Compliments of the Author to

Anson Mills

Hannah Cassel Mills

MY STORY

BY

ANSON MILLS

Brigadier General, U. S. A.

Edited by C. H. Claudy

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
1918

PRESS OF BYRON S. ADAMS
WASHINGTON, D. C.

COPYRIGHT 1918
BY ANSON MILLS, BRIG.-GEN. U. S. A.

CONTENTS

INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS

To General Anson Mills
from his friend
Nelson A. Miles

Lieut-General U. S. Army

PREFACE

Washington, D. C., December 12, 1917.

The record of important events in human affairs as they are placed upon the pages of history and drift into the shadows of the past, should be recorded with sacred fidelity. The historian who places accurate and important knowledge at the disposal of the present and future students and writers is a public benefactor for those not only of his own time, but for the generations that shall follow.

The achievements and failures, the evils and blessings, the benevolence and the injustice, the rights and wrongs, the ambitions, wisdom and intelligence, the happiness and nobility, as well as the distress and sacrifice of a race or people rightly recorded, forms an invaluable guide and chart for the innumerable throng that occupy the field of activities and in their turn pass on to be replaced by others.

Doubly fortunate is the one who takes an important and distinguished part in the important events of his time, and then can write an account of those events for the instruction and benefit of others. It is doubtful if any epoch in history was more important or freighted with more difficult or greater problems to be solved than those presented during the time just preceding, during and subsequent to our great Civil War.

The great Republic formed after seven years of valor and sacrifice from thirteen weak and scattered colonies, had, through several decades of unprecedented development and prosperity, become a most powerful homogeneous nation. In its creation and progress, there was left one element of discord; one vexed question remained unsettled that threatened to dismember the government, destroy the federation and seriously embarrass our advance toward a higher civilization. When reason became dethroned, logic and argument failed, the problem had to be settled by the dread arbitrament of war.

The young men, the very flower of our national manhood, were required to decide that great problem. For the very important duties of citizenship and soldier, the distinguished author of this volume was well equipped for the important duties of that time and to render important service for his government and the people of our country.

Descending from the best of ancestral stock, born and reared in what was known as the Great Middle West, in an atmosphere of national independence, a region of our country where we find the highest type of our American civilization, he grew to manhood under the most favored auspices. Educated at excellent schools and institutions of learning, his mind became well stored with useful knowledge concerning his own country and the world. He then went to that famous military academy, West Point, where he acquired a thorough military training and those manly attributes for which the institution is noted. His mind naturally sought wider fields of usefulness, and when he resigned, he became identified with that marvelous civil development that has transformed a vast wilderness and mountain waste into productive communities and States.

As a civil engineer, he was most useful and successful. When the great crisis came, he was found true and steadfast in his allegiance to the national welfare amid chaos, doubt and uncertainty. His loyalty was invaluable, his patriotism sublime; among the first to volunteer, his record was most commendable and praiseworthy, ever present in every campaign and battle in which his company or regiment was engaged. Four times breveted for distinguished conduct in battle, he fought for a principle, and had the satisfaction of witnessing its final triumph, and its universal approval by the civilized world.

In that "war for civilization" on our western frontier, he again rendered distinguished service, not only by his conspicuous gallantry in action against Indians, but by his skill and genius as a commander in achieving success and victory where there was little prospect of winning either. In a campaign where success depends entirely upon the ability of the commander, there he succeeded.

During a long life of civil and military achievements, he was blessed by the companionship of one of the most estimable, accomplished and noblest of women, whose gentle influence was refining, whose presence was inspiring, and whose counsel was most encouraging and beneficial.

A successful life, rich with noble designs and good deeds, General Mills has contributed a favor in giving to the readers, the result of his experiences and observations.

These pages are commended to the public with the full knowledge of the fact that they are written for no selfish purpose, but for the highest and best of motives.

Nelson A. Miles

Lieut-General U. S. Army

Bayberry Ledge,

East Gloucester, Mass.,

August 31, 1917.

My Dear Daughter Constance:

After retiring from the line of the army, some twenty years ago, I had no further military duty before me save that of Commissioner on the Boundary Commission between the United States and Mexico, which I believed would occupy but a short time. Your mother and I had permanently located in Washington. We believed our lives had been so varied—mingling with so many races during so many vicissitudes and trials—that it would be interesting to you and your children for me, assisted by her, to write of our careers. Of this intention we told you in a letter dated January 1, 1898, that you might help us in such parts of the story as you were old enough to remember, although this was but a small part of our long career, you coming to us when we were middle-aged.

But the duties of the Boundary Commission became so arduous, and my business increased so as to keep me strenuously occupied until two years ago. And now, just as I find time for these reminiscences, the greatest sorrow of my life has come upon you and me—the loss of your mother. This shock has been so appalling that it shook my resolution to attempt the task without her, who had been the inspiration and chief factor in my life. Before giving up the plan, however, I submitted it to friends who had been nearest to us during our married life, and asked their advice. They all think I should not abandon my first intention of writing my life and career, in which my wife took so large a part. I record here my letter to Mrs. Albert S. Burleson and her answer, which is typical of the rest. I have selected her letter for publication because of its womanly sentiment, and because the marital life of General Burleson, my friend for a generation, has been not unlike my own. These letters are as follows:

Eastern Point,

Gloucester, Mass.,

May 31, 1917.

My Dear Mrs. Burleson:

We, Constance and I, want to thank you and General Burleson for your card of sympathy.

Twenty years ago, after retirement, I had in mind to write a reminiscence of my career, but the boundary duties and my Worcester business so occupied my time that I was unable even to begin it. Now that Nannie has gone, I reflect that she has been the inspiration of whatever success I have had in life for nearly forty-nine years, so that it seems to me that whatever I do in that line should be devoted to her more than to me. I have, therefore, about concluded to write something in memory of her, and I am considering just how to do this. She was so serene, so unassuming, and so devoutly thankful to the Great Creator and her forebears for her rich endowments that she had no incentive to display them, but was always, before all, the same radiantly beautiful, graceful, modest woman, whose sparkling eyes and responsive facial expression foretold her charity for all and malice toward none, that I can not do her too much honor. From my viewpoint, women have as much right to be remembered for their work in this world as men. Certainly she had.

It is difficult to write on such a subject, especially so soon after my great loss, but, as I have but a brief period in which to accomplish what I think I ought to do, I want to ask your judgment as to how I should proceed.

Yours very truly,

Anson Mills.

Mrs. Albert S. Burleson,

1901 F Street, Washington, D. C.

1901 F Street,

June 5, 1917.

Dear General Mills:

I believe it would grieve your wife—could she know—to have you put aside something you had planned through so many years to do. Doubtless you frequently discussed the undertaking with her—perhaps her interest in it was even greater than yours. And any reminiscence of your life would necessarily include her life—your life together. In the preparation of such a book she would continue to be your inspiration, and that thought alone would give color and strength to all you wrote. From the viewpoint of a devoted, understanding wife myself, I feel deeply that her husband's life history would be the most pleasing of all memorials to her; for surely her memory is perpetuated in your life.

I should be glad to have you write to me again, and if it is not painful to you, to come sometime to see us. You must know that all that concerns you and your wife, whom we too knew as a "radiantly beautiful, graceful and modest woman," concerns us.

With high regard and good wishes that time will bring peace to your wounded heart, believe me,

Faithfully yours,

Adele S. Burleson.

I have two objects in undertaking this work:

First. That I may leave to you, your children, and their descendants, some evidence of who and what their forebears were.

Second. To give our collateral relatives something that may interest and possibly encourage them.

As far as practicable, I shall tell the story chronologically, dividing the narrative into three periods: first, my childhood, and up to the time of the Civil War, when I was commissioned in the army; second, the period of the Civil War up to my marriage; and, third—by far the most important—our history as man and wife for nearly forty-nine years.

It may be my narrative runs too much to sentiment—but there is sentiment in our Flag; in the Declaration of Independence; in the Constitution—but we can not make them commercial assets. It was sentiment that caused the armies of the "Blue and the Gray" to amaze the world with the most sanguinary and chivalrous war ever waged during all the tide of time; and it was sentiment that in a few years brought these foes together as one harmonious people. The want of sentiment caused the Goths and Vandals to degenerate into what their name now implies. The same may be said of the Hessians of our War for Independence. The want of sentiment required 300,000 British soldiers, and half as many American mules, three years to overcome 40,000 Boers imbued with sentiment, which brought peace without vainglorious victory.

Anson Mills.

I am appending at the end of this book three papers which Mrs. Mills assisted me in preparing, as follows:

"Organization and Administration of the Army;" "Address to the Society of the Army of the Cumberland;" "Address to the Order of Indian Wars."

FOREWORD

I am eighty-three years old, having lived two-thirds of the constitutional life of this great Republic, which I believe the greatest institution for self-government ever devised.

Counting service as a cadet, in the line of the army proper, and as a Boundary Commissioner, I have served fifty-four years, nine months and four days in the United States Army; longer, I believe, than any other officer.

Mrs. Mills and I often congratulated ourselves that we lived in this nation and generation. In no other could we have seen and enjoyed so much, conducive to the belief that mankind was rapidly advancing to the greatest possible perfection.

Of the four greatest scourges, war, pestilence, famine and flood, we have seen the three latter almost entirely eradicated.

Only the scourge of war, the most cruel, barbarous and destructive of all, is left uncontrolled and unhampered, although there is hope this may soon be so restrained that it will be no longer a menace.

We have seen the nation develop from twenty millions to over one hundred millions of the most civilized, righteous and just people. We have seen it become foremost in the sciences, arts and industries. We have seen sixty per cent of hand labor transferred to machinery; we have watched railroad and steamboat transportation develop from their infancy; we watched the birth of electric light and power; we have seen the bicycle, motorcycle, automobile, sewing machine, knitting machine, typewriter, telegraph and its wireless associate, telephone, dirigible balloon, aeroplane, undersea boat, washing machine, power printing press, linotype, and hundreds of other inventions developed to their present perfection.

We have had a part in the pride that most of these betterments were brought about by the study, energy and ability of Americans, who, by reason of their superior inventive genius, excelled the rest of the world in manufacture.

We, too, tried to invent and discover. If we constantly combated what we believed to be error, ignorance, inertia, and non-progressiveness, it was because we tried to lead those believing, as we did, that their souls should lend the best in them to pave the way for those coming after.

As the spirit, impulse and efforts of the two characters portrayed in these reminiscences have been those of reformers striving for the advancement of their fellow men, it is probable that a free criticism of errors and wrongs will incite a suspicion that they are relating grievances. Therefore, I ask the reader to distinguish between vindictiveness and vindication. What I here record is not a relation of grievances, but an endeavor to explain to those who have the courage to follow our line of life, the antagonisms we met. For those who are willing to live a commonplace life, it is perhaps better to observe the opinions and customs of neighbors and those in authority, but for others it is sometimes wise courageously to defy and disobey injurious and useless commands. Such actions often injure the reputation of the reformer for a time, but eventually they will distinguish him above the large number of his fellows:

"... who yearly creep

Into the world to eat and sleep,

And know no reason why they are born,

Save to consume the wine and corn,

Devour the cattle, fowl and fish,

And leave behind an empty dish."

FIRST PERIOD

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.

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 from Cincinnati. 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.)

Privations of the Early Pioneers

My early life was primitive. For instance, there were no machine-made nails in this country. All nails were made by the village blacksmith from nail rods, and I often watched him while he wrought those I was sent to buy. All pins and needles were imported from England, and none of the pins had solid heads. They had wire-wound heads brazed upon the stems.

There were no shoe factories in the country, and no shoe stores in the villages. We were shod by itinerant cobblers, who made their lasts and pegs from maple wood from our wood pile. There were no rights or lefts, but each child had his own last. We children were so curious to handle the cobbler's tools that father authorized him to draw a chalk line around the corner where he worked, and use the knee strap, with which he held the shoe while pegging, to chastise us if we crossed it!

Farmers made their own brooms and axe helves from young hickory trees. We raised the wool and flax required for our clothing, all of which my mother spun, wove and fashioned, as did all other housewives. Stockings and mittens were all knit by hand; there were no knitting machines, sewing machines or cooking stoves. Practically everything necessary for existence was raised or made on the farms, save coffee, spices, tableware, hardware, glass and cutlery, which came from abroad and up the Mississippi by boat. Our nearest market was Cincinnati—two hundred miles away over rough and at times impassable roads.

There was then no Federal currency. Commerce was carried on with Spanish coin, and legal contracts were liquidated in "Spanish milled dollars." There were no postage stamps. Postmasters collected from writer or recipient ten cents for letters east of the Rocky Mountains and twenty-five cents for letters sent elsewhere. There were no envelopes. Letter paper had the fourth page unruled and was folded into an envelope, leaving the unruled page for the address. They were sealed with wax wafers.

There were no matches in general use. A Kentucky flint-lock rifle hung over the mantel, and this, with powder in the pan, was used to start fires by flashing the powder against tow or fine shavings. All farmers' boys became experts with these Kentucky rifles. Squirrels were so numerous that when the corn was maturing they would ruin three or four rows of corn next the fence. Partly to procure fresh meat and partly to protect the corn, it was our business to destroy these squirrels. I remember one Saturday I killed over sixty squirrels.

Carpenters learned their trade by five years' unpaid apprenticeship. A carpenter's chest of tools cost one hundred and twenty-five dollars, and contained approximately one hundred implements.

My father provided me with a carpenter's bench and tools and, without serving an apprenticeship, I became an expert carpenter, repairing farm tools and making furniture, as well as toys for the children. I was put to work "dropping corn" when not over eight years old and, later, hoeing and cultivating, as were all the children of my time. We were healthy and strong. Few children wore glasses and few had bad teeth.

I first went to school about 1840, when I was six. The school was a log house with a puncheon floor. Benches for the smaller scholars were saw-mill slabs, with four legs, without backs. The older boys had their bench facing the wall, with a broad plank on which to write fastened on pins in the logs.

School teachers, employed by the farmers, "boarded around" for a week or two at a time with the parents. These schoolmasters were almost invariably Irish, and governed entirely by fear, punishing cruelly. Of course, the children became stupid, uninterested, and learned slowly. We were made to sit on the bench eight hours a day, holding a book in our hands, whether studying or not. Hearing of the New England method of "moral suasion," my father interested his neighbors and succeeded in engaging as teacher a young man from New Hampshire.

He, Charlie Naylor, told us that he had come from afar, where the teachers tried to avoid corporal punishment, and that, unless it was absolutely forced upon him, he would never whip us. He was brilliant, active and industrious, and soon won the love of his sixty scholars.

Many settlers were from Kentucky, where they compelled the teacher to "treat" on Christmas. If he refused, they tied him hand and foot, took him to the river and immersed him under the ice until he consented to supply them with apples, candy and cider. Naylor's predecessor had been treated this way.

When Christmas came nine boys over fifteen years old determined to demand the treat. The day before Christmas these nine boys took the loose benches and barred the double doors. My cousin, Lee Kenworthy, passed a note through the transom to the teacher, demanding the usual Christmas treat.

Naylor read the paper, stamped it under his feet, went to the wood pile and got the axe. Smashing the door panels, he boldly entered, axe in hand, walking to the center of the room ringing his bell violently. Every scholar proceeded to his seat. For some minutes the teacher walked back and forth. Then he asked the larger boys in turn: "Had you any hand in this?"

Each answered clearly that he had. They were brave boys. To each of the nine boys Naylor said: "Take your place out in the middle of the room near the stove." Then he gave his knife to the boy on the right and said: "Go out to that beech tree and cut nine good switches."

Naylor deliberately drew each switch through his hand, laid it on the hot stove, where it began to pop and frizzle, then slowly drew it through his hand again, bending it back and forth. Finally he walked out before the boy on the right and called on him to step forward and give him his left hand. Then, raising the switch with a frightful effort, he brought it down mildly on the boy's shoulder, and told the boy to return to his seat. He repeated this with each of the nine, none making any resistance. He then threw the switches in the fire and resumed teaching.

This moderation established Charlie Naylor as the most popular teacher that community had ever known, ended the Christmas treat, and almost entirely ended corporal punishment in our public schools.

My father enlarged his farm. When I was twelve he was raising corn and wheat for shipment, and I remember driving a two-horse wagon loaded with thirty bushels a distance of twenty-five miles to Lafayette. There I saw Perdue's Block, the first brick building I had ever seen. It was celebrated throughout that part of Indiana, yet it was but two stories high and had only three stores!

Father had three permanent farm hands, Matt and John McAleer, refined and fairly educated Irishmen, and Bill Smith, a partially degenerated and cruel American. When the Mexican War broke out, all three wanted to enlist. The nearest recruiting office was Crawfordsville, and I went with them. The recruiting officer had stacked in front of his office many old-fashioned flint-lock muskets, which so excited me that I begged the recruiting officer to take me as a drummer, although I was but thirteen! He replied that he would, provided I could get my parents' consent.

Father met us when we returned and asked the men if they had enlisted. Matt and John said "yes." Then father asked Bill, "did you enlist?" "No, Jim," he replied, "I did not. You should see those big guns. They carry a ball as big as your thumb and three buckshots, and have spears on the end of them that long, and just as keen——!"

Matt and John served through the war, but John died of yellow fever coming home. Matt remained with father many years. All this war experience so inspired me that I persuaded father to apply to our Congressman, Dan Mace, for an appointment to West Point. He replied that he would have given it to me, but that he had already nominated another.

My father was an ardent Democrat of the Jackson type, and when Jackson died he felt for a long time that the country was lost. Although self-educated, he was a great reader, and a very progressive man. Our first corn we shelled by hand, but later my father bought the first corn sheller in the county. He got the first traveling traction threshing machine, which threshed the wheat from the shocks in the field. Formerly we threshed it from the sheafs on the barn floor with a "flail"—two sticks tied together, with which the thresher beat the kernels from the straw. Father also purchased the first reaper in that part of the country. He prospered above his neighbors because he was indefatigable in industry, ambition and economy, but he met with a great sorrow, as I did, in the loss of his wife, my mother, when I was fifteen. Before he was very happy and cheerful, singing and whistling much; but I never heard him do either after my mother's death.

Being the oldest child, I was called on more than the rest to care for the younger ones. Shortly after my mother's death my father asked us to make a great sacrifice to keep the family together. He would not marry again, and it would be impossible to have a woman come to care for us. If I would not assume the duties of a mother with Mary, thirteen, and Jane, eleven, to do the housework, he would be obliged to bind the children out to relatives and neighbors. We promised to make this sacrifice, and while I thought then and for a long time after that it was a great wrong, I now know it was the best thing that ever happened to me. The responsibility, together with the instruction and admonitions that I had received, principally from my mother's knee, prepared me for future responsibilities. My father gave me much advice as to the obligations resting on all to do for those coming after him what those who had gone before had done for him. Once, traveling a good road, well prepared to keep vehicles out of the mud, he said, "Now, Anson, somebody built this road for you; you must build some for those who are to come after you."

In 1851 my father had opened his farm to one hundred and fifty acres. Fertilizing it with the ashes of the consumed forest, he raised a most extraordinary crop, three thousand bushels of wheat and thirty-five hundred bushels of corn. He sold the wheat for one dollar and the corn for sixty cents per bushel, which made him a rich man for those days. Then he told my sister Mary and me that he was going to prepare us to fight the battle of life by giving us an education, which he and our mother had not had.

So in September, 1852, he sent us by rail, a five or six days' journey, to Charlotteville Academy, in Schoharie County, New York.

We made seven changes in the five or six days' journey to Canajoharie, New York. The legal rights of railroads were so involved that the projectors had not devised a means to construct interstate or through-city railroads. In none of the towns was there a joint depot; in most we hired a country wagon to carry our trunks from one depot to the other. At Erie there were two depots, because the road to the east was of a different gauge from the road to the west!

I mention all this in detail that those who are so dissatisfied with the beautiful and efficient methods of railroad transportation in these days may realize what they would be up against if the Rockefellers, Carnegies and other benefactors like them had not made these great improvements possible.

At Canajoharie we took the stage to Charlotteville, thirty miles distant, where we arrived in a snowstorm.

My father had entrusted to me a large amount of Indiana money to deposit with the treasurer of the academy. On presenting it to Mr. Archer, he exclaimed: "Why, what does your father mean by sending us this 'wild cat money!' You could not buy a breakfast anywhere in New York with it! However, since you have come so far, I will send it to New York and see what can be done." He finally exchanged it and put it to my father's credit.

Charlotteville Academy

At the academy were eight hundred students, male and female, occupying separate buildings, the chapel and dining room being between the boys' and girls' buildings, and the only place where they met. In the town, the girls were allowed to walk only on certain streets and the boys on others.

My father equipped me with what he considered suitable clothing for my new environment, but what was fashionable in the West was a matter of ridicule in New York, particularly my hat, a tall, square-crowned beaver. I wore a large moustache, had black hair and rather dark complexion, and I was a curiosity to the students, my dialect and vocabulary being different from the Yankee pupils. I was soon nicknamed the "Russian Ambassador from the Woolly West," and my good nature was somewhat tried by the ridicule. However, I made the best of it, had plenty of company always, and my room was visited perhaps as much as that of any other student.

I had made myself a small box with a lock, in which I kept some personal things, among them some correspondence with a girl cousin of mine in Ohio, whose letters were very sentimental.

One evening, I found the son of the professor of mathematics, Ferguson, about my own age and size, sitting in my room. He began to quote some of the silly expressions of this young lady. I asked him if he had read my letters. When he said he had, I invited him into the hall and blackened both his eyes. He called for help, but the watchman came very slowly! Ferguson was unpopular with the employees and the watchman told me afterward he wished he had let me alone a little longer. The boy reported the incident to his father and the elder Ferguson, the second officer of the academy, sent for me in the absence of President Alonso Flack. He threatened to dismiss me because I should have reported to him, but said instead he would report the case to the president when he returned. I replied, to use a present day expression, that it was a non-justiciable case.

Later Mr. Flack sent for me and I told him what had happened. Mr. Flack pondered and then said: "Mr. Mills, I am very sorry that you got into this trouble, but, had I been in your situation I would probably have done as you did. That will do—but don't let it occur again."

At Charlotteville I met two young revolutionary refugees from Cuba, Miguel Castillanos and Juan Govin. Castillanos had been captured and imprisoned in a fortress in Ciuta, Africa, but escaped. By mutual arrangement, we taught each other our respective languages and I thus had an early acquaintance with Spanish.

After a year, during which both my sister and myself got along very well, Father sent me a letter from Mr. Mace, the Congressman, saying that his appointee had failed and that he would nominate me for West Point. The nomination came and Father had me come home until the opening of the academy in June.

Prior to leaving Charlotteville, I obtained from Secretary of State, William L. Marcy, a passport with the view of going to Cuba when I had finished my course, but my appointment to West Point changed that.

My Abandoned Birthplace

West Point Military Academy

I reported at West Point on June 1, 1855. I knew nothing of military discipline or ways and was received, as were others at that time, in a most cruel manner by the older cadets.

I was told to report to two older cadets for examination and assignment to quarters. I expected at least serious treatment, but they asked me the most ingeniously foolish questions. I smiled, but with great sternness they demanded I observe proper respect for the officers of the United States Army.

They questioned me on my political and moral principles, adding that they must observe great caution in assigning room-mates, lest injury might happen. Finally, they assigned me to a room with Cadet Martin (J. P.) from Kentucky, hoping that I would find no difficulty in getting along in peace with him.

After being bedeviled for a week or two, I became despondent and homesick, especially as no cadets would recognize me in any friendly manner or speak to me on any but official subjects, except to jeer and deride me.

One day, I was accosted by an old cadet (whom I afterwards learned to be George H. Crosman), the first friendly salutation I had since my entrance. Learning I was from Indiana, he said he was glad to hear it, as it was his State (which was not true) and began asking me if I knew certain persons from that State, some of whom I did. Crosman seemed glad to make my acquaintance and asked me to call on him.

In camp I was assigned to A Company and Crosman belonged to D. Hoping for some relief from extreme despondency and homesickness by making one friend among the higher class, I proceeded to his tent. I found him lying down in his underclothes smoking a meerschaum pipe.

He greeted me cheerfully, invited me to a seat and asked me if I smoked. He expressed astonishment at my reply and stated I would never graduate, that no man ever had graduated who did not smoke, and that I had better begin at once.

I did not wish to smoke and said so.

"Well, that's all right," he replied, "but examine that pipe. That is a fine pipe—a first class meerschaum pipe."

I took the pipe and began to examine it, when, placing his own pipe on the side of his body opposite the sentry walking his beat outside, he called "Number seven, do you see this plebe smoking?"

Immediately the sentry cried, "Corporal of the guard, number seven."

I said, "Mr. Crosman, you are not going to report me for smoking, are you?"

"Well," said he, "if I should, are you going to deny it? What's the use? Didn't that sentry see you with a pipe in your hand and this tent full of smoke? How could you deny it?"

I moved, my impulse being to return to my tent. "But," said he, "don't be a coward, plebe, face the music. Don't run away."

So I sat still waiting results. Shortly I saw a corporal with two men armed with muskets approaching. They marched up facing me, one on each side. Then the corporal sternly ordered me to take my place between them.

When I refused to move each member of the patrol placed an arm under mine, lifting me from my seat. They dragged me along, the corporal placing his bayonet against my back. I was placed in the prisoners' tent. This was in June and the weather was very warm. The walls of the tent were lowered and a sentinel placed over me and I was ordered to take what was then known as the Shanghai step. The tactics had just been changed from Scott's to Hardie's, Hardie's step being quicker and longer than the step formerly used. The exercise I was ordered to take was marking time by raising the feet as high as possible, bringing the knee up against the stomach.

I did this until wet with perspiration and so exhausted that I almost fell. Presently the sentinel called, "Turn out the guard, Officer of the Day," when they hustled me with other prisoners to form on the left of the guard.

The officer of the day was Cadet Lieutenant Porter, whom I had met. My hopes brightened, thinking I would be released as soon as the circumstances became known. When he came to me, he remarked, "Why, plebe, what are you confined for?"

"I don't know," I replied.

"Well," said he, "if you don't know, I think I will keep you in confinement until you find out."

I remained a prisoner until late in the evening, exercised frequently, when the guard was again turned out. This time, as the officer of the day said, "Well, plebe, have you found out yet what you are confined for?" I replied, "Yes, sir."

"Well, what is it?"

"For smoking," said I.

"That's not a very serious offense. Will you promise not to let it occur again if I release you?"

"Certainly," I replied, and was released.

I resolved to punish Crosman physically, but at the January examination he was deficient and discharged. Before he left he came to see me. "Plebe," he said cheerfully, "I am going away. Here's a set of text books for your next course. If you will accept them, I will give them to you." My impulse was to refuse and force him from my room, but, on better thought, I accepted the books and thanked him.

He afterwards became a captain in the Tenth Infantry.

This was an extreme case of hazing of the kind that eventually brought it into disrepute. I believe hazing held within bounds is of benefit to the academy, in teaching the bumptious and presumptuous how little they are prepared to enter a life of absolute discipline, and how little imaginary personal, social, or political superiority has to do with their future training.

Long experience as a commanding officer has borne out my belief that the graduate (by reason of the cadet being placed upon honor in all communications with his superiors) is generally superior to other commissioned officers. But I am willing to admit that Crosman's apparent cruelties and other similar vicissitudes better qualified me to fight successfully my long battle of life.

One of the things that impressed me most during my stay at the academy was the painting above the chancel, "Peace and War" by Professor Robert Wier. Underneath it was written, "Righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach to any people." The painting was so beautiful and the sentiments so inspiring that it impressed me all my life.

Among the two hundred and fifty cadets was more diversity in dialect, pronunciation, and ways of thought than there had been at Charlotteville. One could soon tell, after a brief conversation, what part of the country one's companion was from. There was so little traveling from State to State that almost every State had its own dialect, as well as peculiar theories of morals, politics and government. The Kansas troubles were then at their height and there were many encounters between the extremists of the North and the extremists of the South, but, after a year or two at the academy, each became reconciled to the other's ways so that the corps, as a body, was more homogeneous than the people at large.

Cadet life then was much simpler than now. Our dining table was without covering, our tableware heavy Delft, and the diet very simple. Years afterward my classmate Samuel Cushing and I were guests in the barracks at the centennial commencement. To our astonishment the adjutant read an order: "Cadets of the first class (graduating) will turn in their napkin rings immediately after guard mount." Cushing jokingly drew his sleeve across his mouth indicative of the absence of napkins in our day.

My experience with the Kentucky rifle had made me one of the best shots in the corps. After marching off guard, it was the custom for each member to go to the target range and fire at a target, the man making the best shot being excused from his next tour of guard duty. I frequently got excused for this excellence.

In camp, I drew a beautiful musket, new, clean, undented, with a curled walnut stock, and my mechanical experience enabled me to make it the handsomest gun in the corps. At guard mount it was the adjutant's duty to select three cadets having the cleanest uniforms and rifles for the "color guard." When the corps stacked muskets at dress parade in the morning, these three color guards walked post in front of these rifles for two hours only, after which they were given freedom for the day. I frequently was detailed on this guard.

We were not allowed to go off the reservation without permission, but on one occasion I was seized with a desire to "run it." Getting a ferryman to take me across the Hudson to Cold Springs, I procured a bottle of brandy. As it was contraband, I placed it under my tent floor.

We were required to keep our brasses and other trimmings bright, but were prohibited from using oxalic acid. Nevertheless, many of the cadets used acid for cleaning brasses, keeping the bottle well hidden.

Unfortunately, I placed my brandy near my oxalic acid bottle. At my suggestion my tentmate, Andrews, drew out what he supposed was the brandy, pouring out a drink. It burned his mouth, so he spit it out, saying, "That's not brandy."

"Of course it is. Give it to me," I said, impetuously taking a big swallow. Immediately it began to burn. Lighting a candle, Andrews cried, "Mills, you have taken acid." Someone called out I was poisoned, and older cadets begged me to run to the hospital. I ran through the sentinel's post without permission or my cap to the surgeon's office. The German steward produced a ball of chalk about the size of a small orange and told me to eat! It was an unsavory meal, but I swallowed it; and the steward told me I would be all right, which I was.

The story spread through the whole corps, even to the instructing officers, and I never heard the last of it.

It was then the custom for cadets to settle private quarrels by personal combat. Cadet Wesley Merritt, of my company and class, and I, each weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds, were five feet ten and a half inches in height, as near physically equal as any two men could be. A question of veracity arising between us, our friends decided we should go down by Dade's monument and settle the matter. Merritt selected his tentmate, Alfred T. Smith, and I mine, John N. Andrews, to act as seconds.

Although our hearts were not in it, and we were always the best of friends afterward, we had one of the hardest fights that took place while I was at the academy. We were finally separated by our seconds, covered with blood, and started back to camp, when, like Roderick's Clan Alpines in the Lady of the Lake, nearly a hundred cadets, secretly assembled as spectators, arose from the surrounding foliage.

General Scott was a great friend of the academy and of the cadets, and often visited us. Once when a plebe in camp, I was on post No. 1 at the guard house. As was his habit when walking out, General Scott wore all the gaudy uniform to which he was entitled. The corporal of the guard called out to me: "Be careful; General Scott is approaching."

As he arrived at the proper distance, I called out, "Turn out the guard; Commander-in-Chief of the United States forces."

General Scott halted, faced me, threw his right hand to his military chapeau with its flaming plume, raised it high in his hand, and called out in a very stern military manner: "Never mind the guard, sir."

He was the most formidable, handsome, and finest-looking man I have ever seen, and carried himself with all the pomp of his high position. Every military man admired him.

Congress had passed a law making the course at West Point five, instead of four years, which necessitated dividing the class ahead of mine in two parts, so that our class was more than twice as large as either of the two classes preceding it. It may be that there was more or less disposition to equalize the classes. However that may be, in the February examination, I was found deficient in mathematics and resigned. Although realizing that I had no just complaint, I was so greatly humiliated, I was ashamed to go home.

I therefore wrote my father that, as he had favored me above the rest of his children, I wished him to leave me out of any consideration in the distribution of his property, but to give it exclusively to my brothers and sisters, and that I would show the world I could make a living for myself.

Although not a graduate, I have always had the greatest respect for the teachings and discipline of the academy. I believe the U. S. Military Academy has turned out the best officers known to the world's history. Schaff says, in "The Spirit of old West Point," that my class was not only the largest, but the most distinguished during that period. Of this class nine became general officers, and nine were killed in battle.

Early Days in Texas

I went to Texas, then a small State, via the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from Cincinnati to New Orleans, thence up the Red River to Shreveport, and from there to McKinney, Colin County, on foot, arriving in April, 1857.

Here I made the acquaintance of Judge R. L. Waddell, the judge of that district, formerly a member of Congress from Kentucky. He offered to get me a school, stating that he had five children who ought to be taught, and gave me the privilege of studying law with him. As I had nothing else to do, I commenced teaching a class of sixty scholars, studying and reciting law to him meanwhile.

Judge Waddell had a plantation near the town and, in his absence on the circuit, placed me in charge of his affairs, including the management of the plantation and his thirty slaves. A strong Union man and earnestly opposed to slavery, Judge Waddell often told me that if his slaves could make a living for themselves he would freely manumit them. But they could not, and he was justified in holding them for their own sakes as long as he could. It was here that I became acquainted with the negro character, its childish simplicity and numerous admirable traits.

The judge was a remarkable man and a most worthy character, unselfish and law abiding. I have often heard him refuse cases because he could not defend clients believing them guilty. He treated me as a son, giving me much good advice. He never entered a saloon and advised me not to, which advice I practically have followed all my life.

At McKinney I met Sam Houston, a personal friend of Judge Waddell. Although then an old man and I a very young one, he took quite an interest in me, and we took many walks together in Trinity Bottom, where, one day, he cut a stick of osage orange (bois d'arc) which he fashioned into a cane and presented to me, and which I have to this day.

In teaching school at McKinney, I adopted Charlie Naylor's methods of avoiding corporal punishment, but there was a surly rowdy about eighteen years old, as large as I was, who often made trouble with the other scholars, even after I threatened to punish him if he did not change. One afternoon, a little boy ran up to me, saying: "Master, you better look out for Tom Shane; he's got a pistol, and he's going to shoot you."

Tom, as usual, was late. When I saw him coming, I placed myself just inside the door. As he entered I seized him by the collar, saying, "Tom, give me that pistol!" He was so overcome by surprise that he handed it to me without a word.

I took it to Tom's father, a blacksmith. Young Shane probably received a more severe punishment that night than I could have given him. After that, I had no more trouble.

At this time there was great excitement between North and South, caused principally by the troubles resulting from the settlement of Kansas and the many conflicts between those who were taking slaves there and those who were determined it should be a free State. The negroes became so excited the legislature passed a law making it a felony for any person to teach a negro how to read or write. The new statute also prohibited free negroes from living in the State, and set a date on which all free negroes who had failed to choose a master would be sold into slavery.

One Sunday, a large free negro blacksmith about twenty-eight or thirty years old came into Judge Waddell's office and asked me if it were true that he would have to choose a master or be sold into slavery. I told him it was. He then asked me to be his master, that he might avoid being sold to another. For many reasons I declined, though I could have sold him for a thousand dollars. As he had means, I advised him to go where he would not be sold. I never knew what became of him.

During the winter there were four or five times as many fires in adjacent counties as there had ever been before. It was generally believed that Northern abolition influence had been communicated to the negroes, and that they were trying to terrorize their masters. Consequently, a law was passed forbidding negroes to remain out at night, and authorizing anyone to arrest and take to jail more than two negroes found together.

I remained in McKinney about a year, when the Butterfield Overland Mail was chartered from St. Louis to San Francisco, an eighteen-day journey, with daily service each way. El Paso was a promising Mexican settlement, and would probably be the half-way house, and eventually a place of some importance. I therefore bid Judge Waddell good-bye and started for El Paso. Before going, however, I visited my father, going with a Mr. Ditto of Kentucky through the Cherokee Nation, where we bought a small drove of very beautiful little Indian ponies, and drove them to St. Louis and sold them. I remained a month or so with my father and, upon returning to Texas, on my father's advice, took my brother Will to McKinney, and he took up school teaching where I left off.

El Paso Experiences

The journey to El Paso, where I arrived on the eighth of May, 1858, was through the most desolate country, with Indians on all sides, some hostile and some friendly. Coyotes and other wild animals abounded, but most interesting were the numerous buffalo east of the Pecos. There were literally millions. I have seen the plains black with them and, when moving, which they did at a kind of lope or gallop, I have felt the earth tremble under the impress of their heavy shoulders. When we encountered one of these moving herds, so impetuous in its advance no obstacle could resist it, we would turn the coach horses in the direction of its flight and the passengers would dismount and fire their guns to scare the buffalo away.

At a station, near the Pecos River, that had been robbed by the Indians, we had to remain two or three days, until we received fresh horses. The Indians had carried off all the eatables, except some corn and sugar, and we parched and ground the corn into meal with the coffee mill and boiled it with sugar to keep us alive until relief came.

Save for this one delay, we made this distressing journey without stopping night or day except for meals. If I gave up my seat at a station there was no certainty that I would get a place in the next coach, so we all stuck to our seats, although passengers sometimes became crazed for want of sleep, and one or two had dashed into the desert and been lost.

After seven days' and nights' travel, when I arrived at the bluffs overlooking the valley of the Rio Grande, I thought it was the most pleasant sight I had ever seen. When we drove into the town, which consisted of a ranch of some hundred and fifty acres in cultivation in beautiful grape, apple, apricot, pear, and peach orchards, watermelons, grain, wheat and corn, it seemed still more beautiful, especially when, under the shade of the large cottonwood trees along the acequias (canals for irrigation), we saw Mexican girls selling fruits of all kinds grown on the opposite side of the river at what was known as Paso del Norte, a city of thirteen thousand people, controlled by well-to-do and educated Spaniards.

The town on the American side was simply a ranch owned by "Uncle Billy" Smith, an illiterate Kentuckian. One Franklin Coontz asked to be made postmaster, and when the Post Office Department informed him he would first have to name the office, he named it after himself, "Franklin."

Mr. Smith was generous, but unbusiness-like. He had given or sold small parcels of land to many who built without any survey having been made. Two or three hundred people lived here, mostly Mexicans and their families, engaged in cultivating the ranch. There were three wholesale stores which sold goods brought up by mule trains from Kansas City via Santa Fe to supply the needs of Paso del Norte, Chihuahua City and other towns in Chihuahua. The Butterfield Overland Mail established a headquarters with many employees and made Franklin somewhat of a money center. The Mexican disposition to gamble and the wild and lawless character of the times brought perhaps twenty professional gamblers to Franklin.

The Texan war with Mexico for independence, in 1836, and the war between the United States and Mexico, in 1847, together with the hostile Indians on the north of the Rio Grande during the early Spanish settlement, forced most of the population and wealth to the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. Few towns on the American side were of any importance. The county seat of El Paso County was then San Elisario, twenty miles below Franklin, with about twelve hundred inhabitants. When I arrived in El Paso it was dangerous to go far from the village. Mesquite root gatherers were attacked, the men killed and the animals driven off within a half-mile from the village.

But on the Mexican side were large, wealthy towns, with good society and well ordered governments. After the Doniphan expedition to Chihuahua, our government had established Fort Bliss, a mile and a half below El Paso, with seven companies of infantry and mounted rifles. I made the acquaintance of the officers, finding several who had been cadets with me at the academy, among them a classmate, Will Jones, the adjutant. Through them I got an earlier standing among the people than would otherwise have been possible for me to do.

The act of annexation of Texas to the United States provided that Texas retain her public lands. The El Paso and Presidio land district included all territory west of the Pecos River (El Paso and Presidio Counties), an area larger than New Jersey.

With the recommendation of the army officers and Judge Crosby of that judicial district, I was appointed surveyor for that district by the State government. Immediately I had plenty of work on pending locations for two hundred miles below Franklin, many tracts embracing five thousand acres each, and also the reservations leased by the War Department for the posts of Quitman, Davis, Stockton, and Fort Bliss. All of them I surveyed within the next year.

The Overland Mail Company also employed me to build a station covering almost an entire block.

At my suggestion, Judge J. F. Crosby, J. S. and H. S. Gillett, W. J. Morton, and V. St. Vrain formed a company with Mr. Smith, the owner of the Ponce grant, on which Franklin was located, employing me to lay out a town, as Freemont's projected Memphis, El Paso & Pacific Railroad, the advent of the Overland Mail and westward immigration made it necessary to enlarge the village.

I made a survey and a plan of the town. As the houses had been built at random, without a survey, on plots given by Mr. Smith, the few streets were neither parallel nor at right angles. I had difficulty in making a plan agreeable to the then owners. I made several different sketches before I produced one that all six proprietors adopted and signed. All these original sketches, together with a copy of the first map, are still preserved in the El Paso Public Library. (Cut, 56, 57.)

The work, which I was glad to get, occupied me two months. My pay was one hundred dollars and four lots—Nos. 116, 117, 134 and 137—valued at fifty dollars each.

Franklin Coontz turned out an undesirable citizen, and it was suggested that I rename the city. As this was not only the north and south pass of the Rio Grande through the Rocky Mountains but also the only feasible route from east to west crossing that river, for hundreds of miles, I suggested that El Paso would indicate the importance of the location. It was decided to so name it.

According to an act of Congress, approved June 5, 1858, a commission to establish the boundary between Texas and the Territory of New Mexico was organized. John H. Clark was appointed United States Commissioner and Major William R. Scurry, Texas Commissioner. After they established the initial point near what is now called Anthony, there was a disagreement, and the Texas Commission surveyor resigned. Major Scurry appointed me in his place.

The commission, with its escort of two companies of the Seventh Infantry, Lieutenant Lazelle commanding, was a very pleasant organization aside from the quarrel between the commissioners. Major Scurry was a most genial companion. Mr. Clark was ambitious in his assumption of highly scientific attainments and overbearing to those he deemed not his equal in such acquirements.

Major Scurry, like Judge Waddell, took quite an interest in me. The three army officers and one or two members of the commission often played poker for stakes. The bets were not large, but Major Scurry, observing that I generally lost, said to me one day: "Mr. Mills, you ought never to play poker. You are not qualified for it. A poker player has to be a cold-blooded man. I can look into your face every time you draw a hand and tell just about what you have drawn. I advise you never to play another game, for you will never succeed in it." And I never did.

The disagreements between the United States and Texas commissioners became acute. As I thought Mr. Clark was mostly to blame, when Major Scurry finally resigned, I did also.

I never saw Major Scurry again, but learned that he raised a Confederate regiment and was killed at the head of his troops in a battle with Banks' Expedition on the upper Red River.

On returning to El Paso, I wrote to my brother, W. W., whose school term had expired, that I had secured him a position as clerk in the sutler's store at Fort Fillmore. He held this position a year, and then joined me in El Paso. He had enough money to buy a lot, on which I built him a house, costing about a thousand dollars.

W. W. and I then sent for our brother Emmett, and we three built a ranch eighteen miles above El Paso, called "Los Tres Hermanos." Emmett occupied this ranch, which was made into a Santa Fe mail station.

Previously I lived on lot No. 116 in a tent, doing my own cooking. I built myself a nice adobe house, doing much of the work myself. Mexican peons made the bricks from a mixture of adobe soil and straw. They were two feet by one foot, four inches thick, and dried in the sun. These were very substantial, withstood the rain and made a house cool in the daytime and warm at night. The house was on the bank of a ditch supplying running water to the farm and under many cottonwood trees. In summer I often slept on the adobe earth roof. Strange to say, even in the hardest rains the water would seldom go through the roof, which was about eight inches thick.

At the same time I built my house, I superintended building houses for many others.

PLAT
OF THE
TOWN OF ELPASO.
DIMENSIONS
BLOCKS 160 FEET SQUARE.
LOTS 86 FEET 8 INCHES BY 120 FEET.
STREETS 70 FEET WIDE.
ALLEYS 20.
PROPRIETORS.
J.S. GILLETT, H.S. GILLETT,
J.F. CROSBY, W.J. MORTON,
V. ST. VRAIN, W.T. SMITH,
ANSON MILLS,
FEB. 28, 1859. SURVEYOR.

EXPLANATION
SCALE 200 FEET TO THE INCH
PROPERTY SOLD AND IMPROVED BEFORE THE TOWN WAS LAID OFF INDICATED BY BROKEN LINES
J. McKITTRICK & CO. LITH. 36 M. MAIN ST.

I early learned the ways of the roaming Indians, and in my surveying expeditions took only a burro for my pack and two Mexicans for chain carriers. I wore a buckskin suit made by myself, and carried a single change of underclothing. We moved from tract to tract, camping without a tent under the mesquite trees, our provisions consisting only of coffee, hard bread and bacon, and occasionally some fresh meat we could kill. Although Indians undoubtedly saw us, they never attacked us during the three years in which I did surveying. The risk of being killed to secure only one animal and a small amount of provisions was not worth while.

My principal employer was Mr. Samuel A. Maverick, of San Antonio, formerly from South Carolina. A run-away boy, he had joined an expedition of about twenty men, which invaded Mexico at the town of Mier prior to the Mexican war. The party was captured. The Mexicans put ten white beans in a bag with ten black ones, ordering them to draw a bean each. Those who got the black beans were immediately shot. Maverick began locating land soon after the war and became the largest land-holder in Texas, if not in the United States.

He owned more cattle on the free public range than any other man in Texas. In 1861 nearly all the people went into the war. Maverick's cattle ran wild on the range, and, when the war closed there were tens of thousands of cattle bred during the four years. Maverick was the greatest claimant to these wild cattle, and marked them with his brand wherever caught. Other owners, and even men who had never owned cattle, would brand with their own marks such cattle as they caught unbranded. It thus became the custom among cattle owners using the free range to stamp as their own any unbranded cattle they found during the "round up," and to this day these stray cattle are known as "Mavericks."

Maverick accompanied me on every surveying expedition I made, following my tracings and examining my notes. He expressed the greatest patriotism as a Unionist, was bitterly opposed to the then proposed secession, as were most Texans, including Governor Houston.

When placer and quartz gold was discovered in the Penos Altos range of mountains in Arizona, near the present Silver City, Maverick requested me to find how valuable these mines were. With a gambler (Conklin) I bought a good two-horse team and traveled the hundred and fifty miles to reach these mines.

At Penos Altos I met James R. Sipes, a clerk for Postmaster Dowell. I said, "Hello, Sipes, how is it; is there plenty of gold here?"

He laughed and answered, "Mills, there is the greatest quantity of gold here, but there is too damned much dirt mixed with it!" which I found to be true.

Locating a claim, I worked a month, 8,000 feet above sea level, where in the day it was scorching hot and at night freezing cold, and discovered that by hard work I could make about three dollars a day. Fortunately, I had brought my surveying instruments, so I abandoned mining and laid out the town of Penos Altos. I also surveyed many claims, about which there were constant disputes. But I soon returned to El Paso, reporting to Maverick that the mines were not of sufficient importance to interest him.

At this time slavery agitation became very violent, creating unrest in Texas, especially among the New England emigrants, who became the most rabid secessionists of all. Some of my friends in the North wrote me what would today be called treasonable literature, sending me the New York Tribune with the most violent abolition articles marked. Postmaster Ben Dowell was induced to open my mail, and later refused to deliver any to me, forming a committee to burn it publicly!

When my term as district surveyor expired, I was the only candidate for election, being the only person in the county competent to survey land. But several political enemies publicly stated that I was an abolitionist, and that it would be unpatriotic to vote for me. As I had always been a Democrat, voting for Sam Houston and Stephen A. Douglas, and never sympathized at all with the abolition movement, I posted the following notice on a tree:

Notice

I have just been informed that J. S. Gillett, W. J. Morton, and J. R. Sipes stated last night to R. Doane and F. Remy that I was an abolitionist, for the purpose of injuring my character. As I never cast any other than a Democratic vote or expressed other than Democratic sentiments, I denounce these three above-named persons as wilful and malicious lying scoundrels. Sipes and Morton owe me borrowed money for the last two years. I would like to have a settlement. I never asked any one to vote for me as surveyor and I now withdraw my name as a candidate, and will not serve if elected.

A. Mills.

El Paso, Texas.

2 O'Clock, P.M., August 6, 1860.

The men I denounced tacked their reply on the same tree, as follows:

Notice

A certain contemptible "pup," signing himself A. Mills, having publicly published the undersigned as scoundrels, we have only to say that he is so notoriously known throughout the entire county as a damned black Republican scoundrel, we deem him unworthy of further notice.

However, we hereby notify this fellow that his insignificance shall not protect him in future.

W. J. Morton,
J. R. Sipes,
John S. Gillett.

Then, I received this letter:

El Paso, Texas

August 7, 1860.

Mr. Mills:

Sir: I have noticed my name in connection with two others denouncing us publicly as malicious, lying scoundrels.

For my part, I now ask of you an immediate retraction of the same, and as publicly as your accusation.

John S. Gillett.

Gillett, a wealthy wholesale merchant, had fought a duel with an army officer. As I paid no attention to his implied challenge, he sent word he would attack me on sight. I always went armed, and though we often met, he never carried out his threat. After the war he became a common drunkard, very poor, living with a Mexican woman. I often met him, and he frequently asked me for a quarter (which I gave him), stating that he was hungry. What horrible miseries war brings about. He wanted to be an honorable man.

In my address before the Society of the Army of the Cumberland (Appendix 390) will be found a statement of some of the reasons which led to political unrest in Texas, and particularly why vigilance committees were formed in many counties. Many people were lynched; principally Germans—especially at New Braunfels and vicinity—who voted against secession or denounced the principle.

I was ordered before the vigilance committee of El Paso County by the sheriff, John Watts. I told him no one man could take me, and I knew that he was not coward enough to bring a posse. He said: "Mills, I'll never come for you." And he never did.

I was notified by this same committee that the vote of the county must be unanimous for secession, and that I would imperil my life if I voted against it.

Phil Herbert, a violent secessionist and a personal friend of mine, came to my house on election day and said, "Mills, are you going to vote?" I said that I was. "Well," he said, "I know how you are going to vote. I am going to vote for secession, but I would like to go with you. If there is trouble, I will defend you." He had a pistol and advised me to carry one, and we went together to the polling place. This was in a large gambling house, in which was Ben Dowell's post office. The judge of the election was Judge Gillock, recently from Connecticut, a violent secessionist.

Herbert and I entered, arm in arm, and Herbert first presented his ballot, which Gillock received and cast into the ballot box near the door. I drew from my pocket a sheet of foolscap paper on which was written, "No separation—Anson Mills," in large letters, and, unfolding it, I held it up to the sight of half a dozen army officers and others playing billiards, faro and other gambling games, saying, "Gentlemen, some of you may be curious to know how I am going to vote. This is my ballot." Gillock refused to receive it, but Herbert said, peremptorily, "That is a legal vote. Place it in the box." And Gillock did so. We left the room unmolested.

My vote was one of the two cast against secession in El Paso County, when there were over nine hundred cast for secession. Some were legal, but the majority, cast by Mexican citizens from the other side of the river, were not.

My friends, particularly Herbert, felt it would be foolhardy to remain longer. Herbert went to Richmond, joined the Confederacy, and was killed in the Battle of Mansfield, La., at the head of his regiment.

I decided to go to Washington and join the Federal forces. The evening before I left, Colonel Reeve, commanding Fort Bliss, invited me to dinner with his adjutant, my classmate, Will Jones. During the dinner, Colonel Reeve remarked that he did not want to obey Twiggs' order to surrender to the Texans (text, 71) because he had large government stores, which would be of great value in case of war to either the government or the Confederates. Therefore, he wanted me to see the Secretary of War, and explain the circumstances, and get him verbal or written authority to take his command and this property into New Mexico.

When I finally arrived in Washington, I explained the situation to Judge Watts, who went with me to Secretary Cameron and delivered Reeves's message. I agreed to take back to El Paso any verbal message that the Secretary would entrust to me, but Mr. Cameron was so uncertain as to what might happen that he refused, saying that Colonel Reeve must act on his own judgment.

I had been prosperous and was well-to-do. But now men who owed me refused to pay, and all I owed demanded immediate payment. It was all I could do to raise money enough to take me to Washington. The baggage allowance was but forty pounds, so I left everything I had to the mercy of my political enemies. I did not dream that it would be twenty years before I again saw El Paso.

In Washington

We left in the coach on the 9th of March, 1861. I was one of eight passengers. Some were going to Richmond and some to Washington, but we agreed, as this was expected to be the last coach to go through, to stand by each other and declare we were all going on business.

The secessionists had organized several companies of State troops commanded by the McCullough brothers and others, with instructions from the bogus legislature commission to take over the military posts and property according to General Twiggs' treaty (text, 71). We met part of this force, under the younger McCullough, near Fort Chadbourne, and we were all excitement to know what they would do, as it was rumored they would seize the mail company horses for cavalry. Marching in columns of two, they separated, one column to the right and the other to the left of the stage coach.

We told the driver to drive fast and to say he was carrying United States mail. The soldiers laughed at this, and four of them, taking hold of the right-hand wheels and four of the left, the driver could not, with the greatest whipping, induce the horses to proceed. They laughed again, and called out: "Is Horace Greeley aboard?"

Horace Greeley had been lecturing in California, and had announced his return by the Butterfield route. The soldiers were familiar with his picture and, after examining us, allowed us to proceed.