Mills family photographs

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Mills Family Photographs
Tennis / Mills Genealogy

	Simeon Mills 1810 - 1895		Simeon Mills, grandson of Constantine Mills and Philecta Way, son of Martin Mills and Clarissa Tuttle, moved from Ashtabula County, Ohio, to what is now Madison, Wisconsin, in 1837. At that time the Wisconsin capital was a single log house. Simeon promptly built his own cabin alongside, opened a general store to serve the scattered homesteaders in the area, and became Madison's first postmaster and justice of the peace. He later was appointed territorial treasurer, and helped found Madison's first newspaper. When Wisconsin entered the Union in 1848, he was elected Dane County's first state senator. Declining to run for a second term, he accepted an appointment to serve on the original board of regents of the new University of Wisconsin, where he superintended construction of the first campus buildings. During the Civil War, then-Governor Randall appointed Simeon as paymaster for the Wisconsin Militia.
		(Right): The 1863 "Old Mills House" is maintained as an historical monument at Elmside, the family's 200-acre farm near Madison. Wife Marie Louise disliked living there, so in 1867 they built a larger house in town, a site now occupied by the city/county building. There is also an historic district in downtown Madison named after Simeon.

Hadsell Alden Mills (Photo provided by George W. Mills, Jan 2009.) [Left to right: James Whitney Mills, Hadsell Alden Mills, Donald Carlyle Mills, and Maude Mattie (McNay) Mills]	Hadsell Alden, son of Henry Martin Mills and Sarah Johnson, was born 7 Oct 1870 in Rock Creek [Ashtabula] Ohio, and died 13 Apr 1940 in Kansas City [Jackson] Missouri, of pneumonia secondary to carcinoma of the stomach, age 69. Maude Mattie, daughter of Robert McNay and Martha Collins, was born 12 May 1874 in Valparaiso [Porter] Indiana, and died 13 May 1937 at home in Kansas City [Jackson] Missouri, of pneumonia, age 62. Their marriage occurred 14 Jun 1899 in Valparaiso, and they began married life in Rock Creek, where the Mills had farmed since the early 1800s. By 1910, the federal Census reports them in Livingston County, Missouri, northeast of Kansas City. Martha (Collins) McNay, Maude Mattie's mother, by then a widow, resided with them at that time (1910). Their direct family included Opal Maude, Mona Nita, Henry Alden, Donald Carlyle, and James Whitney. Maude Mattie's oldest child, however, was a daughter, Sadie Alice Hinshaw, born in a previous marriage to Marvin Victor Hinshaw, who deserted his new family when Sadie was just four days old.
Henry Alden Mills Henry Alden and Ernestine (Martin) Mills in California, 1936 - 1937	Henry Alden Mills, son of Hadsell Alden and Maude Mattie. (Photos provided by son, George W. Mills, Jan 2009.)
c. 1944: Four older Mills children, back row: Ernestine Elizabeth — Patricia Rose — Edward Alden — John Anthony Three younger children in front: George William — Helen Louise — Emma Lou

Mona Nita Mills at work in the 1940s
— likely taken during World War II.

She was a laboratory quality control technician
at Battenfeld Grease & Oil Company in Kansas City.

This photograph is excerpted from a much larger picture with nine of her co-workers at Battenfeld.
The World War II era provenance is supported by the full group photograph, which shows a large wall map of Europe hung on the wall. It's unlikely that such a map would hang in a Kansas City laboratory, absent something momentous going on. A calendar is also posted there — but, alas, is not quite readable.

Due to repetitive exposure to petroleum distillates, she developed a relatively mild but persistent skin rash on her hands and forearms.

As an avocation, she cut and sewed soft calfskin moccasins, which she often gave as gifts — each pair of slippers including a lovely beaded design on the insteps.

She learned these skills from her mother, Maude Mattie (McNay) Mills, who had learned them from her husband, Robert McNay. He was a tailor in Valparaiso [Poter], Indiana, who continued the craft into old age, even after rheumatism had badly impaired the use of his hands. Robert was a Civil War veteran, and had received a pension.

			Mona Nita (Mills) Tennis with husband John Sherman ("Jack") Tennis, c. 1956 in Merriam [Johnson County], Kansas. According to her daughter Alice Loraine (Tennis) Wagner, when Mona — (she disliked "Nita" and refused to use it) — was fourteen, she took note of a hired hand working on her father's property. Strawberries were in harvest, and she threw a big, juicy, over-ripe berry in his general direction, but it hit him in the face. He was John Sherman Tennis, and they married when she was just two months past her fourteenth birthday and he was 21.

In the Kansas City area, they raised five children. Their grandson, Billy Eugene Wagner II, suspects that they may not have been all that happily married —(at least in their later years)— because he recalls them rarely speaking to each other beyond "Pass the salt" kinds of interactions.

Their property on Grandview in Merriam [Johnson County, Kansas] —(now obliterated by an onramp to Interstate 35)— was rather primitive in amenities until the early 1950s. Until then, there was an outhouse, and water came from a well whose pump was right in the kitchen sink. The stove was either wood- or coal-burning, and a large tub sat atop it to heat water for kitchen use and bathing —(which was done in a large metal tub brought into the kitchen as needed).

They raised chickens. When it was time to end the birds' semi-free-range existence, Jack didn't want to chase them around the yard after chopping off their heads, so he hung them by their feet on a clothesline and then quickly did the deed, or just wrung their necks. Being a farm girl herself, Mona was a champion chicken-plucker.

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