My Ancestors
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.