Mills, Noah 1839-1876 & Susan, 1846-1918

MILLS, MARQUIS, ZEEK, STREETER, EATWELL, ELLIS, KNAPP, BORTS, DENSMORE, MOORE, HAYNES

Posted By: Janice Young (email)
Date: 7/27/2003 at 18:32:37

NOAH AND SUSAN MILLS

Eli and Rebecca Mills were the parents of nine sons. Despite the fact that the family belonged to the Church of the Brethern or Dunkard faith, and were therefore conscientious objectors, four of the boys enlisted in the Civil War. Two younger boys tried to get in, but were rejected due to age. Noah served with Company D, of the 5th Iowa Infantry.

Noah married Susan Catherine Marquis on New Years Day in 1863. Noah was home from the Civil War due to injury and illness. Susan was not quite seventeen.

Noah and Susan were the parents of six sons:

Enoch Ulysses married Minnie Leota Zeek. Enoch had health problems and moved to Colorado for a change of climate, They had nine children.

Ross and Suzy were the parents of one daughter named Myrtle.

George Albert never married. He died young.

Eli married Lydia Streeter. The union ended in divorce. Eli was a loner. He batched in a timber north of Mingo for a while, selling firewood from time to time. Eli was living in Monroe when he died in 1948.

Garner Oliver married Mary Gertrude Eatwell in 1894. They were the parents of seven daughters. This was a real shocker in a family where boys, boys, boys, proliferated. The girls were: Eva May Graham Davis, Mary Pearl Phillips, Iva Susan, who died young, twins Emma Elizabeth Clement Mead and Edna Katherine McNeer, Jessie Gladys McIntosh, and Viola Helen Clement.

Jesse Jonah Wilson Mills was born on June 8, 1876. He married Harriett Ellis. Their story appears in this book.

Noah was struck and killed by lightning on August 21, 1876. Jesse was only three months old when Noah died. Susan buried Noah at Ashton Cemetery and set out to raise her six boys by weaving rugs and doing odd jobs. Noah had tried for several years to get a soldier's pension. Now Susan had to start all over in her attempt to receive a widow's pension.

As her boys got old enough, Susan "farmed them out" to earn their keep. Garner lived with the Clayton Baldwin family, Eli with Sarah Deniston, and Jesse with Charles Hillary, a Dunkard preacher at Peoria Church.

Susan lived for forty-two years after Noah died. She was married six times. After Noah came Joseph Knapp, Jonas Borts, Thomas Densmore, Alanson Moore, and George Haynes. She out lived them all but one.

Susan was a tiny, bouncy person. She loved bright jewelry and laughter. During later years she moved to California. She died there on January 9, 1918, at age seventy-one. She was brought back to Iowa for funeral services at Ashton Chapel. Her obituary says "beautiful flowers of California and Iowa were tributes of friends". She would have been pleased: several years before her death she had postcards made showing her California garden.

by Susan Kathryn Mills Cochran
Mingo Community Centennial 1884-1894 Book by The History Book Committee, Sue Cochran, editor