How did The War Between the States ever come to be known as The Civil War, for it was an egregiously uncivil era in our history? My great-grandfather, Robert H. McMillen, though not a slave holder, joined his neighbors in enlisting in the 44th Infantry of the Army of Tennessee in 1861 for one year. His payroll records show that he was both a mechanic and a carpenter. He was a Lieutenant until the fall of 1862 when he went AWOL for the weekend when his regiment passed near his homeland. Afterwards, he was a private. His last day of enlistment fell on December 31, 1862, and he had given his family indications that he would not be reenlisting. Sadly, Robert was shot in the stomach on that very date at the Battle of Stones River in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He lingered for a few days and died in the field hospital on January 3, 1863. He left behind a pregnant widow and three children six-years-old and younger.
I realize that the stories of heartache and loss endured by this line of my own family is mirrored by the families of most people who were citizens of the states belonging to the United States of America during that era of time. My maternal grandmother made the stories of deprivation suffered by her maternal grandmother the bed-time stories of my childhood. Perhaps if we follow the admonition of Theodore Roosevelt we will learn from the past so we will not be condemned to repeat it. I suppose this reason is the foundation for my earnest desire to share family stories, not mere lists of dates and dead people, but the recognition that these people whose lives we dig for in the annals of history were much like us today: people who loved their children, their land, their neighbors.
Robert H. McMillin was born in 1834 in Lincoln County, Georgia to James and Margaret (Griffin) McMillan. Robert was their fourth child, the third son. The oldest son died sometime in the 1830s, leaving William Buckner and Robert H. as the only boys in the family. Margaret Griffin McMillan was a native of Lincoln Co., Georgia, but James had been born across the Savannah River in Abbeville County, SC in the Long Canes/Cedar Springs southern section. The family returned to Abbeville County, SC to handle the legal matters surrounding the settlement of the estate of James's father, Andrew McMillon, in time to be counted there in the 1840 census. By 1845, James, Margaret, and their children made the trip to Lincoln Co., Tennessee to join James's mother, Susannah, and many of his siblings. Of the 10 children of Andrew and Susannah (Mitchell) McMillan, only Margaret McMullin Wideman remained in Abbeville County, SC.
Arriving in the Camargo district of Lincoln County, Tennessee, the family enjoyed the life of small-acreage farmers. In 1853, brother Billy married Nancy Means Spence, whose family had also migrated from Abbeville. In 1855, Bobby married Rebecca Holt, the daughter of Gabriel Holt. The Holt family had been in Tennessee longer than the McMillans, migrating from Orange County, NC. (This line of the Holts descend from Michael Holtz of the Germanna Colony.) In 1855 Billy and Nancy welcomed their first-born son and named him Marquis Lafayette McMillen. In 1856 Bobby and Rebecca welcomed their own first-born son and named him De La Montcalm. They called him "Mont."
When Bobby was killed, Rebecca and her children joined the household of her father-in-law, James McMillan. In addition to their son Mont, Bobby and Rebecca had three girls: Medora, born 1858; Adelia, born 16 August 1860; and Roberta H. (Bobbye), born in 1863. After James died in 1878, Rebecca continued to live with her sisters-in-law Margaret, who never married, and Susannah Golightly, who was widowed after marrying late in life. (Their youngest sister, Sarah, married William Raney in 1865. She died in 1869.) These women, fortunately, lived in a close community of friends and family. The Holts were a large clan who lived nearby the McMillans. Many of the friends who had been neighbors in Abbeville, SC were also their friends and fellow church members at Prosperity ARP church. I have always wondered how their work days and weekends unfolded, who came by to visit, why she never remarried. Perhaps she had remembered the stories of her mother-in-law's young years when Margaret Griffin McMillan, whose own father had died when she was only 3, was abandoned by her mother, Amelia Sims Griffin, when Amelia remarried. But, that story can wait for another day.
Mont married the daughter of his neighbors, Georgia Spray, in 1875. They had nine children. I descend from their youngest son, born in 1897 and named John Robert for his two grandfathers, John Spray and Robert McMillin. In fact, my own father is John Robert McMillen, Jr., proudly carrying the names of his forefathers.
Medora married a cousin of Georgia Spray, William L. Sandlin. Adelia married Edward C. Blankenship. Bobbye married R.G. Higgins.
I have a photograph of Rebecca in her senior years. The hardships of life are etched on her face, yet she holds on to her anchor, her Bible, and to a photograph of her young husband. When we, the descendants of Mont and Georgia, gather each June at our family reunion, we also visit the graves of Rebecca, Mont, and other family members. I often wonder what difference one day might have made in my family's history -- what might have been our lives' paths had the Battle of Stones River been delayed by that one day that remained in Robert's enlistment. One day.
**I have purposely spelled my family name differently each time I've used it just to illustrate the variations in spelling that family history researchers often encounter in the name of one individual, even within one document.
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