Amanda "Mandy" Lucy Mallory

 
Amanda "Mandy" Lucy Mallory 
The daughter of John and Eliza (Hackney) Mallory, Mandy was born [in Missouri], on 10 Dec 1849, according to her headstone.  The 1850 Census places the family in Dade County, Missouri.  She was the fifth of eight children, and would have been about thirteen years old when she accompanied her mother and younger brothers on the perilous trek from Missouri to Texas during the Civil War (see June Ferguson history).  
John Mallory died in Texas in 1869.  That same year, at the age of 19, Mandy married John Rickman Miller, 27 May 1869.  (In the certificate below, notice that the county clerk is reusing forms from another county and has crossed out those names and written in Grayson for the county and Sherman for the county seat.)
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
John Rickman Miller
 
The 1870 Grayson County Texas Census shows John and Mandy (Mallory) Miller living next door to John's parents.  The newlyweds are enumerated with all but one of John's brothers and sisters, including a couple of infants.  Most likely, the two houses were shared and the family was rather fluid about who was staying where.  Mandy's brother, William F. Mallory, with his family, were also nearby in Grayson County at this time.

June Ferguson wrote in the Ben Mallory family history that "After the deaths of their parents [John and Eliza Mallory], Ben, Perry and Tom were with their brother, William, who was about 24 by then and married.  That didn't work out, so Ben, at age 15, appears to have taken off on his own.  Perry and Tom were to live with Amanda [Mandy], perhaps 20, and her husband...a Baptist preacher.  
"As Perry passed the story down to his family, the boys didn't like living with their brother-in-law so Perry ran away and took Tom with him.  ...  The two boys were pursued and Tom was caught, but Perry got away and kept going.  ...  It would not be surprising if he had gotten in with a cattle drive and made his way there [Montana]."

John Rickman Miller was described by various sources as "colorful" and "a fire-eating Baptist preacher".

Rickman Miller's father, John K. Miller, was a pioneer farmer with real estate valued at $1,500 and personal property valued at $750 (approx. $35,000 and $17,000 in 2023 dollars).  According to Jack Maguire, author of Katy's Baby The Story of Denison Texas (Nortex Press, 1991), J. K. Miller built his home "close to a spring flowing an abundance of clear, cold water.  As other settlers moved in, he sold them enough water to satisfy their basic needs.  Miller's spring was a great asset, since many of the early residents could not afford to drill their own wells."  This quote was found on the Grayson County TXGenWeb site, "John Kinsey* Miller (1826-1908)," which goes on to state, "Constructed as an Indian fort, the Miller home initially was a log cabin of two rooms with a dog trot between them and a basement below.  Later the cabin was expanded into a house, with additional rooms being built around the original ones."
 

 
 
 
 Ten years on, the 1880 Federal Census enumerates John and Mandy in central Texas, San Saba County, where John's occupation is described as "Preaching." 
 
 John Miller Sr. plat from McAnelly Bend Draw-Strings by Grace Hollis Puryear, Tuttle Pub., 1972
 Three of their children are on the census: Mattie, Otis Leon, and John K.  Walter S., who would have been 9 or 10 years old, is not with them.  Neither are any of the three youngest Mallory boys.

In "Notes of lecture...February 24, 2014, at Jeff Davis County Library, Fort Davis, Texas" generously shared on Ancestry [jpg images in my google drive, links below], the speaker, Kimball Miller, records that one of his sources (Puryear) focused on a town called McAnelly's Bend.  According to Wikipedia, this San Saba County town was originally called Schleicher's Bend.  When the town applied for a post office, two names were suggested, "Bend" and "Little Breeches," but the name Bend was chosen in 1879.  

June Ferguson wrote, "Clay [Ben's second son, b. 1885] was born in Little Britches, Texas, he often said, a place not on any map I have seen but somewhere in Brown County.  Oscar [Ben's first son, b. 1883] may have been born at the same place."  Brown County (where Ben Mallory and Letitia Owen were married) is just north of San Saba County (where Mandy and her family were living).
 
 Puryear writes, "In the years between 1885 and 1900 there was a great exedus [sic] (considering the population involved) of people from San Saba and Lampasas Counties to the far western part of the state, where at the time there was free range for cattle and land was cheap" (39).

In his 2014 lecture, Miller stated, "Now in the Fall of 1897 a big move was being planned.  Rickman Miller, a Baptist preacher, engineered that move which Jess and Mima Hollis joined, theirs being the only other wagon in the caravan besides the two Miller wagons.  There were two men, three women, two children and 8 or 10 men who drove the cattle.  Some of the drovers were kinfolk, one being a Miller's son...(probably Bud Miller).

"The move was started on Dec. 6, 1897, and the Miller's destination was the Davis Mountains near Fort Davis for there lived Walter Spurgeon Miller, Rickman and Mandy's son, and Lena Espy Miller, daughter of Rowena Marley and Henry Clay Espy who had left San Saba Co. along with others of the Espy clan previously I believe.

"There was always fun around the camp in the evenings.  Jess Hollis had his fiddle along; someone had a banjo; another a guitar and all could sing or listen well....  ...  After three weeks, they reached Sweetwater and from there the cattle were shipped on to Van Horn on the railroad.  This freed the wagons to go faster."
 
In 1900, Rickman and Mandy are living next door to their son, Walter and his family, in Presidio County, Texas.  (Jeff Davis County was created from Presidio in 1887.)  Amanda Lucy Mallory Miller is using the name "Lucy" at this point.  

I was unable to locate the Miller family in a 1910 Census, but Kimball Miller tells this story:

A promotor named Griffin met John Rickman Miller and cornered him and some other Lubbock ranchmen to join him on a venture in Mexico.  Going by chartered train to Mexico City, then to Vera Cruz, then another train, finally boarding a steamer going up a river.

Griffin had bought a plantation from a wealthy Mexican, reputedly for $1.00 an acre which he was selling to the Lubbock group for $5.00 an acre.  This Mexican man lived in a palace -- the colonists lived in a huge mansion nearby.  Later, they moved to the plantation by boat and built houses made of palm.  Soon the revolution [Mexican Revolution 1910-1920] began and the Revolutionaries (Pancho Villa, etc.) were killing Americans, confiscating property and such violences.

The Millers and others fled through the jungle, probably to, or near, Oaxaca where they found trains and escaped with only the clothes on their backs and some trunks.  They had spent a year on this 53,000 acre plantation near the Gulf of Mexico -- 16 people who were then to return to the plains of Texas, plenty glad to get back home.
 
Whether the whole family was there or not, the story doesn't make clear.  The next mention of the Miller family is the 1920 Census in Lubbock County, Texas, where Rickman has retired from preaching and taken up farming.  

Amanda "Mandy" Lucy Mallory Miller died 22 August 1921 at the age of 71, and was buried in Hillcrest Cemetery, Fort Davis, Jeff Davis County, Texas.  Mandy's husband, John Rickman Miller, died four years later and was buried beside her.


 *Kimsey
 
 
 

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