When cotton farmer and bootlegger Lee Mills stuck a .12-gauge shotgun under his chin and ended his life, he left his wife and six children in a world of mess.
That was 1929 — the same year the stock market crashed and America’s Great Depression began.
Lee’s 32-year-old wife, Maige Lisk, couldn’t tend all the young children alone. So she sent them away — four at first, then another, then the last — to live at an orphanage.
“I can remember my dad coming across the field and I’d ask him if he’d brought me candy and he’d pretend he hadn’t and then he’d pull some out of his pocket,” said Rachel, one of the siblings who lives in Fayetteville now.
Then her tone lowered as she drew closer: “But I don’t have much sympathy for my father. He left us and our mother in a very bed situation.”
The six Mills children have grown up together at an orphanage, helped fight a war, worked in textile mills and had children of their own.
But they’ve always stayed together. For the past 20 years — as they did all day Saturday — they’ve met on a hillside above Poole Road in southeastern Rowan County. There, as relatives close and distant ate, played bocci, caught fish and wove stories, they recalled the bittersweet memories of their father.
Growing up on farms in Stanly and Richmond counties, the children recall a father who was generous but stern.
“He was good to us kids,” Robert said of his father, recalling the Christmas that Santa Claus left them all pocket knives. “But if he told you not to do something, you’d better not do it.”
Robert Mills said his father’s troubles came when he began drinking the batches of corn liquor he distilled.
“If you’re gonna make liquor, don’t drink your business,” said Robert, who was born near Lake Tillery in a slave house before the family moved to Ellerbe, a small town in Richmond County.
“It was Depression times and that was how you could make money,” said sister Myrtle, who lives in Charlotte. “I’m sure God will forgive him even if the law doesn’t.”
Maige was 32 when her husband took his life.
With the economy crushed and Maige unable to keep up a farm with the children, all under age 11, the children left for Barium Springs, a Presbyterian orphan home south of Statesville. Maige began a career of nursing.
At Barium Springs the youngest of the 350 children tended gardens, then prepared meals in the kitchen, then cleaned clothes in the laundry and — if they were lucky — got to work sewing machines.
Mrytle said the orphans had one of the best football teams around. “That’s all we had for entertainment down there. That’s what the superintendent called ‘control.’ ”
With an education they believe was better than most public schools could have given them, the six children left Barium Springs one by one to take jobs the orphanage arranged for them.
For $6.50 a week Myrtle made salads in an upscale restaurant in downtown Charlotte. Her resume didn’t stop there, however.
She was a switchboard operator for Southern Bell. She worked at a bakery, a medical clinic, a jewelry store and even ran a day-care center.
“It’s a blessing for us, simply because we all got an education,” said Myrtle, who learned to play piano at Barium Springs.
“I learned to cope with this world. You learn pretty fast when you’re told to sit down and shut up. But how else were they gonna control 40 little girls?”
When Robert and Horace left the Navy after World War II, Robert settled in southeastern Rowan County.
That was 1947, and Robert remembers driving to the house in a 1932 Buick loaded. The living room lacked a floor. Goats and geese wandered loose in the yard.
Maige, their mother, never remarried. But through her the children would one day rejoin. “We drifted back together through our mama,” Myrtle said. “Even though we were separated, we were still family.”
Maige died in 1964. Two of her children, Watt and Sadie, also passed away.
But the family has always returned for reunions, as about 50 did Saturday.
“We realized that we were being separated again as each family branched off in a different direction, so we took action,” Myrtle said.
Today Rachel and Myrtle still write each other weekly. To attract younger relatives and raise money for charity, children of the siblings hold an annual golf tournament, the Robert Mills Invitational. The 10th annual game is on Oct. 13 at McCanless Golf Course.
In these days of rest homes and relatives in distant states, Myrtle urges people to care for their kin and elders.
“If people hadn’t cared for us, then we wouldn’t be here today,” Myrtle said. “We all need to be more loving and caring.”
Contact Brad A. Hodges at 704-797-4266 or bhodges@salisburypost.com
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