Remembering Our Civil War Heritage and
Heroes:
1861-1865
Sergeant Jacob Mills,
Jr.:
A Warrior For His
Union and Lord
Part II
By
Ken Robison
For The River Press
July 11, 2012
This
continues with the second part of the story of Civil War veteran Jacob Mills,
Jr. Part I covered Mills’ early years and his service with the 8th
Vermont Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. Part II continues his story
with the post-war years and his service in Montana Territory as a Methodist
minister.
A veteran of
the Civil War, Jacob Mills, Jr. bore his wounds for life. At age nineteen,
Jacob Mills, Jr. had joined the 8th Vermont Infantry Regiment in
December 1861. He served in two important theatres, the campaign to secure New
Orleans and the Mississippi River and with the Army of the Shenandoah in
Virginia, and rose through the ranks to 1st Sergeant. During the
Battle of Winchester on September 19, 1964, Mills suffered a shattering wound
and went through a near death experience during surgery to remove his left arm.
Mills remained in the hospital in New Orleans for more than a year.
He was
always grateful to the surgeon who recommended retaining an additional “pound
of flesh” on his shoulder, for without it wearing a coat would have been
difficult. He became very adept in the use of his one arm and was able to do
most things that were possible for those who had two good arms. In later years
there were only two things Mills admitted to being unable to do with only one
arm – to drive four horses and fasten his own shirt cuff.
After his
discharge from the army on October 12, 1865, Mills returned to Topsham, Vermont.
There he entered business in partnership with Duncan Stewart for three years and
was elected to several political offices, county clerk, county treasurer, Justice
of the Peace. Mills was a good businessman, and his early training had made him
frugal. His savings were invested and increased in value. Likely as a result of
his Civil War service Mills was appointed to the federal customs service on the
border between Vermont and Canada, living part of the time in Island Pond,
Vermont and six years in Sherbrooke, Canada. He remained with the customs
service for eleven years.
During those
years Jacob Mills concluded that his life had been spared, when so close to
death, for some purpose other than advancement of his own personal interests
and fortune. He decided that the ministry offered the best opportunity to satisfy
his desire to serve. But Mills had no desire to serve a settled parish in a
settled community in the settled East. He wanted the challenge of the frontier
west. At this time the Methodist Episcopal Church was the only Protestant denomination
offering frontier mission work so the Reverend Mills went out under its
auspices.
In 1870 Jacob
Mills married Jeannie Forest, who became in immensely important part of his
life and his work for the next 55 years. She was in every way an assistant
pastor. She often took church group meetings into her own home. She helped
organize children’s work and various women’s organizations. She was largely
instrumental in organizing the Conference Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society,
and was a leader in its work after it was formed. Many young preachers and their
wives found in her a true friend.
Mills had
been raised a Christian in the Advent Christian Church and early had learned lessons
of devotion. This strict regiment had trained his young mind in the
fundamentals of ethics and religion. He was taught to be diligent and thrifty
and that to waste anything was wrong. These principles remained with him
throughout his life.
While still
in Vermont, Mills read a New York newspaper article written by Col. Wilbur F.
Sanders, extolling the opportunities for investments in Montana Territory.
After careful thought Mills placed his money in a horse ranch in Montana. He then
saw another advertisement in the Christian
Advocate in which Methodist Rev. F. A. Riggin stressed the need for
ministers to care for the expanding work of the church in Montana. These two
items impressed Mills. If his money was invested in frontier Montana, then his
life should be at work there too, serving the Lord and his new Church.
Mills had
already been licensed as a local preacher and had done some preaching in his
hometown. At once he wrote to Rev. Riggin, Superintendent of the Mission in
Montana, and after some correspondence during the following year, Mills, age
40, set out for Dillon, Montana Territory on March 23, 1882.
Mrs. Mills
and their two boys remained behind in Vermont, until Mills was satisfied that
his family’s future belonged on the frontier. Dillon at that time was the terminal
of the new Utah and Northern Railroad that made connection with the transcontinental
Union Pacific at Corinne, Utah. Arriving at Dillon, Mills hired a livery rig
and proceeded to Fish Creek where he was to meet Riggin. There he found not
only Rev. Riggin, but also Rev. William Van Orsdel, a traveling missionary gaining
fame as Brother Van.
Jacob Mills
was homesick, missed his wife and family, and was not impressed with the
country. He wondered whether he should return to Vermont, “but after prayer and
fasting” he decided to remain. In April 1882, Superintendent Riggin took him to
the rough and tumble riverboat town of Fort Benton. By November he had broken
through Fort Benton’s tough outside crust enough to prepare for the
organization of the church. Among his other problems, the town was
over-churched, with three other Protestant denominations trying to get a
foothold—Congregational, Presbyterian, and Episcopal Churches.
Few men
could have kept the work going in those first trying years in Fort Benton. Only
a man with an independent income and a strong fortitude could have held on to
organize a church. The first members of the Fort Benton Methodist Church were:
H. T. Hepler, Hannah Hepler, J. F. Keilhauser, Lizzie Smith, Zinia Wamer,
Marcella D. Rosencrans, Hannah Evans, S. A. Kanouse, Jennie F. Mills, Libbie W.
Evans, W. C. Evans, Edward L. Mills, Lurina Keilhuaser, Gibson Finn, May Evans.
The last five were probationers. Finn, an African American, became a founding
member of the church.
Church
services were held in the wood-frame Court House until it burned down January
5, 1883. In June of that year, Mills organized a Sunday school with about 25
members for the growing congregation. After the loss of the old Court House, church
services were held in various buildings around town. At one time he and the
Congregationalists rented a downtown room jointly. On one side was a saloon and
on the other a tailor shop, occupied by the tailor and his family. The
partitions were thin and “spirituous fumes not spiritual” came in from one
side, and through the other side the angry tailor could be heard berating his
family. During the spring of 1884, services were held in the basement of the
Record Building.
Mills lived
in a rented shack until his family arrived. It was cold, and often he wore an
overcoat and overshoes while studying during cold weather. Living expenses were
high, with poor quality wood $16 a cord. Coal was $23 a ton, eggs $1.50 a
dozen, and rent of his two room shack, $18.50 a month. He received $110 for his
first year’s services. He paid out of his own pocket $5.00 a month for the rent
of the room in which he preached and for the fuel to warm it as well. All told,
his fuel bill for the year was $150, much more than he received from the
church, and there were other expenses as well. His financial independence kept him
going.
Anticipating
the arrival of his family Mills secured lots and built a parsonage and
intending later to build a church. The total cost of the parsonage was $1490.93.
Of this sum $1076 came “out of the Lord’s money,” in other words out of Mills’
own pocket. This sturdy parsonage stands today at 1512 Franklin Street.
Jacob Mills
was ordained a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Butte on August
18, 1883. Rev. Mills intended to build a church in 1884, but the steamboat
trade was fading rapidly with the arrival of railroads in Montana Territory.
Within a few years, most business has been diverted from Fort Benton
devastating the local economy. A new school building was being built, so the
Methodists rented the old “L-shaped” schoolhouse. They continued to use this
building for church services until their church was completed at last in 1898.
Because of
Rev. Mills’ out-spoken ways, some members left his congregation. One Sunday
morning Mills saw a young black man sitting at the back of the church. He
called out, “Come on up here, Brother; I want to shake your hand. I gave my arm
for you.” When he gave the young man a seat near the front, some members of the
congregation got up and walked out and never came back again. But in spite of
such setbacks Rev. Mills never compromised the principles he believed to be
right.
In addition
to his church, Rev. Mills had a circuit of unbelievable distances, with the
only means of conveyance being by teams or horseback. He held regular services
each month at Highwood and Sun River—the latter requiring four days each time
he went there. At Sun River he built the first Methodist church in northern
Montana. Outside points included Shonkin, Belt Creek, Sand Coulee, Stanford
(then Wolf Creek), Chestnut Valley, Augusta (then South Fork), Choteau (then
Teton), Philbrook, Utica, and Otter Creek. He tried to go wherever he though he
was needed.
The last of
March 1883, he was called to Rock Creek, about 100 miles distant on the Helena-Benton
Road, to perform a marriage ceremony. Quoting Mills: “A heavy storm was raging,
the driver got lost between Fort Shaw and Browns’ and traveled nearly half the
night without knowing whither he went. It was an exceedingly hard journey and
notwithstanding the fact that a fee of one hundred dollars was received, I
would not again venture in such weather for that or any other sum . . .”
When Rev.
Mills first went to Fort Benton there was no sign of a settlement at Great
Falls. A ford served to cross the Missouri River at about the place where the
present railroad bridge crosses the stream. Rev. Mills preached the first
Methodist sermon in the store of W. D. Beachley on the northeast corner of
Central Avenue and Fourth St. This sermon was preached in 1884 and thereafter
Great Falls and Sand Coulee were added to his circuit, and Sun River was
dropped.
After three
years in Fort Benton, Rev. Mills was assigned a pastorate at White Sulphur
Springs, but before going he donated to the Fort Benton parsonage the stoves,
lamps, furniture, dishes, bedding, carpets, tools, and nineteen good chairs,
with the stipulation that they were to be used only at the parsonage
Moving on
from White Sulphur Springs after he’d served there two years and built a fine
brick church, Mills occupied several other pastorates: Butte, Bozeman for two
terms, and Billings. His principal contribution to Methodist growth, however,
was as presiding elder. In 1887 he was appointed presiding elder of the Bozeman
District that included all of Montana Territory east of Helena to the Dakota
line, with all the communities on the Northern Pacific and Great Northern
lines. The railroads had opened up parts of Eastern and Northern Montana and
development was progressing rapidly in these sections.
In 1914 at the
Methodist conference meeting at Forsyth, Rev. Jacob Mills retired. After he giving
his retirement speech, the floor was open for others to make remarks. Rev.
Robert M. Craven came forward and grasped his hand. Jacob Mills was a veteran
of the Union Army, and Robert Craven a Confederate. Once they had met in mortal
conflict but for years they had worked as good friends in the army of the lord.
In fact it had been Mills, as presiding elder, who had given Craven his first
appointment in the Conference. Craven said, “Hello Yank,” and Mills replied
“Hello Reb.” With hands clasped they faced each other with smiles. It was a
heart-warming scene to see these two men, once enemies, now with old memories
of war forgotten, brothers in Christ and veterans in the army of the Lord.
Civil War
veteran Rev. Jacob Mills passed away October 28, 1925. The old soldier rests in
the family plot in Forestvale Cemetery in Helena.
[Sources: “Diamond
From The Rough” A History of The Fort Benton Methodist Church; GFLD 14 Jun 1915;
Great Falls Yesterday; Progressive Men of
Montana; Sanders’ A History Of Montana; Plains, Peaks and Pioneers Eighty Years
of Methodism in Montana by Edward Laird Mills; Religion in Montana Pathways to the Present edited by Lawrence F.
Small; The Jacob Mills Family Pioneers of
Montana 1882-1928; When Wagon Trails Were Dim . . . portraits of pioneer
Methodist Minister who rode them by Paul M. Adams.]
Note: If you have Civil War veterans in your family who settled in
this area, we would be pleased to hear from you with copies of stories and
photographs that we can share with our readers. Send your Civil War stories to mtcivilwar@yahoo.com
or to the Overholser Historical Research Center, Box 262, Fort Benton, MT 59442.
Photos:
1.
Reverend Jacob Mills, Civil War veteran.
2.
Methodist Church Parsonage built in 1884 by
Mills at 1512 Franklin Street.
