Ken & Cy

 

on

 

 Lyman A. Mills (1841-1929)

 

 

 

Duration 51:30

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introductory comments by Conrad Terrill, July 2010:

Lyman A. Mills, circa 1903, from ref. 1

 

   Ken speaks on the subject of Lyman Allen Mills from personal experience, providing a wealth of wonderful detail on day-to-day life at the Mills estate.  He and his father, and his uncle before them, did considerable carpentry day work for Mills; and Ken’s mother-in-law worked and lived at the Mills house for 18 years, for Lyman A.’s son Herbert’s wife, Bessie.  At 8:10 into the recording, when Cy refers to it being a continuation of a June 13th tape, he means that the first eight minutes of this 20 June recording were recorded onto the end of the 13 June tape.  Ken spends several minutes near the beginning reading highlights from biographical sketches of Lyman A. Mills and his son Herbert Lee Mills (1868-1934) from the 1903 Commemorative Biographical Record of Middlesex County.1  Lyman A. Mill’s wife was Jane Louisa (“Jennie”) (Andrews) Mills (1847-1919), born in New Britain, CT.  Herbert L. Mills’s wife was Bessie Delano (Kendall) Mills (1873-1957), from Chicago.  Ken is in error in saying that Mills was president of the Metropolitan Washing Machine Company (MWMC), but it’s certainly true that he was involved in its management, and from an early age.2  And I don’t think it’s true that the Mills family was particularly wealthy, either, although Lyman A. Mills indeed became so.  His father, Rev. Charles Lewis Mills (1812-1884), was a Congregational minister who married Elizabeth Coe Lyman (1812-1851), an older sister of David Lyman (1820-1871).  His mother died when Lyman A. was ten years old, and his father remarried the next year.  But Lyman A. was already living in his grandfather’s (William Lyman’s) household in 1850, at age nine, and was probably brought up there under his grandfather’s care.  William Lyman (1783-1869), a wealthy farmer in Middlefield, who became more wealthy as a one-third (I believe) partner in the MWMC, died when Lyman A. was almost 28 years old.  Lyman A. may well have inherited considerable wealth at that time (I haven’t checked the probate records).1-4

 

   Lyman A. Mills was Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut for two years, 1899-1901.5

 

   Here’s a link to an image of a painting which once hung on a wall in the Lyman A. Mills house: The Paintings of Gilbert Munger.  Here’s another.

 

   Lyman A. Mills died 22 Feb. 1929 in Dunedin, Pinellas County, FL.6

 

 

 

References

1.  Commemorative Biographical Record of Middlesex County Connecticut ... (Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., 1903), pp. 48-49, 928.  The picture at top is from this source (between pp. 48-49).  Available online via the Godfrey Memorial Library’s web site (PDF, 195 MB).

2.  Lyman A. Mills was elected secretary of the MWMC by the stockholders in 1871 (at age 29), when the company was reorganized after the death of David Lyman.  He surely started playing a managerial role before that, though.  And after the company (then called the Metropolitan Mfg. Co.) was sold to the American Wringer Co., in 1891, Mills served as a director of that company, for many years.

3.  Genealogy of the Lyman Family ..., by Lyman Coleman (Albany NY: J. Munsell, 1872), pp. 119-121, 130.  Available online via Google books.

4.  History of the Davis Family ..., by Albert H. Davis (New York: T. A. Wright, 1888), pp. 116, 119-121, 130.  Available online via Google books.

5.  State of Connecticut, Secretary of State web site.

6.  Ancestry.com Public Member Tree (Moore-Perrine (subscription required).