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Mills, William Wallace

Michael L. Lewis — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:16:11 +0000

William Wallace Mills, El Paso pioneer, second son of James P. and Sarah (Kenworthy) Mills, was born at Thorntown, Indiana, on February 10, 1836. He received his early schooling there, and although he later was appointed to West Point, he never attended. In December 1858 he followed his brother Anson Mills to the town of Franklin, which Anson later renamed El Paso. Shortly after the election of Abraham Lincoln in late 1860, eight Southern states, including Texas, adopted ordinances of secession. In El Paso the Anglo-Americans were almost unanimously pro-Southern, and at a local election on the question of secession, there were less than a half dozen opposition votes. Two of these were the Mills brothers. Anson left for Washington, D.C., to serve the Union cause and later became a brigadier general; his brother went to New Mexico to join Union forces there. After Confederate forces occupied Fort Bliss in 1861, on one occasion they caught W. W. Mills in El Paso del Norte across the river and took him prisoner. He eventually escaped to New Mexico but never forgot or forgave Simeon Hart, whom he held responsible for his humiliation. With the restoration of Union control over New Mexico and El Paso in 1862 Mills, who had been named United States collector of customs at El Paso, gave full support to the federal district court at Mesilla, New Mexico, in the enforcement of the congressional law of July 1862, which provided for the confiscation of property of any person who had aided rebellion against the United States. The law thus offered Mills an opportunity to settle an old score with Hart, whose property was seized. The long struggle lasted for more than a decade, and even though Hart received a presidential pardon, it was not until 1873 that he finally recovered his property.

During Reconstruction Mills assumed the leadership of the local Republican party and formed the “customhouse ring,” a vehicle for extending favors to local merchants, controlling appointments to office, and manipulating elections. By 1868 the dominant radical wing of the Republican party in Texas was receiving strong opposition from those seeking a more moderate policy. Mills was named a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1868–69 in Austin, where the radical majority selected Edmund J. Davis as president. Mills supported the moderates, led by A. J. Hamilton, and as a diversionary attempt to weaken radical strength in the convention proposed to establish Montezuma Territory from El Paso County and Doña Ana County, New Mexico. The proposal was rejected by Hamilton, however, who concluded that a division of the state would strengthen Governor Davis’s hand. Yet Mills continued to support Hamilton, whose daughter he married in early 1869. Meanwhile, in El Paso the Republican leadership devolved upon Albert J. Fountain, who gave his full support to the radical wing. The radical victory in the governor’s race in 1869 brought Mills’s removal from his post as collector of customs, thus sharply curtailing his local power and influence. By 1872 radical rule in Texas had run its course with the defeat of Governor Davis, and in El Paso the Republican party was in ruins, shattered by the Fountain-Mills feud. Mills’s political career had come to an end, although he did serve as United States consul in Chihuahua from 1897 to 1907. His memoirs, Forty Years at El Paso, remain the most complete account of that city during its formative years. Mills and his wife, Mary, moved to Austin in 1910, where they spent their last years. Mills died on February 10, 1913.

White, Zach

Michael L. Lewis — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:54:47 +0000

Upper Valley pioneer was responsible for the location of the El Paso Country Club and the design of the stained-glass dome at the Camino Real hotel. No related posts. No related posts.

Franklin Mountains State Park

Michael L. Lewis — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:52:02 +0000

The largest urban wilderness in the world, the 25,000-acre park features hiking and biking trails, bird watching, climbing, spelunking, campsites and more. Related posts:Coons, Benjamin Franklin Related posts:

Coons, Benjamin Franklin

Mills, Anson

Michael L. Lewis — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:12:43 +0000

Anson Mills, c. 1915

Anson Mills, surveyor, builder, army officer, engineer, American boundary commissioner, diplomat, and inventor, was born at Thorntown, Indiana, on August 31, 1834, the son of James P. and Sarah (Kenworthy) Mills. He attended school in Indiana and New York and accepted an appointment to the United States Military Academy in 1855. After flunking out at West Point in 1857, he rode the Butterfield Overland Mail stage to El Paso, where he arrived on May 8, 1858. He was appointed district surveyor and surveyed forts Quitman, Davis, Stockton, and Bliss, all in West Texas. He also built the Overland Building, for three decades the largest structure in El Paso.

On February 28, 1859, Mills submitted a street map of a settlement called variously Ponce’s Rancho, Franklin, and Smithsville. He called the little community El Paso, and the name stuck. The downtown is still practically as he platted it. Mills encouraged his brothers Emmett and William Wallace Mills to settle in El Paso. Anson laid out the village of Pinos Altos in New Mexico, feuded with almost everyone of importance in El Paso, and voted against secession. After failing to talk the commander at Fort Bliss out of surrendering the federal fort to Confederate forces, he accepted a Washington commission in the Union Army. His brother W. W. remained in the Southwest as a Union spy. Emmett caught the last stage out of El Paso and was killed in New Mexico when Mangas Colorado and his Apaches ambushed the coach.

Military career

After an undistinguished Civil War career, Anson Mills remained in the army during the Indian campaigns. After the Little Big Horn debacle (see CUSTER, GEORGE ARMSTRONG), he took part in the “horsemeat march” during Gen. George Crook’s Big Horn and Yellowstone expedition.

A woven ammunition belt of Mills’ design.

As the starving army began eating its own horses, Mills led a supply detachment and encountered Indians. For his role in the resulting fight at Slim Buttes, Mills always believed he deserved the Medal of Honor, though he never received it.

During his military years he designed and patented the woven ammunition belt. The invention made him wealthy. On October 13, 1868, he married Hannah Casser, and they had two children.

Boundary commissioner

By 1894 Mills had been transferred to El Paso, retired as a brigadier general, and was sworn in as the American boundary commissioner. During the next few years he reestablished the Mexican border on the island of San Elizario and was responsible for straightening the Rio Grande by severing the Córdova banco, an improvement that relieved serious flooding at El Paso. Mills advocated a major international dam at El Paso, which eventually went to Elephant Butte in New Mexico, 120 miles north. He practically wrote the Mexican treaty, “An Equitable Distribution of the Waters of the Rio Grande,” which promised Mexico an annual 60,000 acre-feet of water. He also wrote the 1905 treaty for the elimination of bancos (see BANCOS OF THE RIO GRANDE).

The Mills Building in downtown El Paso.

Mills is best remembered, however, for the boundary dispute with Mexico over the Chamizal tract (see CHAMIZAL DISPUTE) and for the Mills Building in El Paso. As the American boundary commissioner he refused to accept the 1911 arbitration agreement that gave the El Paso Chamizal to Mexico. The Mills Building began as the Grand Central Hotel, which Mills constructed in 1883. When the hotel burned, he replaced it with the Mills Building in 1911, at that time the largest concrete monolith in the world. Today it is no longer the highest building in El Paso, but it remains a major El Paso landmark. At the age of eighty-seven Mills wrote his autobiography,My Story (1918). He retired from the boundary commission in 1914 and died in Washington, D.C., on November 5, 1924. He was buried with honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

Bibliography

Jerome A. Greene, Slim Buttes, 1876: An Episode of the Great Sioux War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982).

Leon C. Metz, Turning Points in El Paso Texas (El Paso: Mangan, 1985).

William Wallace Mills, Forty Years at El Paso (El Paso?, 1901; 2d ed., El Paso: Hertzog, 1962).

C. L. Sonnichsen, Pass of the North: Four Centuries on the Rio Grande (2 vols., El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1968, 1980).

Coons, Benjamin Franklin

Michael L. Lewis — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:08:10 +0000

Benjamin Franklin Coons, merchant, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1826, the son of David and Mary Coons. He led wagon trains to Santa Fe in 1846, 1847, and 1848, and by September 1848 had established himself as a merchant in El Paso del Norte and elsewhere in Chihuahua. Coons bought ranch property near El Paso del Norte from Juan María Ponce de León in 1849 and leased the main buildings and six acres to the United States government for $250 dollars a month as the site for the first military post in the area. He then proceeded to build a tavern, warehouse, stables, and store just west of the army post. Hoping to capitalize on the potential market, he established a partnership with Lewis and Groesbeck of San Antonio in 1850. Financial difficulties began almost immediately, however. The first wagon train, plagued by unscrupulous drivers and a scarcity of water, took nearly five months to travel from San Antonio, and most of the shipment was ruined as a result. Also, that summer Coons absorbed a loss totalling nearly $18,000, having accepted several bills of credit that later proved to be forgeries.

He went to California in late 1850, regained a measure of financial security, and returned to El Paso early in 1851. Unfortunately for him, when the United States troops left Coons’ Rancho in September, 1851, Coons lost his most reliable source of income and was soon forced to default on his property payments. His ranch repossessed, he returned to California to seek yet another fortune. He apparently achieved some measure of success herding sheep, moved back to St. Louis in 1856, and married Sophie Delor in 1859. Later censuses listed him as a farmer and teamster. Coons died in St. Louis on December 14, 1892. The Franklin community (later renamed El Paso) and the Franklin Mountains are said to have been named for him.

Hawkins, 1st Lt. William Deane

Michael L. Lewis — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:58:17 +0000

William Deane Hawkins (April 18, 1914–November 21, 1943) was a United States Marine Corps officer who was posthumously awarded the United States’ highest military honor — the Medal of Honor — for heroic actions and sacrifice of life during the World War II Battle of Tarawa.

Hawkins was born on April 18, 1914 in Fort Scott, Kansas. When he was a baby, he suffered an accident which scarred him for life. A neighbor upset a can of scalding hot water over him and it was a year before his mother was able to cure the muscular damage by massage and he could walk again.

When he was five, the family moved to El Paso, Texas; when he was eight, his father died and his mother had to seek outside employment. She was employed as the secretary to a high school principal and, later, as a teacher in the El Paso Technical Institute.

An excellent student, he skipped fifth grade at LaMar and Alta Vista Schools and graduated from El Paso High School when he was 16. He won a scholarship to the Texas College of Mines, where he studied engineering. During summer vacations, he delivered magazines and sold newspapers, and worked as a bellhop, ranch hand, and railroad laborer.

When he was 21, he went to Tacoma, Washington, to work. At 23, he was an engineer for a Los Angeles title-insurance company.

After Pearl Harbor was attacked, he enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve on January 5, 1942, and was assigned to the 7th Recruit Battalion, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego. He had tried unsuccessfully to enter both the Army and the Navy Air Corps, but his scars prevented his being accepted. Now, as a Marine, he joined the 2nd Marines, 2nd Marine Division, completed Scout Snipers’ School at Camp Elliott, San Diego, and on July 1, 1942 embarked on board the USS Crescent City for the Pacific area.

A private first class when he went overseas, he was quickly promoted to corporal and then sergeant. On November 17, 1942, he was commissioned a second lieutenant while taking part in the Guadalcanal campaign in the battle for the Solomons. On June 1, 1943, he was promoted to first lieutenant.

Less than six months later, he was killed in action leading a scout-sniper platoon in the attack on Betio Island during the assault on Tarawa. During the two-day assault, 1stLt Hawkins led attacks on pill boxes and installations, personally initiated an assault on a hostile position fortified by five enemy machine guns, refused to withdraw after being seriously wounded and destroyed three more pill boxes before he was mortally wounded on November 21, 1943. For his actions above and beyond the call of duty, 1st Lt. Hawkins was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

In September 1944, the Medal of Honor was presented to Hawkins’ mother by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a White House ceremony.

Lt. Hawkins’ remains were eventually interred in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.

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Michael L. Lewis — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:53:05 +0000

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