Hello, again!

Many thanks to those of you who wrote to inquire about the lack of blog posts the past year (cannot believe it has been a year!).  It is heartwarming to know that there are people other than my immediate family who actually read this blog.   Last fall was a busy time - actually the whole year was busy - and it was time to take a break from the blog.  I can only point my finger at Michael Luke Mills, our precious grandson.   Luke has been an absolute joy to get to know over the past eighteen months since his birth, and it is his fault that the blog has suffered from a lack of posts!

Luke can't take the full blame, however, as there has been a book in the works.   A photographic history book of Itawamba County is set to be released by Arcadia Publishing during the early part of January.  I started on the book last spring and sent it off to the publisher just a couple of weeks ago.  

Now, if I can just remember all of those things that crossed my path over the past year, when I thought "that would make a cool blog post."  ;)

Here's one of those moments - a trip this summer to the Wolfe-Mills Cemetery, nestled in the beautiful, yet isolated, Clinch Mountains of Hancock County, Tennessee.   Three generations of Millses, descendants of John Mills and Alley Coffey, stood on ground that once was part of the Mills family.   John and Alley's grandson, William Orville Mills, left Tennessee as a young boy, traveling with his family to Posey County, Indiana.  Orville, who later joined the McKay family as they made their way from Indiana back to Itawamba County, married Samuel McKay's daughter Telitha and created a new generation of Millses who would call Itawamba home.

The small cemetery near Treadway contains the marked graves of two of Orville's uncles, Hiram and John, and it is believed that John and Alley are buried here in unmarked graves. 

And so, on a warm day in June, homage was paid to the place of Orville's birth, where his journey began and the connection to Itawamba County was started.