My journey, my story to tell

EDITOR’S NOTE: It is NOT my intent to air Lynn’s dirty laundry. I only felt obliged to begin writing it last weekend when she began lying about me, our situation and assassinating my character, as she is prone to do. I have not cheated on her nor did I leave her for someone else. Period.

My story

It will soon come to light that I left Fort Myers Beach and all it had to offer behind, including a romance that was doomed from the start. I’m talking March 2012 when we were both still married. That should’ve been enough of a red flag to us both. Only one of us heeded it and spent ten years healing, growing and changing.

When I got back to what once was my happy place, I set a course for new adventure but ended up going right back to relearn the lessons I thought I had mastered the first time. Nope, I ran right past all of the red flags. You see, the dreamer in me wanted to rewrite the ending of our saga. Here is how I started that last chapter in 2024.

What I quickly realized is that my partner, the one who I called in the blog post linked above “my person,” was not any different than the psychological mess—the wounded child—I’d left here on Mango Street in February 2014! I’d assumed, and given her the benefit of doubt, that she’d likewise grown, matured and changed over the ten years of separation. I was wrong to assume anything. Turns out, I had to learn the lessons all over again. So that instead of writing a love story, what I was actually finishing is a horror/thriller ride.

It has finally come to an end.

I walk away licking my wounds once again. This is no call for sympathy, just a cautionary tale. Good guys easily become suckers. I fell for the damsel routine once. I didn’t believe I was falling for it again. I thought I had come back to find a strong, empowered woman who had discovered and learned to love herself. Instead, I found the same damsel whose victim game is well worn and tattered, who needs to learn to own up and lose the girl who cried wolf routine.

While no one can undo the damage to the little girl, the adult woman can decide to heal, forgive and move on. That’s what I have decided to do. I need to heal once again from the emotional scars that two trips down this road have left deep inside me.

This isn’t abandonment 2.0 regardless of what some others might believe. She never really wanted me here. She obviously wanted to continue punishing me for the sins of her father and the abusive men who came before me. Added to that she had a personal vendetta for what I “did to her” in 2014. This isn’t me leaving. It’s her pushing me out the door. She’s been doing it since June! I have all of the receipts in my journal.

I fought her on it the first few times in June/July, refusing to leave “her house.” Funny how she called it “Doyle Beach House,” in one breath and her place the next, threatening me with police-enforced eviction more than one time. When she did this again in August, I left. I never felt so liberated.

She used counseling to manipulate me back inside her world. She promised her counselor and I to never kick me out again. She kept her word on that. I was back to being “pawpaw” or her “hubby boy” within weeks. We celebrated my September birthday with a short cruise to Freeport.

Fast forward through two hurricanes and many fights later…

We were at a hotel in town where we chose to evacuate with our pets during Hurricane Milton. I once again made the mistake of pointing out her poor choices/bad behavior. The child lashed out again, leaving me there the night of landfall and telling me she didn’t care if she or our animals survived the night.

So she kept her word of never kicking me out. But giving up and leaving me is no different. Our relationship ended that night. I slept on the hotel room floor once she came to her senses and returned to safety. Once home, I was determined to leave her for good. It took weeks, but my plan eventually materialized.

Fast forward again to this past weekend. She attacked me for being the opposite of everything she typically says that I am, “her perfect man.” This is the game the narcissist plays with their narc supply—you are their hero one minute, Satan the next, there is no in between. I’ve suffered in this no-win situation far too long. I no longer want to be her hero, the villain OR the victim.

So I left.

Monday I packed my things and walked out the door. I’m never looking back. Narcissist abuse is real. My suffering was very real. Therapists will all tell you to cut off their supply and go no contact. That’s what I am doing. 

No regrets and no shame. It was just another misadventure. It was a mistake I MADE TWICE! Never again.

(Edited and posted in Pittsburgh, PA)

Sins of the Father: American Hypocrisy

It was our Christian European forebears who first landed on America's shoreline, and the white colonists who followed, that cemented our fate. As the Old Testament says over and again, the sins of the father will be visited upon their children.

The Scripture noted above is followed by three more in Exodus and Numbers, each talking about future generations of family, down to the fourth. We may be well beyond that generation in America. I mean, I've traced my own ancestral roots back to my 6th great grandfather, a Revolutionary War hero from Maine. It's apparent, at least to me, that the sins of his British ancestors, some of them Quakers, are still being visited upon our ilk.

I've been watching the fictional drama on Paramount Network, Yellowstone, featuring producer/lead actor Kevin Costner, which deals not-so-delicately with the tenuous relationship between non-native and Native Americans near his fictional ranch in Montana. Each episode reminds me of the hypocrisy of Manifest Destiny, white privilege and American power. Today, the Biblical-rooted idiom, "sins of the father," kept repeating in my stereophonic brain. And this blog post began formulating therein.

No more succinct indictment of American hypocrisy has been made than this by the Brown Political Review last November:

If the United States wishes to punish human rights violations abroad, it must also come to terms with its own flawed record. To be clear, the United States’ claim to moral authority has never been strong. From the genocidal colonialism of indigenous peoples under the guise of Manifest Destiny to the forced internment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans in World War II, the history of the United States is rife with severe human rights violations (Source: "The Man in the Mirror: Human rights and American hypocrisy," 8 Nov 2018, cached on Google).

The above article goes on to remind us that "the United States withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), joining Iran, Eritrea, and North Korea as the only countries refusing to participate in the council." That's sadly telling.

It's the proof positive, to me anyway, of the snowballing effect of Manifest Destiny. We see it in the current administration's stance on everything from women's rights to the rights of immigrants and foreigners and the LGBTQ+ community. The hypocrisy is that we forget history (doomed to repeat itself), our own heritage, our non-native origins.

A Foreign Policy article, The Heart and Hypocrisy of the American Empire (19 May 2019), describes
"American power" or Pax Americana as "overbearing, lustful, and mendacious." I call it sinful. It sickens and saddens me that this is both our heritage and our legacy.

In Rob Larson's article earlier this year, Capitalist Freedom is a Farce, he quotes American icon Frederick Douglass, who railed against unfettered capitalism, "Experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other. . ." It led Larson to conclude, "capitalism limits both positive and negative freedom...the dynamics of capitalism generate unbelievable concentrations of private power," tending toward monopolies.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.   ~Lord Acton (1887)

That's one way to say it. We are, as a nation, enslaved to the Almighty Dollar. Let us not pretend that we operate under some divine right or that our allegiance to this nation is somehow ordained by Almighty God. That's not the bronze calf at who's altar we worship. Let's be clear about that. Capitalist America is greed-driven. It's power is not god-ordained in anyway, don't be fooled by the inscription upon our currency, "In God We Trust." It might as well read, "In This Almighty Dollar We Trust." Yet, that paper currency isn't worth the pulp it's printed upon.

Yes, our hypocrisy runs deep.

The sins of our father's father's father (well beyond four generations, now) is certainly visited upon us today. This shouldn't be a source of national pride or patriotism. For me, it is a source of great shame.
As the people said in response to Pontius Pilate (Matt. 25:27), "His blood be on us and on our children." We sacrificed human dignity and sanctity upon the cross of Manifest Destiny. It's blood is surely on our hands, America.

FATHERHOOD

I'm no good at this anymore...not the blogging. In fact, since I've been confiding so much in my journal, I hardly find time to write much else. This may not even be a complete thought I have to share, but I figured I'd start it just like any entry in my journal.

MY FATHER

I've been dreaming about my dad a lot the last couple of weeks. Very vivid dreams in which he is usually upset, perturbed or frustrated about something and taking it out on everyone else. I don't know why I've been dreaming about him so much. He's still alive and well. But dream I have.

I shared one of the dreams with my youngest daughter because, in it, he was getting upset with her because his feelings were hurt by her unresponsiveness. It's not like my youngest daughter at all to be unresponsive, unless she's totally distracted or asleep. In this dream it was the latter and he could not wake her up to go with him on an errand or to breakfast or something. The details of my dreams, often forgotten are not important, but the very real feelings they evoke are. I got very protective of her in this one, standing up to my father, dressing him down and even going a step further into the territory of insult.

Now, I know I was taking my life into my own hands at that point because he could react in one of two ways--sulk away defeated or charge at me like a bull. I feared the worse, but he simply sulked away, feeling bad about how he'd acted. My youngest wouldn't hurt a flea, let alone intentionally hurt her Papaw. I held my groggy, upset girl close, closer than ever, and just stayed in that embrace for several long minutes, ignoring my mother who was trying to gloss things over.

Okay, that was way more than I intended to share about that dream, but that's been the nature of my dreams about dad of late. Maybe I should call him and smooth things over.

We've never been super close, but we've had our moments. Take Summer 2016, for example. My father, freshly widowed and living alone in the house he and Mom had just purchased the year she died. She had cancer. I took that summer away from my kids and work and invested it in our relationship. It was a good summer and a great investment of time. Sadly, the closeness we shared that summer wore off within a year.

Dad went back into his shell. I got resentful. I didn't feel like I could share openly anymore without his judgment or religousy advice. It saddened me. Then he shot me a text in response to a rant I had sent him and it angered me. I didn't text him for awhile after that.

I'm thinking that distance, his retreat and my reaction to it are what's bothering me. Maybe reconciliation is in order.

HEMINGWAY

I recently took a keen interest in the lauded author Ernest Hemingway. It would seem that no amount of his creativity poured out onto the printed page could free him of his demons. He took his own life by shotgun in 1961, seven years before my birth. I was never an avid reader, growing up, and knew very little about the author. I knew of his Key West home, his affinity for liquor and that he'd won many accolades, including the Nobel Prize for Literature. I began to think I wanted to be him. I've dreamt about the Keys since my first visit in the early 2000's. Making my first trek to Key West some six years ago, I've been determined that I will one day live there. As an aspiring writer, I think I really wanted Hemingway to become my hero. But I knew so little about him. So I started reading.

First, was a novel in which he was the main character, written some 12 years ago by Michael Atkinson, titled "Hemingway Deadlights." It gave some keen insights into him as a person and international celebrity. Then, I did a little research into his suicide, which has since 1961 been dissected every way until Sunday. Fully psychoanalyzed posthumously by the experts, I feel like I understand him a little better.

Hemingway's father committed suicide with a pistol to his head the same way my maternal great-grandfather took his own life. Their self-inflicted deaths occurred within 15 or 16 years of each other, my Great Grandfather Roy Larson and the elder Hemingway. Just made that connection as I was writing this blog post. Anyway, that suicide obviously shook the author and influenced much of his work, including the book I'm currently reading, "The Garden of Eden," published posthumously in 1986.

I began to wonder why the influence of our fathers had become a recent theme in my life and my thinking. I shared a little of this with my daughter this morning after church.

FATHERHOOD

The theme was even present at this morning's worship service. I mean, the overarching theme of God, our Father, is always present, but Pastor Betsy was sharing some of her personal experiences with her father from childhood. He's still with us, as well, and was at the service today. Her story was one of love, service to the community and how his work had inspired her.

There I was sitting with my own daughter, considering the effects of fathers on their children. I feel very fortunate to have a great relationship with my youngest, Makenna. She took communion with me, a weekly ritual at our particular Methodist congregation, and we sat down. She immediately wrapped both arms around me in the most loving embrace. I simply closed my eyes and just absorbed it into my being. It felt so good through and through. I began to tear up under the weight of such unconditional love. Seeing the mist upon my eyes, she looks up and says, "It's okay to cry." I smiled, pointed at my eyes and said, "They're happy tears." She responded, "I know." And we sat there a moment longer.

Like I said from the outset, I hadn't completed this thought. These were just three seemingly random recent events that I tied together this morning under the heading "fatherhood." Still processing what it all means. All I know is, I love my daughter and I will always be here for her.

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.

My Dunnings and the Great Flood of 1937

The Great Flood of 1937 hit the Ohio River Valley hard in mid-late January after 12 days of rain caused every tributary to over top their banks, flooding 70 percent of Louisville and 90 percent of it's sister city, Jeffersonville, Indiana. Things were so bad down river that Evansville officials declared Marshall Law. Upstream, things were nearly as dire for towns like Hazleton, Patoka and Wheeling, Indiana. The highest crest ever recorded in the town of Hazleton, situated at the mouth of Robb's Creek on White River, was in January 1937 at 31.7 feet, just for reference.

Gaylord, Elsie & Nancy Kirk

We'll get back to the flood momentarily, but first let me introduce you to my Aunt Elsie's family. That picture was taken around 1957 of Aunt Elsie with her husband and oldest daughter. Elsie was the first child born to my maternal great-grandparents, David and Ruth (McEllhiney) Dunning.

She was born in 1909 on the farm of her grandparents, Thomas J. and Rhoda (Greek) McEllhiney. In fact, the attending physician mistakenly wrote her last name as McEllhiney on the birth certificate when, in fact, she was the first Dunning child born in Center Township, Gibson County, Indiana.

Aunt Elsie married Uncle Gaylord on Christmas Eve 1933 in Evansville. She had spent the better part of her life taking care of eight younger siblings, so having kids was not her first priority after marriage. Oldest daughter, Nancy Gayle, wasn't conceived for almost seven years. In the meantime, the young couple took up residence in a house near Hazleton, owned by the Ice family. The Ices were property owners north of Wheeling, not far from where Elsie grew up. The Dunning family farm was on Wheeling Road, north of Francisco. Anyway, Elsie's older cousin, Venita McEllhiney had married Charles Ice three years earlier, so we know the cousins were tight with Charles and his family. While living near Hazleton, Gaylord was a bus driver for the local school there. It wasn't long before they moved into the house owned by Gaylord's grandfather, John A. Kirk, elsewhere in Washington Township, Gibson County.

When they moved to Section 1, Center Township in Gibson County, they were living in the Netty Moore house very near where Elsie attended 7th and 8th grade at the Lawrence School, a single-room country schoolhouse before the consolidation of county schools in 1927. She never went beyond the 8th grade. That old schoolhouse, as well as the Netty Moore place where she was living, was on property once owned by her 3rd great-grandfather, a war hero, Joshua Stapleton, who fought the Native Americans at Tippecanoe (and I believe, also saw battle during the American Revolution). Joshua had lived there as early as 1820 and donated the land for Lawrence School. This was the best place they had lived since getting married in 1933 and it put Elsie much closer, within 2 miles, of her family home.

So that Gaylord could work his own farm, reaping more of his labor, they once again moved within Center Township. This time, they moved even closer to Elsie's family, taking up residence on the 100-acre Morrow farm on Wheeling Road in the Patoka River bottoms. It was late 1936 and they were about to experience one of the worst flooding disasters in Indiana's history. By mid January the next year, with the ground frozen and saturated by the Indiana winter, the rains began to fall, 15 inches in 12 days at Louisville fell from January 13-24th, according to the National Weather Service. As noted at the beginning of this post, it was a disaster of epic proportion for the entire region.

The land rented from Vesper Morrow began to fill with water. Unlike their McEllhiney neighbors across the road who had built their house on an elevated piece of land in the bottoms, the Morrow home that Gaylord and Elsie lived in was at ground level. The Patoka River flowed into the first floor of their farmhouse, but they had prepared by removing valuables to the second level and elevating furniture as best they could. Wheeling Road was impassable below the Dunning farm and the Kirk home on Vesper Morrow's farm was only accessible by boat until waters receded in February. The family had escaped in time and most of their valuables and sentimental items were spared.

It was still a mess and took some time to get back to where they were when they had moved in a few months earlier. Keep in mind, this disaster came on the heels of the Great Depression. As Uncle Les (Elsie's younger brother) reports, the financial crisis did not hit farm families quite as hard as they were more self-sufficient than ordinary homes. For instance, "they had their own wheat for flour, cows for milk and butter, chickens for eggs and meat, hogs and cattle for meat, their gardens for vegetables, enough crops to feed the livestock and sell for the staples needed. Eggs and cream were sold for salt, pepper, coffee, baking powder, soda, sugar and etc." ("The Early Life of Elsie Isabell Dunning/Kirk/McDowell" by Leslie Dunning.).

Elsie took the hardships of the flood without complaining and accepted the gracious help of friends and neighbors to recover, clean and set back up her home. In early 1938, she was dealt another setback, as her mother left her father at home with two children and another finishing high school. Elsie stepped in to help her grieving father take care of the house and the children, stepping back into the role she served as a teenager.

Aunt Elsie

Her mother left with Elsie's Uncle Edward Williams and soon filed for divorce from David Dunning. This was quite a shocking development and David demanded that his ex-wife, Ruth, have no contact with their children, the youngest of whom, Carl, was only six. Two years later, Elsie became pregnant with Nancy, who was born in early 1941. By then, her brothers, Roy, Tom and Les were serving our country, Ginny was in high school at Francisco and Carl was in 4th grade.

Aunt Elsie survived the Great Flood of 1937 that claimed nearly 400 lives, fairly unscathed, and the personal tragedy at home of her parents' 1938 divorce. She was a great stand-in matriarch for the Dunning family all while trying to start a family of her own. She and Gaylord Kirk had two daughters who are still living in the area where their parents made their humble start. Speaking of humble beginnings, Elsie started her life in a one-room log cabin and grew up on the Dunning homestead, which still stands (in an updated form) on Wheeling Road outside Francisco, IN. She was my great-aunt and lived a great life of 96 years.

My family has now farmed Center Township in Gibson County, IN, for more than 200 years. I'll be posting more about our pioneer ancestors in the weeks to come to commemorate the bicentennial of the State of Indiana, admitted to the Union in 1816.

200+ Years in Indiana

My ancestral roots in Gibson County go back to pioneer times back when Indiana was still a territory. I've spent countless hours researching my pioneer heritage and those branches of my Mills family who spread out from Gibson County, Indiana to Oklahoma and points beyond. Here's a little about the first generation of my Hoosier-born ancestry on mother's side.

Berilla Louisa Mills-Greek (1829-1908) provided the launching pad for my research. My third great-grandmother provided the family story published by Gil R. Stormont in his 1914 "History of Gibson County." She recounts how her Grandfather Mills' family emigrated from lower Maine to what would become Gibson County in southwest Indiana. Berilla weighed only one pound at birth 14 Mar 1829 in Princeton, IN; her twin brother, Zyasa, weighed seven pounds and yet died the following day. They were the first of three pairs of twins born to Duston and Louisa (Stapleton) Mills. Their's was the first full generation of Mills to be born on Indiana soil. After her marriage to Joseph Greek in 1848, the couple moved from Vanderburgh County (Evansville, IN) to a farm five miles east of Princeton. Joseph was a bricklayer at the time of their marriage, but he eventually took up farming in the rolling hills between Princeton and Francisco, IN, in a rural community known to locals as Fairview. She bore Joseph twelve children in all. Such was the case with Indiana farming families. The more children meant more hands for the hard labor required by that occupation.

Besides a twin brother who died a newborn, Berilla had a sister Adelia (1831-1853) who married Charles King in Gibson County, 1849. She bore him two children who went to live with grandparents, Duston and Louisa Mills, in Princeton after her death in 1853. A third sister, Cecilia Ann (1832-1875), born just 19 months after Adelia, married twice--Henry Bucklin in 1853 and George W Smith in 1871.

Berilla's fourth sister, Zelissa (1833-1886), followed suit in marrying a member of the Greek family--Samuel, Joseph Greek's younger brother by five years. Coincidentally, Samuel had been married previously to a daughter of Bracket Mills of Evansville, who was a first cousin to the Mills of Gibson County. Cousin Emily died at the age of 24, just two years after her marriage to Samuel and before she bore him any children. Zelissa married the widower in Gibson County just two days before Christmas 1852. They had one daughter, Lulu, and Zelissa died of liver and bowel disease in 1886, age 53. Samuel built the Garden City Mill in downtown Princeton in 1871.It sat along Chestnut Street near North Main St., just east of the Louisville, Evansville & St. Louis RR Depot. Adjacent to him, another Mills, Byron (1835-1908) brother to Zelissa Mills-Greek, ran the Peoples Planing Mill.

Byron took up the family business, carpentry, at an early age. He married Mary Jane Curry in 1855. He was a lifelong resident of Princeton, IN, with a home at 514 N. Race St., about four blocks east of his mill. His wife was near term with their fourth child when Byron enlisted 21 Oct 1861 in Company B of the Indiana Volunteer Infantry (Union Army). Besides running the planing mill, "a dealer and manufacturer of rough and dressed lumber, flooring and ceiling manufactured to order, in hard or soft lumber," (published on a county map by DJ Lake & Co, 1881), Byron was a charter member of the Grand Army of the Republic Post 28 in Princeton. Mary Jane bore him eight children before her death in 1882. He, then, married Ellen Spencer of Evansville. He died in 1908 of cirrhosis of the liver.

That brings us to the seventh child of Duston and Louisa Mills, a son, Horace Ames (1838-1856), who died at the age of 17, cause unknown, and is buried in the old Page Cemetery just east of Princeton, IN. Of the three sons born to that family by 1840, only one, Byron, had survived to adulthood. Firstborn Zyasa died an infant and Horace a teen.

Born in 1840, daughter Elvira (1840-1913) never lived on her own nor did she ever marry. She was not of sound mind, or as one census taker noted in 1880, "idiotic." At the time of her death, she was living with her nephew Guy Olds, near Francisco, IN.

Albert and Polly Mills Family, early 1900's

The second pair of Mills twins born on Indiana soil were Almena (1843-1878) and Albert (1843-1920). The latter became a local Civil War hero while his twin sister married a first cousin, Edgar Mills of Evansville, and died in her mid-thirties after bearing one daughter. Albert enlisted in Co. B. about three weeks after his brother Byron. Nearly three months to the day after mustering out of the Union Army, he married Polly Ann Yeager of Princeton. Up until the Civil War, Albert had lived on his father's farm and then obtained 80 acres known as the Weidenbach farm, where he lived until moving to Princeton in 1870. His sister, Berilla, wrote, " He was elected constable of Patoka Township, in which position he served four years and was then interested in the sawmill business for 25 years, also following carpenter work about ten years. He has been employed by the Southern Railroad Company at their shops for the past ten years (ca. 1914), and is numbered among their most faithful and efficient employees." He and Polly lived at 330 E. Monroe Street in Princeton. They raised five children.

The final pair of twins--children eleven and twelve to Duston and Louisa Mills--were Mary Katherine (1846-1930) and John (1846-1922). John married twice in Princeton--to Eva Paul and Fannie King--and lived at 621 Seminary Street, then 820 S. Race St, before moving west. Family stories say that his twin sister, Mary Katherine, was friendly with the Native Americans living on the Patoka River and tutored some of them. That's how she met her husband, a member of the Miami tribe, Cass Olds. He took her out west, where they married in Iowa, 1870, before moving to Missouri. By the mid-1880's, they were divorced and had six children together. She had lived out in California with one of their sons around the turn of the century, but was back in Gibson County, IN, by the time the 1910 U.S. Census was taken. She lived with various family members in and around Princeton where she died in 1930. Her twin brother died in 1922, making her the only one of the 12 Mills children to live long enough to witness the Great Depression.

Aside from being carpenters who made everything from flatboats to log cabins to milled flooring, the Mills were also learned men who practiced law, served in public office and helped to establish the towns of Princeton and Evansville. This brief recap is of my direct ancestors on my mother's side, who was born a Larson. Her grandmother was born a McEllhiney and the granddaughter of Berilla Mills-Greek who is at the forefront of this post. That is my direct connection to this great pioneering family. Berilla's grave is clearly marked and sits alongside a corn field in Center Township, Gibson County, in the area briefly described above as Fairview, between Princeton and Francisco. Sadly, the burial sites for her father, Duston, and grandfather, James, the patriarch who led the family from Maine to Indiana, are unknown. James died of milk sickness while living with another of his sons and the entire family was buried in the Patoka River bottoms, precise location unknown. Duston, my fourth great-grandfather, presumably died in Princeton in 1875, and though we know much of the story of his family, I do not know where he and Louisa (d. 1882) were laid to rest.

I'll share more about the other branches of this family in a future post, so stay tuned. (Note: The State of Indiana celebrates it's bicentennial next year. My family has owned a Gibson County farm throughout the state's 200-year history.)

A Hero Remembered

Grave of Clifford O. Carlton
1924-1991
(Garden Sanctuary Cemetery, Seminole, FL)

On the heels of Veteran's Day Weekend, I thought it appropriate to honor the memory of one of my ancestors. His name is Clifford O. Carlton, of Evansville, who served heroically in the U.S. Air Force/Army during World War II.

I was researching Clifford's family, as I am a 4th cousin,* and ran across these newsclippings in the Browning Genealogy database (http://browning.evcpl.lib.in.us/):

4 Jan 1945 -- "Pfc Clifford O. Carlton was wounded in action in Germany on Dec 16 [1944]. An infantryman, he also has served in England and France since arriving overseas in August, 1944...A former Reitz High School student..."

24 Sep 1945 -- "Pfc Clifford Carlton, brother of Mrs. Heal, is now home on sick leave from Fletcher General Hospital, Cambridge [Ohio]. He is recovering from left leg wounds suffered last Dec. 16 in battle east of Cologne. In the Army since April 3, 1943, he trained at Ft. McClellan, Ala., Ft. Benning, Ga., Ft. Mackall, NC., and Camp Forrest, Tenn. When injured in a parachute accident, he was transferred to the infantry. Going overseas in July, 1944, he served with the 8th Division. His decorations include the Purple Heart, good conduct and American Defense ribbons, a three-star-studded ETO ribbon and combat infantry badge."

Clifford and his wife, Jane, retired to Madeira Beach, Florida. He died 25 Feb 1991 at Bay Vines Veterans Hospital in St. Petersburg. He was laid to rest at Garden Sanctuary Cemetery in nearby Seminole, FL.

* Clifford and I are 4th cousins, 2 times removed, because his second great-grandfather, Bracket Mills, was a brother to my fourth great-grandfather, Duston Mills, of Gibson County, Indiana.

Echoes From Auschwitz

Before the door to the cramped, foul-smelling cattle car was opened, Eva remembers her father saying his morning prayers. She also recalls her anger. “As I watched my father and the other people in our car praying to God, a strange feeling of anger swept over me. It was an anger that I had experienced…when we had been called ‘Dirty Jews’…[and] that day when the Hungarian gendarmes were taking us away to the ghetto and no one spoke up or tried to help us, not even my friend Luci.” The feeling of anger was soon replaced by anxiety and despair as Eva and her twin sister were separated from their family, never to see them again. Read more...

Eva & Miriam Mozes in Rumania

Eva Kor IDs herself in famous liberation picture

Related blog posts:
My Return to the Holocaust
Meet My New Hero!

Never Again - The Jewish Holocaust

One can scarcely believe that something as atrocious as the WWII Holocaust ever occurred, but even more inconceivable are the claims of so many that it never really happened; that it was merely pro-Jewish propaganda funded, produced and distributed by Hollywood moguls. The purpose of this blog entry is to perpetuate the truth of the mass murder and near extinction of European Jewry, so that we can reverberate the oft-repeated refrain, “NEVER AGAIN!”

I have no doubt that the Jewish Holocaust happened, yet even still I cannot fathom—nor begin to wrap my mind around—the brutality and terrorism exhibited by the Third Reich during WWII. As evidence, I point to the many testimonies I’ve read and witnessed either firsthand or as documented on film. I have touched a living Auschwitz survivor and listened as she recounted her harrowing story.

Personal Stories
I have been thoroughly gripped by these accounts for the last year or so and was recently reminded when I read of the homeless Holocaust survivor who died in New York. Suffice to say that I am moved deeply by every story that I hear. Stories of survivors like Eva Kor, my new hero, and Szmulek Rosental (aka Steve Ross) cause me to reevaluate my own priorities and my appreciation for life and personal liberty.

I’ve blogged before about Eva, but I only learned Mr. Rosental’s story while watching Bearing Witness: American Soldiers and the Holocaust. This short documentary meant to be used as a tool to educate young people is very well done and provides thought-provoking questions in the accompanying discussion guide. It is one of the best documentaries on the subject I have seen, considering it is time-condensed for teaching purposes. I think this video paired with a presentation by Eva would be ideal for a seventh grade class (anyone know any junior high teachers or admins?). It’s important that we educate the next generation to ensure that truly and forevermore, “Never again!” Watch a clip of the intro to this video documentary, below:





Why We Watched?
Educated as I have become on the subject, I have yet to figure out how the Nazi death camps were kept secret for so long, why well-meaning Europeans kept silent or why the Allies turned a blind eye when they had ample evidence. The former I can understand because of all the Nazi propaganda, the terror they spread and the fear of individuals speaking out. The latter, namely willful ignorance on the part of the United States, I have been unable to come to terms with even after reading a lengthy book on the subject, titled Why We Watched .

I find myself intrigued, fascinated, repulsed and feeling a bit guilty, but I cannot let the memory of what happened die with those who survived and those helped put an end to the Holocaust.
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Streaming Video of Bearing Witness:
http://www.communicationsforlearning.com/showcase_bearing.html

MEET MY NEW HERO! (updated 9/15/09)

“Never again,” Eva Kor says with a bulldogged determination. “We will overcome prejudice through education, education, education.” And when Eva speaks, people usually listen. I heard her speak these words about prejudice and the Holocaust as one of the lucky participants at her 75th birthday celebration yesterday.

Eva knows about prejudice and persecution. She was a Transylvania-born twin of Jewish descent who became a victim of Nazi experiments at age ten under the cruel hand of Dr. Josef Mengele. She spent nearly ten months in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the deadliest of World War II’s death camps, and has an amazing story of survival and triumph.

At the 50th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz (January 27, 1995), Eva publicly declared her forgiveness of Dr. Mengele and the Nazi’s for what they did to her and her family. She was accompanied by former Nazi Dr. Hans Munch, a man she was able to personally forgive for the role he played at the death camp.

“Forgiveness is really nothing more than an act of self-healing and self-empowerment. I call it a miracle medicine. It is free, it works and has no side effects” (excerpt from TheForgivenessProject.com)

As I’ve been studying the Holocaust over the past few months, I’ve found it hard to wrap my mind around the atrocities of Hitler’s regime. I’ve found it even more difficult to forgive my own country for standing idly by while these atrocities were committed. It’s not like our government didn’t know. They willingly chose ignorance and inaction.

After meeting Eva in the flesh, how can I not forgive? Her message is almost as big as her personality, and very moving.

Hitler saw Jews as an infestation of sewer rats and treated them as such in his propaganda and his death camps. Eva grew up under his tyranny but would not succomb to it. She’s outlasted and overcome the hate and incarnate evil he represents. She was named a 2008 Hero of Forgiveness by The Forgiveness Alliance, but more than that, Eva Moses Kor is my new hero.

Links of interest:

Never Again! online Holocaust memorial
http://holokauston.wordpress.com/
(Eva's mentioned here.)

CANDLES Holocaust Museum Site
http://www.candlesholocaustmuseum.org/

Victims of Mengele Site
http://www.auschwitz.dk/mengele/id19.htm

19 Stars of Indiana Book
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=93168