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Content Outline of Interview of Columbus Mills at Age 99

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Mills, Columbus Cassette Tape Content Outline Cassette Tape Mo. 92/1
Knox Historical Museum Oral History Project Special Collection: Railroads
COLUMBUS MILLS (Born July 7,1893)
Interview I2 Cassette Tapes dated October 22, 1992 on file at the Knox Historical Museum.
Notes and partial transcription by Charles Reed Mitchell. Part I of a two-part interview.SCRIPSIT Disk 13 D. OH 5; filename: C0LUMB1.Interviewed by David H. Cole at Columbus and Oris Mills's home on Mills Lane in Artemus, Ky. on October 22,1992, Columbus Mills,Artemus's oldest living resident at the time of the interview (age 99), speaks on early family and county history and repeats some of the stories told in an interview with Cole published in the Mountain Advocate earlier in 1992. Also present running the taping equipment and sometimes asking questions is Charles Reed Mitchell.Two cassette tapes. Total playing time: approximately 130minutes. Open. Rel

ease signed.

Tape 1 Side 1START. Columbus Mills (no middle name) was born July 7, 1893 on Stinking Creek at the area designated Scalf. He was born at home attended by a midwife named Hubbard, related to Mose Hubbard.     He was named after his mother's grandfather, Columbus Davis, a relation of Harris Davis of Brush Creek. On his mother's side of the family, Great great grandfather Mose Hubbard and two brothers came from Virginia to Stinking Creek before Kentucky became a state in 1792. Mose Hubbard had a license to make bonded whiskey from the government and he took out a warrant for some land in Stinking Creek. Hubbard's brothers went to Clay County and to Crab Orchard or Paris, Kentucky. A third brother was lost track of.     Scalf had no name when Mose Hubbard came but after the whiskey business was set up a post office was established called ''Scalfton" for a couple of years but the post office closed for a year or so. Then a man named Scalf opened the post office and the place was named after him.     Columbus's father, Pleas Mills, was a tenant farmer who moved from farm to farm and worked for little money. His wife Amelia Mills and the family moved with him from job to job. He moved to Macroe Branch, near Scalf and settled there. CM remembers when he was about two years old (so ca. 1895) that Pleas and an old man named Jackson were digging a well and found a brass capbox for holding rifle caps. When CM ran out to grab the attractive box, Jackson frightened him by threatening to toss him into the well. ''This old man Jackson, he was a terrible, he wore his hair and beard all over his face, and he looked like the devil to start with." CM remained afraid of Jackson until he died around 1903.     CM also remembers the death of his great grandfather when CM was two years, seven months old. This was the first time he had ever seen a corpse. The body was in a homemade wooden casket which tappered from a head of three and a half feet wide to about five inches at the foot and rested on sawhorses. His mother, Amelia, had to lift CM to see the body. He was old man Mose Hubbard who lived up to around 106 years of age. ((CM may have his grandfathers mixed up because if Hubbard was 106 in 1896, he was born in 1790 and CM has Mose Hubbard coming to Stinking Creek before 1792, in the 1780s.))     Mose Hubbard laid a warrant on a thousand acres of land in Stinking Creek to build a watermill. The mountains around the area pooled the necessary water and his dam backed the water up for at least half a mile, about four or five acres of water. CM had corn ground many times at that mill and the mill's rock foundations still are extant. The turn of corn went on top of the pile and was ground bottom first. The mill ground corn mainly to make corn liquor and Hubbard had selected the area around Scalf because of its suitableness for ponding water. By law he could sell no less than a keg of whiskey, about 16 gallons. CM says that ''the government made liquor," perhaps meaning that Mose made it to be sold to the government.GHOST STORY.A keg of liquor was involved in an act of violence in the Scalf area. CM's parents told him that in 1887 violence took place at an election at Scalf. People voted by standing in line for a candidate and the poller simply counted the number in each line as the vote for each candidate. Some of the candidates had bought a keg of whiskey at Mose's grocery store close to the mill for the men. Drinking was going on and a quarrel broke out when one of the voters hit another with a measuring weight from the store weighing scale. Guns were drawn and four men were shot dead at the election, one of wham was Henry Mills. (CM remembers three sets of Mills brothers being killed on Stinking Creek in his lifetime.) Three men lay on top of one another by an oak tree, and a fourth man died later from the shooting.     The court hired CM's father Pleas and Henry Jordan to dig up Henry Mills's corpse a year or so later for an examination of the bullet to find out who shot him. The body was perfectly preserved: "He was laying there just as pretty as you ever seen but when that air hit him, he just went down to nothing, you know, just sunk down." The bullet that killed Henry Mills cost Amelia's first cousin Bob Hubbard some time in the penitentiary because the bullet matched his gun."It developed that people would see haints at this place.... There stood an oak tree on the lower side of the road and there were three of these men piled right on top of each other, just shot down on top of one another at the tree. The other one they took about a hundred yards to some house and he died that night. They told all kinds of tales." Houston Broughton, the father of Tom Broughton, and another fellow were riding by the place. "It took a full day to make a trip to Flat Lick and back, the way the roads were" ((from reach Scalf)). Something like a rooster flew down from that oak tree upon a fence and made a noise. "About time they got to the tree, they claim that . . . somebody in a coffin got on the wagon. And it scared the horses and the mules so bad. They commenced to whipping those horses and mules and the fire flying from the wagon wheels, and this coffin ahanging to that wagon.... It scared them so bad, they lacked a mile or a mile and a half of being home, buddy, they run over to one of the neighbor's, and that's as far as they went."Tape 1 Side 2START.SECOND GHOST STORY.When Columbus Mills was 16 or 18 was attending a New Year's night party at Aunt Kitty Cat's and he was asked to fetch some apples for the party about midnight on a Sunday night. CM and an old man named John Smith, who had one leg shorter than the other because of an injury, had to pass that haunted oak tree on a Sunday to get to Yule Mills's store. Mills would not open the store on a Sunday. He lived a quarter of a mile from the store but the two lied saying that Aunt Kitty Cat wanted some medicine for one of the kids and they got their apples.     Carrying a half bushel of apples on foot the two had to pass that oak. "We got pretty close to this place and the old man had the apples on his shoulder. About that time I heared something just like somebody tuning fiddle, just like you'd draw a fiddle bow across a fiddle twice. That's all I heared; that's all I seen. I swear I could hear that old man's heart beating.... I grabbed them apples. He grabbed me by the arm. He said, 'Columbus, don't run off and leave me.' And his heart, I could hear it pounding. I said, 'I won't leave you.' I don't know what it was; it sounded just like somebody tuning a fiddle. I told him, 'That's what we got for telling a lie.'''     CM had eleven siblings, all of whom reached adulthood except one baby girl. All are dead now except Cordie Taylor. CM went to Scalf school for most of his education. He loved books and read by moonlight. Some of his teachers at Scalf were Sol Smith, Nicey and Dicey Smith, Lawyer Cams Davies, and Grover Hopper (the brother of Walter Hopper, Sr., whom CM held in high esteem). On the last day of school (just before Christmas) a party and a play were always held and a Christmas tree was decorated in the one-room school where Hopper taught. School in Columbus's boyhood ran six months, from July to Christmas.First jobs.Frank and Milt Scalf worked at the L&N Railroad Co. and got CM a job in Bell County. CM recalls the long thirty mile walk from Scalf to Varilla (6 miles past Pineville). CM's first day of work was under the Seven Sisters Rock on the railroad with a work crew of about thirty men. He helped build a rock roadbed for the railroad from Pineville to Harlan in 1911 and worked until school started July 12th. (CM was about 18). He worked for 10c an hour and room and board cost 5c a hour; so a nickel an hour was the real wage. He made about seven or eight dollars for a couple of weeks work. The pay train ran about every two weeks.
     After leaving Scalf, CM went to school at Jeff's Creek, where he later taught for a year. CM got his teacher's certificate even though he failed one subject. At the examination in the superintendent's office, he scored 100% on writing, spelling, math, and geography, but cannot recall what he failed. Ed Hemphill was probably the county superintendent at that time. CM did not like teaching.     Then CM operated a cannery at Scalf. "I put up canned goods.... I put up sweet potatoes, pears, apples, peaches, beans, kraut."He raised most of the vegetables and fruits that he canned. "1 had my label on them, nice labels." CM cannot recall the name on the label but thinks it may have read ''Jeffs Creek Brand." Ben Messer has a can from CM's company. He sold the cans wholesale to merchants. CM sold Jack Hughes 20 cases of sweet potatoes for Cole & Hughes and upped the order to 40 cases the next year.     In 1918 CM moved to Artemus and sold the cannery. He married Axie Jordan, daughter of Robert Jordan, in 1916.Tape 2 Side 1Columbus Mills moved to Artemus in September 1918 when his first cousin Ev Hammons offered him a job at the A & J Railroad under a Mr. Hayden (or Hyden). The Artemus Coal Co. shop house owned by Judge Hammons was converted into a four—room house which CM rented for $7.00 a month. CM's pay was $60 a month cash. His job at the depot kept him out of World War I when the U.S. government took over the A & J Railroad and moved him to Warren. CM's job was keeping records straight between A & J and L & N Railroads. The L & N agent Bill Lawson named CM ''Clerk and Operator" with a raise in salary to $87 a month.CM also worked at the Barbourville depot as night clerk for several months but he disliked the night shift. He worked under John Allen Owens and knew George Owens as well but he never worked with Charles Reed Mitchell I. Before the twenties there were no roads of any worth in the area and everything had to be shipped in by railroad freight. During World War I, CM had to work two hours overtime daily because there was no relief worker. The local train from Middlesboro was usually late, keeping him overtime.     During his thirty-day vacation, CM tried the grocery business by selling items from the Louisville Grocery Company as a representative to the area. He sold groceries to Ike Congleton (of the coal commissary) and to Claude Congleton, with carloads of orders. CM sold over the county and into Clay County. The merchandise was picked up directly from the railroad shipping cars.     He had trouble with the Louisville Grocery Co. because the coal commissaries and coal companies were slow in paying their bills.Mew roads and trucking services and grocery warehouse delivery trucks directly to the stores eventually killed the railroad grocery shipping business. He worked for the railroads for about 14 years, from 1918 to 1932 (1930?).     CM also farmed a couple of years before running for tax commissioner of Knox County. He got his tax certificate in 1931 and was elected in 1931 to office, taking office in 1932.In 1911 CM moved to Barbourville briefly and went to school in town. He worked at the Advocate Publishing Co. in 1912 and at Henderson Jarvis's store in town. (He first misidentifies Jarvis as Henderson Hampton.) Jarvis's store was a big two-story frame store where the Baptist Church is now located on North Main St. On the second floor, Jarvis had a second-hand furniture store. Jarvis paid CM one dollar a day. Jarvis ''had a funny sort of way of talking."Tape 2 Side 2At Jarvis's store CM worked repairing the used furniture. One time Henderson Jarvis had a freight load of cheap flour for a special sale. He could not pay for the flour, which had been sent C.O.D. through the railroad. He could not raise the money from the banks and was faced with paying a storage fee to the depot.Henderson's wife was a mail ordered bride, whom he assumed was poor. But she had been postmaster at Pontiac, Michigan and had really saved quite a good nestegg. Jarvis had already sent out printed advertisements for the flour sale but hadn't the money to pay the railroad for its shipping cost. After three days of this worry, the wife offered to loan him the money but he thought she was simply mocking him and got angry with her. CM overheard the whole quarrel. She wrote him a check for around $300 or $400 but the banks did not believe it was valid until calling her Michigan bank. Robert V. Cole of the First National Bank was told that her check was not only good but that she had thousands of dollars in the bank.     Jarvis got his flour and held the big sale. Wagons from Poplar Creek, Indian Creek, Big Creek and other local areas poured in to buy the flour at 35c for a 24 pound bag. That was CM's first job in Barbourville.     Editor McDonald of the Barbourvi1le Mountain Advocate hired CM as a typesetter and Doc Keltner taught him how to set type. ''You had to set that type, you'd pick up one letter at a time and you'd you'd put it in a little frame. If you got that letter turned wrong side down you had it in a mess. This type, was in a tray and you'd take one letter—like 'a' *b' *c'--and print your word. And you had to be careful or you'd misspell your word."CM remembers working on the special Christmas issue of 1912, the first time the paper had printed in color. The paper was run through the press three times,' once for each different color. ((KHM has an original copy of this issue in the Ollie Cole - W. S. Hudson collection.)) CM was paid $10 a week at the Advocate, with a Christmas bonus of $25.00. He worked at the Advocate until his father moved back to Stinking Creek. He could not recall The People's Mews, a rival newspaper in Barbourvi1le.     A $200,000 bond was arranged to build Highway 11 toward Swan Pond through the county with steel bridges. When CM entered as Tax Commissioner the county still owed $75,000 on that bond. In Sampson Knuckles' term as county attorney Knuckles paid the bill off in two or three years. Pleas Mills worked for Judge Hammons on the road project and was in charge of prisoners working on the road.The Doc Keltner who taught CM typesetting at the Advocate how he had been a doctor working in Pineville after finishing medical school but that he had no customers. A boy from Big Creek (Erose) at the head of Stinking Creek came for a doctor to Pineville when the snow was a foot deep but only Keltner would go with him. The old man turned out to be a hypochondriac, or ''hyppoed" as CM put it, but Dr. Keltner needed a success. Keltner took the old man to his home, cleaned him up, sent him to a barber to shave him and give him a haircut. Keltner's wife let him stay at their house until the old man believed he was cured. Business picked up.     Columbus asked Keltner, ''What got you out of that job into this job?" Keltner explained that he got into trouble performing an abortion on a fourteen-year—old. The girl's parents got the law on him and he lost his license.END OF INTERVIEWTo be continued on Columbus Mills Interview Part II.



INDEX
Interview Index Card Mills, Columbus (b. July 7, 1893)
Railroad worker, merchant, newspaper worker, and politician KHM Cassette Tape No. 92/1 Special Collection: Railroads
Interviewed by David H. Cole at Columbus' home on Mills Lane in Artemus, Ky. on October 22, 1992. Two 60-rainute tapes. Total playing time: approximately 130 minutes. Open. Release signed. A second interview with Mills (KHM No. 92/2) is also on file.
CONTENT: Mose Hubbard and settlers of Knox Co. in 1780s. Whiskey making. Watermill operation. Stinking Creek. Scalf. Gunfight at Stinking Creek. Ghost stories. Railroad work. L & N RR. Artemus & Jellico RR. Cannery. Grocery wholesale sales. Artemus. Politics. County Tax Commissioner. Henderson Jarvis' store. Typesetting at the Barbourville Mountain Advocate. Doc Keltner.

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