Part 2

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.

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.

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.