Mills Was A Texas Hero In War And Peace

Roger Quarles Mills, Civil War hero and U.S. Senator, died in his hometown of Corsicana on Sept. 2, 1911.

Mills was a Kentuckian born in 1832 five miles down the road from the birthplace of Jefferson Davis, future president of the Confederacy. He watched seven older siblings leave home and decided at the age of 17 that his turn had come to go out and conquer the world.

Texas sounded like the land of boundless opportunity, at least according to a sister living in Palestine. Steamboats offered the young adventurer a cheap but roundabout route via four rivers