4G Grandfather Duston Mills, Pioneer

In August 2015, I wrote my "200+ Years in Indiana," post documenting the family of Duston & Louisa Mills, which included three sets of twins! My hopes back in 2015 were to finish a book of family history on the Mills who emigrated from Maine to Indiana in the second decade of the 19th century.

It was Duston's father, James, who brought the family to Indiana circa 1811, picking a spot east of Princeton, overlooking the Patoka River. Duston was five and one-half years old when the family landed at Evansville on the Ohio River, New Year's Day. They made their way north to Gibson County, a halfway point between their landing spot and the old fort at Vincennes, by then a territorial capital (the Old Northwest Territory). The U.S. Land Office opened some time later in Vincennes is where James Mills would go to enter his land. When Duston was entering manhood, he inherited some of that land plus what he'd receive as a dowry from his father-in-law, named below.

Even though my 4G Grandfather was a Maine native, he grew up, married and began family life in Gibson County, so I consider Duston my earliest Hoosier ancestor. As the crow flies, the farm where my maternal grandmother grew up is only a little more than a mile from that spot. When I made that discovery some 20 years ago, I was delighted. It meant that my family had farmed that same sacred soil for nearly 200 years.

Indiana celebrated it's bicentennial in 2016 and I really wanted to publish "My Mills Family: 200 Years in Indiana" that year, but it wasn't in the cards. I still had too much digging to do to document all of the many branches of that family that remained in the Hoosier state. Following that path from Duston to my own nieces and nephews, took me from 1804 to present, spanning eight generations. As you can imagine, that's quite an undertaking and the book has grown to nearly 400 pages!

Go back with me, if you will, to those early pioneer times in southern Indiana. It was the only portion of the state that was fairly safe from Indian attacks. A flood of pioneers came to the Hoosier State in those first three decades of the 1800's. Farms on the rolling hills east of Princeton, above Indian Creek, were cleared one acre at a time, usually by one man and an ox or mule. These are the times that Duston was raised to manhood, learning the agricultural, lumber milling and carpentry trades. He became a well-known Gibson County farmer, cabinet maker and a builder of flatboats.

He assisted in the organization of the county's first agricultural society, signing incorporation papers 19 Sep 1856, per Gil R. Stormont's History of Gibson County, Indiana...p.113. He and brother-in-law, Richard Hussey, are credited by some historians as founding the Patoka River town of Kirk's Mill, named for another pioneering family. That place was later granted a post office and named Bovine before being renamed Wheeling (it's present-day name). Back in pioneer times, the river at Kirk's Mill was 4G Grandfather Duston's launching point for pork and agricultural products by flatboat all the way down to New Orleans via the Patoka, Wabash, Ohio and Mississippi rivers. I forget how many pounds of pork, lard, corn and wheat made those long, arduous journeys south, but suffice to say it made him a wealthy man, by era standards.

Duston, often spelled Durston/Durstan, was a Whig in politics, but as Stormont writes, "on the organization of the Republican Party he cast his fortunes with that party." I believe he was also a Cumberland Presbyterian by religious affiliation. He married Louisa "Eliza" Stapleton 16 Dec 1827 in Gibson County. She was the daughter of a Tennessean, Joshua Stapleton, who served as a private in the Indian War of 1811 and Gibson County Historian Elia W. Peattie notes that he was "a hero in the Battle of Tippecanoe." After the war, he'd also settled in the same area of central Gibson County, so Louisa was a neighbor of the Mills family.

Together, they raised eleven children and buried another in infancy and also raised a couple of their grandchildren on the farm. Duston died there in 1875. I even have an image of the funeral announcement, but it fails to mention where he was laid to rest. His place of burial remains a mystery to me to this day. His widow lived another six years, but her burial place in 1882 is also a mystery. It's possible they were buried together across the road from their farm at Lawrence Cemetery. There are several members of the Mills, Greek and Hussey families buried there. It sits just north of where Louisa grew up.

Documenting the history of their children, grandchildren and four generations of descendants, focusing primarily on those branches who remained in Indiana, is the aim of my book. I'll keep you posted on my progress.