McCallister's McAlisters (and some other good families)

The Mills Family

Peter P. Mills was born about 1635 in Holland (the family was probably in exile from England) but sailed to the Maryland colony while still quite a young man. He married Mary Shercliffe in St. Mary’s County, colony of Maryland about 1664, and they set about raising a family in the new land. The Mills family became part of what I call the “Maryland Catholics”, a large group of families whose migratory path, leaving Maryland shortly after the American Revolution, reached central Kentucky, and then reached Union County Kentucky a generation or two later. They generally moved en masse. Where one family went, they all eventually went.

Eight generations after Peter Mills, Louis P. Mills was born in Marion County Kentucky. He too, moved to Union County and by 1860 had married Mary Elizabeth Beaven. (The Beaven family was another of the Maryland Catholic families). Together, they parented nine children, of whom Lucy Ellen Mills was one. Lucy Ellen Mills was my great grandmother. Mr. Louis P. Mills is buried in the St. Agnes Cemetery at Uniontown Kentucky.

A tall thin woman, Lucy Mills married Charles Abell McCallister when she was 24 years old. At 38, he was considerably older. They had seven children, of whom 4 reached maturity. Grandma Lucy is remembered by one grandchild as making very large, light and fluffy biscuits, which she evidently did daily as a snack for the grandchildren on their way home from school. The Charles McCallister household was situated on the road between the school at Uniontown and the McCallister farms, and the grandchildren were wont to stop there often.

Lucy died in 1934. She had been sick for 5 weeks and two days, according to the Julia Whitfield McCallister diaries. She is buried at St. Agnes Cemetery alongside her husband who died in 1939.

The chapel at the top of this page is an artist’s conception of how the original brick church at St. Mary’s County Maryland Colony would have appeared. The Mills family were communicants of this church. I am most indebted to Bob Alvey of California for much of the Mills genealogy.