1844 my great grandmother Stroud came to live with us. I remember well the stories she told me of the outrages of Lord Rawdon's troops when he invaded North Carolina with the Hessians and destroyed her father's property. Her father was once arrested for secreting a neighbor rebel in a sack of wool under the bed, discovered by the Hessians sticking their bayonets into the wool and wounding the rebel.They placed a rope around her father's neck and were taking him out to hang him, when he was rescued by the sudden arrival of some of Generals Lee and Sumter's soldiers. She described, too, her visit to the battle-field of the Cowpens near her father's plantation, to care for the wounded, and told of her three brothers who served in the Revolutionary Army, one of them being killed. She was so vehement in her denunciation of the English and Hessian soldiers that, all my life, I have been intensely prejudiced against the English.

Later she left our house to live with her youngest daughter, Lydia (Mrs. John Frazier), and died there in 1847, aged eighty-two.

Like my father, my mother had small patrimony, only two hundred dollars, which her father gave her in lieu of the one hundred and sixty acres he gave each of her brothers. Like him, she never attended school. In Coshocton, Ohio, by an unwritten law, no girls were permitted to enter the school house during sessions, so her knowledge of letters was gained through instruction by her parents and brothers. But, if lacking in schooling, both my parents had the greatest of all endowments—strong hands, clear heads and brave hearts, with which to enter their life struggle for existence.

They had nine children: Anson, William W., Marietta, Eliza Jane, Emmett, Allen, John, Caroline and Thomas Edwin, seven of whom grew to maturity. (Cuts, 28, 29.)

Thorntown had been a partially civilized Pottawottomi village under French Jesuit control, the seat of their reservation, where corn and other products were cultivated. When their reservation was opened to settlement, the Indians moved to Kansas. The birds carried the hawthorn seed and deposited it on the freshly plowed furrows of the farm land the Indians abandoned, which resulted in a beautiful orchard of hawthorn. Hence the name, Thorntown.

Grandfather Kenworthy purchased a good portion of these fields, including the old Indian burying-ground. He built a store and employed two six-mule teams to carry supplies fromCincinnati. One day, when Grandfather was plowing near this graveyard, a number of chiefs in war-paint came to his house.

After the Indians had smoked awhile, one of them drew a long knife,faced Grandfather and, pointing toward the graveyard, said:

"Kinwot, bimeby you gee-haw; gee-haw cut my brudder!"

Grandfather replied: "No, I will never plow the land under which your dead are buried," and it is today preserved as a graveyard.

Subsequent experiences with Indians led me to realize more than before the seriousness of this interview.

Anson Mills.

W. W. Mills.

Emmett Mills.

Allen Mills.

Myself with Brothers. (Text, 27.)

James P. Mills.

Marietta Burckhalter.

Eliza Jane Smiley.

Caroline Mills Martin.

My Father and His Daughters. (Text, 27.)

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