An Autobiographical Sketch of My Life
by John Thornton Miller
April 1st, 1914 -

The task of writing an autobiographical sketch of my
life is requested of me by one of my children - a
work had I begun a few years ago would have been
much lighter, for then I could see good, and now my
eyes are dim and my mind is not so clear, and my
memory is so impaired that many incidents I would
gladly record will be forgotten.

I was born in the great old state of Georgia. The
very name is precious to me, and I still love not
only the name of the state, but the county of Dade,
and the town of Rising Fawn - now quite a town - on
the Chattanooga and Wills Valley Railroad. My
mother and father recorded the day of my birth at
the 14th day of October, 1839; I being the sixth
child, with three brothers and two sisters older,
and three brothers younger than I.

The older brothers married and went away, and the
farm work and leadership fell on me. The three
younger brothers and myself did most of the farm
work. What piles of corn and garners of wheat we
made! What fine hogs, meat and lard! To get out on
the road, or farm, with a fine yoke of oxen and a
good wagon was a fine past time. It was fun to load
the team and see them get down to pulling.
Sometimes I would walk out on the wagon tongue and
get astride 'Old Buck,' and get ditched. This was
not so funny, but it mixed in occasionally. +++

April 2nd, 1914 -

My father's farm of 420 acres lay in a little creek,
which I shall call Cove Creek, because it drained
what was in the early days of that county called the
Lost Cove. Sometimes this stream would get out on
our land. It was crooked, and in the crooks the
land was very rich. Bill and I called these little
crooks 'newks.' My, what corn we made in those
newks! This Cove Creek emptied into Lookout Creek -
a larger stream, and it in turn emptied into the
Tennessee River 20 miles below us and at the mouth
of the Lookout Valley about eight miles southwest of
Chattanooga, to us a big town then. We did our
marketing there. Corn, meal, potatoes, and other
farm products were hauled there. We did not grow
much cotton then except for home use. We had no
gins, and had to pick the seed out of the cotton
with our fingers. This we usually did after supper
before bedtime. And now, children, you may think
this is a romance, but it is a fact as sure as you
are born. Then mother carded the cotton and made
our summer wear. One pair of red leather shoes -
homemade, at that -was our share of shoes a year.
These we got about the first week of December. We
were proud, and 'stepped high." On these creeks, we
boys would fish, and swim, and kill moccasins. I
dream of the creeks, and newks, and swimming holes
and canebrakes now some nights. They all look just
like they did sixty years ago - that is, in
dreamland. The old foot-logs, the wash place, the
mill over on the bank, the big scaly-bark tree just
there by the wash place - I shall never see them
again only in dreams.

Well, children, I have said enough about the creeks
and the farm. I could write all day of
reminiscences of the days spent up and down the
creeks, of hairbreadth escapes, snake scares,
strangles, and deep wadings. But there are some
other matters of which I must tell you. There is Old
Pleasant Grove Log Meeting House, and the school a
mile away. Professor A.R. Morrison is teaching. He
was the best teacher I ever had. The house was a big
pine-hewed log house with great cracks. We boys who
were in arithmetic would sit out of doors to study,
throw stones at the birds, talk and laugh and have a
good time generally. Well, the preacher preached in
this old house and when it was Circuit Preaching
Day, we quit work about ten o'clock in the morning
and went to meeting. (I wish the people would do
that way now.) The preacher would sometimes come
home with us, and Bill and I were always glad, for
mother always fixed something good to eat when he
came. We would likely have chicken, biscuits, ham
and gravy, or sausage and such like.

Somehow, I learned to love the preacher, and that
learning has been a habit of my life. I still love
a man of God. There have been many changes since
those days in the modes of living and acting, but
the Word of God has not changed, and the Word is not
lost. If I could I would go back there and walk
over the old places so sacred to me, made so by the
scenes and experiences of my youth. There are
mountains there one of which I would balance against
all the mountains of Montgomery County (Arkansas).
I desire to stand in the valley of my birth and gaze
on those lofty peaks and cliffs! When I was
seventeen years old I began to feel the need of an
education, and asked my father for the sum of one
hundred dollars, which then would pay my way ten
months in an academy at Trenton, Ga., the county
seat. Father said, "All right, John, make a big
crop this year, and I will send you next year." We
made the crop and when we got it harvested, I asked
him for the money. He told me that that was more
than he had been able to do for the other boys and
so put me off. As a result of my disappointment, I
started to Texas.

I started from home on the sixth day of October
1858, with my now sainted brother, Joe. As I
remember the big comet was in the West. (I wonder -
was this Halley's comet? I think it was.) My
brother located in Pike County, Arkansas. Then
moved to Dallas, in Polk County. He bought the
Little John Longacre Farm, now owned by B. F.
Thompson. There, Joe's wife died in September of
1859. Later my father and James, my oldest brother,
moved to Polk County, and in December of 1860, I
went back to my native state. I married, there,
Miss Sarah L. Russell, a sweet little Christian girl
of seventeen summers, with whom I lived sixteen
years, having born to us five children -three boys
and two girls.

We had passed through the War Between the States,
and we moved to Arkansas, settling near Charleston
at Hickory Ridge, Sebastian County. There we buried
my wife - leaving me almost a wreck. The sadness
and loneliness and sorrow of such an ordeal no one
knows except those who have experienced it! Having
five small children, their mother gone, poor in
worldly things, one hundred miles from and of my
people, set me in serious straits. I could not
leave my children and I could hardly stay with my
children. What could I do? It began to be a
serious question and rather difficult to solve. I
was then thirty-seven years old. Time sped on.
Gloom impenetrable settled down about my home. But
the Good Lord always 'tempers the wind of the shorn
lamb.' So I was married to Mrs. Joan Lackey, with
whom I have lived these thirty- seven years happily.
She proved to be indeed a wonderful mother to my
motherless children and a congenial companion to
myself.

May 19th, 1914

The longer I live the thoughts of home and home
life, home comforts and home influences and
training, crowd in on my mind; and now that I am
nearing the seventy-fifth mile-post of life's
journey I am thoroughly convinced that for a boy or
a girl there is not and cannot be any other
influence so great as the home. I fear sometimes
that our American home life is falling down in the
very essentials at the outset of education.

The home may be poor and destitute of the luxuries
of life. But it is home -sweet old word! Not many
words in our language so precious - in fact no word
so sweet except, perhaps, the word 'mother.'
Mother! The sweetest thought trembling down the
path of life! The crowning though of home!

I recall an incident occurring on my trip from
Georgia to Texas, in 1858, near Tuscumbia, Alabama.
In our tent some time in the night I awoke. I was
sick, oh, so sick I did not know that I could ever
get well. I thought I might die in the night. Yet
my mind was clear and the past years of my life
passed in review -my home, my brother Bill who had
been my play-mate, my chum, my yoke-fellow in the
fields, in the creeks, in the squirrel hung, in the
fishing days. The farm work and the manifold duties
of a farmer boy all passed in my mind. Oh, if I
could only be with my mother, dear sweet old soul,
and say to her, "Mother, I am sick." And hear her
say, "You will be better in the morning, my boy,"
and have her put her sweet old hand on my forehead
and bend down and kiss me. But the spell passed and
we drove on and on to the great West. But, my dear
mother, I can never forget your kindness, and when I
get HOME-thank God for the word! I trust that I
shall be allowed to see you. I shall there try to
make amends for all the heartaches I have caused
you. I know now that all will be forgiven me.

When but a child I would follow my dear mother to
the big spring at nightfall to get water for the
night. After dipping the pail in the water and
lifting it our, she would sit down and say, "Son,
let's pray.' So she would pray and I would sit and
look into her old wrinkled face and hear her
whispering to God about us children and pleading for
us. Well, thank God for a praying mother! These
memories and environments of home, the preaching,
the Sunday Schools, the religious meetings; these
made on my mind and in my soul impressions for
everlasting good. So the thought of religion and
getting home to Heaven became the absorbing themes
of my life. From my earliest recollections, I had
no other thought than that I would become a
Christian and live for God and heaven. And often
when alone I would plead with him to permit me to be
a Christian, but I always had such a sense of my
unworthiness, as always to be afraid He would not
allow me to be saved. And these thought were
horrible to me, to think I should be lost - how
could I bear it? But these awful experiences were
all the while leading me up to the feet of Jesus,
where I could look up through my tears to the Great
Face of a loving Savior and receive His smiles and
His pardoning love. When I came to the place where
He showed me that He did not save people because
they were good, but because they were bad like I
was, it was easy for me. Thank God, Jesus came to
save sinners, and not the righteous! +++

May 20th, 1914 -

I sought and received the forgiveness of my sins in
August 1861, at a camp meeting at Bird's Chapel, in
Dade County, Georgia. My conversion was so definite
- I may say, so sweet and so satisfactory -followed
by so great peace - which I could never be made to
doubt that I was reconciled to God. My consecration
was so full as not to leave a hoof behind. I
immediately erected a family altar, and while it has
been a rule of my life to keep up family worship, we
have neglected it at times, to our great spiritual
loss. Soon after my conversation or even before, I
felt impressed that I should preach the Gospel and
asked the church after a few years, for license to
preach; and in October, 1870, the Quarterly
conference gave me the license. Timidly, I
undertook work as a local preacher. I always wanted
to join the conference and be a traveling preacher
and spend my whole time in the work. But I did not
join the traveling connection. I have done what I
could as a local preacher. In May 1876, bishop
Wightman ordained me as a local deacon at
Russellville, Arkansas. I have don some little
supply work, and feel now that I should have joined
the Conference, yet I may not be entirely to blame
for not doing so. And now the day is far spent and I
am in the evening of my of my life, and the results
of my work are with the Great Head of the church.
Amen.

Well, (again looking back) the war was now over, the
south subdued and our entire Southland almost all
devastated, the people poor and discouraged. I am
at Lavergne, Tennessee, on the Nashville and
Chattanooga, Railroad, sixteen miles from Nashville,
in a great country - with only $500.00, which we
have saved in the last year. I have been at work
for the United States government at pretty good
wages; have traded, run the blockade from Nashville,
and sold to Negroes such little things as I could
get out of Nashville undetected. My wife and my two
girl babies compose my family. My brother, George,
who lived in Arkansas was with us. He persuaded us
to return with him to Arkansas. So about the 15th
of July 1865, we hired a man to take us to Nashville
- gave him $5.00 for the trip. At Nashville we got
aboard a steamboat, and went down the Cumberland
River to Smithland, thence down the Tennessee River
into the Ohio thence down the Ohio to Cairo,
Illinois. We there took the big boat, "Ben
Stickney," and ran down the Mississippi to Napoleon,
where we took the Glide No. 3, for Little Rock,
Arkansas. At Little Rock we purchased a wagon and
team and moved overland to Polk County, arriving at
my father's farm on August 1st.

Our people were all poor now and in a hard shape
financially. So we had to begin at the bottom with
only a few dollars in cash, and our living to buy. I
did not like Arkansas, and thought I would go back
to Tennessee, but George always influenced me, and
we stayed. So we are here yet. I got hold of a hew
hogs, a pony, a cow, a bull-tongue plow, a sprouting
hoe - and went to work. I would turn the pony out
on the grass with a bell on. We would hunt him in
the mornings. We had no bedsteads, except scaffolds
pinned to the wall. We lived three miles from Shady
Grove Church and schoolhouse. There we went to
church, where the Rev. W. Wakely baptized me and
received me into the M. E. Church, South.

I worked hard and saved as much as possible. We
lived a rather hard but happy life. We were 150
miles from a railroad and market. That first fall I
went to Center Point and bought two bales of cotton,
and took it to Little Rock. Sold it for 36 cents a
pound. Bought a few supplies - a barrel of salt for
$6.50, a pair of cotton cards at $2.00, some little
Oznaburge at 60 cents a yard, a little coffee at 60
cents a pound. I was gone three weeks on the trip.
I began to get acquainted, and secured a little
school to teach at a little log cabin where the
village of silver Center now is. Wade Hilton had a
little water mill just down on the creek. Sometimes
we could get some corn ground and when the creek was
low, he could not grind. The next nearest mill was
on Big Fork, ten miles away. We would go down there
and stay all night. Maybe we would get a peck of
meal and maybe not. We would grit the corn and make
hominy, but we would scrape about some way to keep
from starving. There was not a steam mill in the
whole county, a county that was sixty mile long and
fifty miles wide. There were not more than three
hundred voters in the whole county. How is that for
neighbors? Game was plentiful. Anybody could kill a
deer if he could shoot. I could not see them until
they had left me. Cattle could be bought cheaply.
We would dry the beef and it would answer for meat
and bread. Acorns were plentiful and the hogs would
thrive on them. We did not feed the cattle. They
would live through the winter on the range. Was I
what you would call a pioneer? No, there were then
old settlers. I could name a few of them, but there
is not need. I write these little details down to
impress on you boys some of the troubles and trials
through which the older generation has gone in order
that you may be a little happier and a little
better. I soon moved to Pike County and bought a
place on the Little Missouri River. Kept it two
years and sold it, moving back to Polk County. But
in Pike County, my oldest son, Gip, was born, and he
being our first boy, we thought him the finest of
all boys. Well, he grew up, was a good boy,
industrious, tenderhearted, a young man of good
sense and well balanced, but he did not have the
chance to go to school.

Back again in Polk County, I bought a farm on the
Washita River from brother George, and paid him
$1000.00 for it. I lived on it three years, and
sold it to Barry Vaught, and moved again. Well, I
have never been satisfied and have moved around a
great deal. Had I been still I might have saved
more of the world's goods, but, "The soul seeks
creation through trying something new." The only
reason I have not seen the world over is that I have
not had the money on which to travel.

Our next boy was one we called Wallace Gladwin, a
fine little fellow and quick to learn, growing up to
be an excellent schoolteacher, and today his whole
talk is 'school, school, school'. Going back a
little in time, while I was in Pike County, I was
made a Mason at Dallas Lodge No. 128. I was zealous
for the institution for a long time, and have had
active participation in its teachings, but it seems
now that through this country the time-honored order
is way-worn and heavy laden Unscrupulous men have
crept into its portals and the great light is being
dimmed by men who do not strictly adhere strictly to
the great teachings. I write it down here that no
institution among men can live and prosper to
success only as it is related to Jesus Christ. The
church itself will die if she cuts loose from
Christ. There is life and power from nowhere else.

In 1870, leaving home I took a trip to Texas after
my wife's mother, Mrs. Russell, who lived with Col.
A. A. Hughes, a gentleman who married my wife's
oldest sister and lived in Travis County on the
Colorado River near Austin. I came back to Lampasas
Springs and by Gatesville. Well, I had a time in
the black mud. I did not like Texas. It was so
sticky and everybody cursed. I would camp by
myself. I had no weapons except my Bible and
hymnbook. I would sing a song and pray by my fire
before going to bed, and ask God's care over me and
my property through the night. I had no bad luck on
the trip of 1000 miles. I praise the Lord for His
care, and I think I shall always keep the faith.
But for his mercies, I should have been in eternal
despair. Pardon me for my so frequent allusion to
the phase of my life. Someone has said, "In Italy
all roads lead to Rome," so in this life of mine all
thoughts lead to God. Mrs. Russell did not like
Arkansas and I had to send her back to Texas, at a
cost of $65.00 - at that time quite a little sum of
money. And money was a very much-needed luxury.
For about this time some of the children needed to
be placed in school; and right here is the great
problem of the family. To rear a family and not
educate the individuals of it is a calamity to the
children and a curse to the world. So I began to
cast about as to how to have the children trained.
There were no very good schools in reach, and the
system of free schools had just been set up and was
not in good running order yet. So to educate a
family of some size was no little task.

(This paper is so soft and spongy that I cannot
write longer with a pen, so I shall have to do the
remainder with a pencil.)

Vernon was my next boy. He was quite a little
fellow, and is still small. But he has grown up to
be a good substantial businessman, and somewhat of a
moneymaker. He is the baby boy of my first wife.
The girls have grown up and married. The first born
of my union to Mrs. Joan Lackey was a fine boy. We
gave him the name of Marvin, for one of our great
bishops. He was a good spirit and we admired him
very much. But at the age of 18 he passed away and
brought to our home and hearts the saddest day of
our lives. But I know God knows best, and I submit.

I began to sell goods and made some money at it and
helped my younger boys about going to school. John
Cotton, our next oldest to Marvin, is a fine judge
of human nature and of men. He is absolutely honest
and despises a falsehood or the one guilty of
falsehood. The next one, Eddie, was stillborn.
Then came Joseph Jones, high spirited and ambitious
and quick of perception, graduated from Ouachita
College and studied in the University of Chicago,
and has developed into a good schoolteacher. Last,
but not the least, coming to our home was Robert
Franklin, our baby. He is the largest of all of
them, and a fine fellow. He is at home with us now.
He and Cotton are the stay of their mother and
father. Don't you all think this is a pretty good
family? All are rather intelligent, all in good
health, all happy, and none guilty of crime. It is
much to be thankful for.

In 1892, I took quite an active interest in
politics. I made speeches in interest of the farmers
and laboring people. Having all my life been a
democrat, I thought my party and the Republican
Party were ignoring the interests of the masses and
catering to the classes. I though the time had come
for a change in the political complexion of our
country, so I took up the cause of the Populist
Party and was elected to represent Polk County in
the Legislature in 1893, and again in 1895. My
opponents were outstanding leaders of the whiskey
and gambling ring, which has since been demonstrated
by the untimely death of the man I had the honor of
beating. We had a stormy season in 1893. In 1895,
I introduced the first bill to prohibit the
manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors in the
state. Of course, it failed to pass.

Selection by: Cynthia Forde <cfordetx@direcway.com