author
Anson Mills
1834–1924
A frontier surveyor, soldier, and inventor, he helped lay out the city of El Paso and later turned a practical military invention into a lasting part of his legacy. His memoir offers a firsthand look at army life, engineering work, and the rough-and-ready American West of the nineteenth century.
1 Audiobook
My Story
by Anson Mills
About the author
Born in Indiana in 1834, Anson Mills built an unusually wide-ranging career as a surveyor, civil engineer, U.S. Army officer, inventor, and entrepreneur. In Texas, he is especially remembered for helping name and lay out El Paso, work that tied him closely to the early development of the city.
Mills served during the Civil War and went on to a long military career on the frontier and beyond. He also became known for inventing a woven cartridge belt, a practical improvement that eventually brought him considerable financial success later in life.
He published My Story in the early twentieth century, sharing memories from a life that stretched from farm boyhood to military service, engineering projects, and public work. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1924, leaving behind a memoir shaped by firsthand experience in some of the major movements of nineteenth-century American life.