Anson Mills

Who was Anson Mills?

Anson Mills was a United States Army officer, surveyor, inventor, and entrepreneur. Engaged in south Texas as a land surveyor and civil engineer, he both named and laid out the city of El Paso, Texas. Mills also invented a woven cartridge belt which late in life made his fortune.

Mills was born on a farm near Thorntown, Indiana, the first of nine children to a father and mother of Quaker ancestry but with no particular interest in religion. As a young man, Mills worked on the farm but also became a practiced carpenter and weaver. In 1855, he entered West Point but in 1857 was dismissed for "deficiency in mathematics." Too embarrassed to return home, he taught school in McKinney, Texas and then moved on to El Paso to work as a surveyor, which included drawing up the original plat of the town.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, he accepted a commission as a first lieutenant in a regular infantry regiment of the U. S. Army. His service was undistinguished, but he appeared at Shiloh and in the Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Atlanta, and Nashville campaigns. He rose to the rank of captain by the end of the war.