Orville Mills and Talitha McKay

Power of the internet, part two.

Actually, this should be part one because it happened first, but let me explain. As the previous day's post indicated, the pen and ink drawing of Henry Randolph and Rachel Fowler was delivered after my post about their daughter, Onady Randolph Mills, appeared on this blog. Amy Randolph Hill, a great-granddaughter of Onady's brother Allen, saw the post and contacted me to see if I was interested in the drawing of Henry and Rachel. I definitely was, and before long, Amy e-mailed the image to me. What a wonderful example of how technology is bringing families together again!

The above photo is of the parents and siblings of Onady's husband, Jesse Mills. We had searched long and hard for a photo of Orville when a couple of years ago, out of the blue, Bobbie Mills Connor, a fellow researcher living in Arkansas, recent internet acquaintance, really nice person, and descendant of Orville, said she thought she had a photo of the couple. When it arrived late one night around midnight, I awoke Mike, and it was like Christmas at our house! The photo you see above has been professional retouched as it was in bad shape, but there is no doubt that is our Orville and Talitha. Again, it came to us through the power of the internet.

Along with the photo came new relationships with a whole lot of Arkansas and Missouri cousins, descendants of Orville and Talitha's children who moved to those states in the 1920s and 1930s. In 2007, along with several other Mississippi cousins, we attended the Mills Family Reunion at Heber Springs, Arkansas during Labor Day weekend. In 2008, many of the same people gathered at the city park pavilion in Marietta, Mississippi for another Mills Family Reunion. Isn't technology wonderful?