The Mullins Family of Georgia, Alabama and Escambia County Florida

Miles Mullins

10 Feb 1815 Georgia

29 Oct 1880 Canoe, Alabama

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orn in Georgia just as the Battle of Waterloo ended the career of Napoleon, Miles lived for a while with Clem Mullins in Cass County where he met Elizabeth. They were married in 1840 and promptly disappeared from the census records of the area for the next twenty years though I found records of him being in the area during that time. He served as a private in Ward’s Company of Lindsay’s Georgia Mounted Militia in the Cherokee War and in Camp’s Company of Wood’s Battalion in the 3rd Brigade of the Georgia Militia Infantry in the Creek War. He was in Cass County in 1844. Finally he turned up in Butler County, Alabama in 1860. I can only assume that Miles had been fighting Indians and working for the railroad during the missing time because in 1860 he is 45 years old and a railroad laborer. He was living next door to the Miles family.

By 1870 Miles had become a railroad manager and moved to Canoe, Alabama. He retired from the railroad and by 1880 was farming while his son John Madison timbered. Later that year Miles died and was buried in the Bowman Cemetery near Wawbeek.

Elizabeth Dodgens Mullins

21 Apr 1822 DeKalb County, Georgia

5 Jul 1900 Muscogee, Florida

Elizabeth’s Gravestone in Old Muscogee Cemetery

after being vandalized.

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lizabeth was born in DeKalb County, Georgia in the same year the Rosetta Stone was deciphered. She had her first child in Georgia in 1845 and her four subsequent children in Georgia as well. Her fourth child, John Madison was our direct ancestor and was born in Cobb County, Georgia in 1850. Her last child, Mahala Ann was to be her salvation. After following Miles across the South, Elizabeth finally ended up living with her daughter, Mahala Ann Brown, during the latter years of her life. She is buried in the Muscogee Cemetery near her daughter. Her tombstone is one of the few left unvandalized in the area and is a fine example of turn of the century stone cutting. It states proudly that she was born in DeKalb County, Georgia.

John Madison Mullins

30 Oct 1850 Cobb County, Georgia

24 Mar 1925 Muscogee, Florida

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ohn's tombstone states that he was born in Cobb County, Georgia in 1850. Though I have searched the censuses there which were taken about the time he was born and I have never found anyone even closely resembling him or his parents. Perhaps his parents were just passing through on the train when he was born. It seems strange that a mistake like this could make its way onto a person's final marker unless there were some good and well established family knowledge of such an event. Still, his parents, Miles and Elizabeth, moved about during those years and I have never found them in any 1850 census. Maybe they were in Cobb County all along and the census enumerator just missed them. Where ever he was, he was lucky to make it to 1860 because John was born at a time when only half the children in the U.S. ever reached the age of five. At any rate, by 1860 John and his family lived in Butler County, Alabama. Ten years later the family had migrated down to Canoe in Escambia County, Alabama where John was, at age 18, farming for a living. By 1880 he had moved into timbering and his brother, James, who lived next door, was a section manager for the railroad. But John finally found his calling around age 30. From that time on John was a railroad man as was his father before him.

By 1882 John had married and was working for the Southern States Lumber Company as the foreman in charge of keeping the tracks in good repair. He had a large crew of mostly blacks to get the work done. He must have been rather gruff because I recall my dad telling stories of himself and his cousin, Clarence Bowman, working with the crews in the summer. John Mullins would tell my dad that he was going to stroll up the track for his lunch break. That was the signal, that apparently only my dad knew, for the crew to relax and go swimming if they happened to break near the river. Clarence, however, was always afraid of being caught fooling around and could never enjoy the break for fear of John Mullins coming back early and catching everyone having a good time.

John lived to age 75. He died at 1:20 PM in his home and was buried at 2:00 PM the next day in the Clear Springs Cemetery in Alabama not far from where he had lived.

Margaret Cornelia Bowman Still Mullins

2 Dec 1855 Canoe, AL

24 Jan 1931 Muscogee, FL

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ornelia was born in the small town of Canoe, Alabama in the county of Escambia in the same year Congress authorized the creation of a telegraph link between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Coast. Her mother Malinda Shepard Bowman died during the Civil War when Cornelia was about nine. By that time Cornelia already had seven brothers and sisters. Somehow, they got along until their father returned from serving the Confederacy. They all lived together for several years then her father remarried to Sarah Frances Presley - a woman only eleven years older than Cornelia. Her step-mother, Sarah, bore at least six more children for the Bowman family, so Cornelia grew up amongst kids.

Cornelia married a Still but was listed in the 1880 census of Escambia County, FL with her aunt.

I’ve not been able to determine what happened to Still but on 13 July 1882 Cornelia married John Madison Mullins. By 1900 they had five children - The eldest daughter being Julia Ola Mullins who married Arthur Merritt, the eldest son of Kate and Orrin. In addition Cornelia was raising Mattie Dawson (granddaughter of John W. Bowman, daughter of Julia Ann Bowman and Luther H. Dawson) who was treated as though she were one of Cornelia's own. Mattie was in the will and received the same share of the estate as the other children. In fact, Mattie was considered a sister by the other children.

By 1900 Cornelia and John were living in Muscogee, Florida not far from the Merritts with a son, three daughters, and Mattie.

When Cornelia was a grandmother she fell down the high, steep back steps to her house and broke her leg very badly. After it healed she was playing with some of the children on roller skates and broke the leg again. This time gangrene set in and the leg had to be amputated to save her life. This didn’t slow her down a bit. She got around on crutches and a wheelchair just fine. Fuzzy recalls her bouncing babies up and down on the stump of her leg and having a great time doing it. She outlived her husband by six years and was buried at 2:30 PM next to her husband in the cemetery at Clear Springs, Alabama just across the Perdido River from Muscogee.