Background
Robert Mills was the fourth child of Adam and Janet (Graham) Mills. He was born on March 9, 1809, in Todd County, Kentucky.
Robert Mills was the fourth child of Adam and Janet (Graham) Mills. He was born on March 9, 1809, in Todd County, Kentucky.
On May 15, 1826, Mills entered Cumberland College, now George Peabody College for Teachers, where he studied until the following May.
When Mills was twenty-one, he set out for Texas to join an elder brother, Andrew G. Mills, in merchandising at Brazoria. Since Andrew was a sea-faring man, the management of the business devolved upon Robert. The firm supplied planters and other merchants of the Brazos and Colorado valleys with necessities bartered for pelts and cotton and extended its trade area even across the Rio Grande. Trains of burros returned to Mexico laden with goods in exchange for specie and bars of Mexican silver, which Robert stacked like stovewood in the counting room. He and Andrew fought in the battle of Velasco against the Mexicans on June 26, 1832. After Andrew's death in 1835, Robert and his younger brother, David G. Mills, conducted the firm, first as R. Mills & Company, later as R. & D. G. Mills. About 1849 Mills, realizing that the Brazos would never be navigable, removed to Galveston. The next year he became a partner of Mills, McDowell & Company of New York and of McDowell, Mills & Company of New Orleans. From 1850 till 1863 John William Jockusch, the Prussian consul at Galveston was the third partner. Their ships and steamboats plied the rivers of Texas and the ocean, transporting cotton and sugar to the markets of the world. In 1852, Mills was president and director of the Galveston and Brazos navigation company that hoped to connect these two points by an intercoastal canal. From the beginning he performed the double function of merchant and banker, dealing in exchange and advancing credit to customers. In the absence of banks, R. & D. G. Mills countersigned the questionable notes of the Northern Bank of Mississippi at Holly Springs. Between twenty-five and five hundred thousand dollars of this money were reported to have circulated as readily as gold in Texas and in New Orleans. The suspension in 1852 of the affiliated houses in New York and New Orleans sent "Mills's money" below par for only one day in Galveston. In 1859, the supreme court of Texas decided that the partnership had violated no statute in reissuing these notes and remitted a fine of one hundred thousand dollars, assessed against the firm in 1857 by the district court of Galveston. While Robert was building up the commission and banking business in Texas, David was equally successful in operating their plantations. By 1860 the brothers had four sugar and cotton plantations, "Low Wood, " "Bynum, " "Palo Alto, " and "Warren, " embracing approximately 3, 300 acres in cultivation and 100, 000 acres of unimproved land. They owned another 100, 000 acres scattered over the state. They were also the largest slaveholders in Texas; they emancipated about eight hundred slaves in 1865. Though reputed to have been worth between three and five million dollars before the Civil War, R. & D. G. Mills in 1873 were bankrupt. Thereupon Robert surrendered to his creditors his plate, carriages, and his mansion, though he might have claimed the protection of the homestead law. His declining years were embittered by inactivity, poverty, and dependence upon relatives. He died in Galveston, where he was buried from Trinity Church.
Mills married Elizabeth McNeel, who died with their first-born child.