Our zany national politics moves one to ask if there are politicians in the family tree . . .
Thomas Clinton (T.C.) Mullins
The most recent politician in our family was Thomas Clinton (T.C.) Mullins, who was a life-long Democrat, and was elected Mayor of Boonville, Indiana, serving from 1923-1926. During his years as Mayor, there were 3 scandal-plagued Republican Indiana governors:
- the first resigned,
- the third was indicted for bribing the first, and
- all 3 were caught up in a Ku Klux Klan scandal.
T.C. was approached by the Democrats to run for Governor but declined to enter the fray. He was probably dissuaded from continuing in politics by his young family, and by the grotesque nature of statewide politics in Indiana at the time.
William Madison Mullins And Thomas Jefferson Mullins
William Madison Mullins served as a Washington County, Arkansas, judge in the 1880s, as did his father, Thomas Jefferson Mullins. There is very little information about these tenures.
Judge David Walker
Judge David Walker of Fayetteville, Arkansas, was a doubly related family cousin of the Mullins family. In the winter of 1861, the 6 southern-most states seceded from the Union. Judge Walker was elected President of the Arkansas Secession Convention in March 1861 and led the Convention to reject the secession of Arkansas from the Union. However, one month later, Union forces fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and sentiment across the South quickly became polarized. Judge Walker reconvened the Convention in May and convinced several delegates to join him in changing their votes: the Convention approved secession and Arkansas joined the Confederacy.
Judge Walker’s oldest son, our cousin Captain Jacob Wythe Walker (CSA), suffered mortal wounds at the Battle of Jenkins Ferry in 1864. The wounded youth was taken from the battlefield to an isolated farmhouse in central Arkansas where the Judge spent weeks trying to nurse the boy to recovery, in vain. Several poignant letters from the Judge to family members— written from the farmhouse—survive.
One wonders how the Judge looked back on his influential role in bringing Arkansas into the war that took his son’s life.
Walker was elected Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1866 and continued intermittently on the Court until his ignominious death in 1879 when he fell fatally from his buggy at the Washington County Fair.
Dr. Martin Luther Hawkins
On a more prosaic scale, Dr. Martin Luther Hawkins was elected Coroner of Carroll County, Arkansas, in 1838. His commission certificate from Arkansas Governor Conway is shown here.
He also briefly served as the President of Carroll County before his death of pneumonia in 1840.
Our Jamestown Ancestors In The Virginia House Of Burgesses
One last group of politicians in our family comprise several of our early Jamestown ancestors. In 17th and 18th century Virginia, political posts were almost universally filled with wealthy landowners, —a practice that only changed gradually after the American Revolution. Thus, our Chiles, Curle, Wilson, and Venable family ancestors served in a number of public offices, most prominently in the Virginia House of Burgesses.
Founded in 1619 by the Virginia Company, the House of Burgesses was the first elected representative assembly in the English colonies. The first Mullins ancestor elected as a Burgess was Walter Chiles I, who served between 1642 and 1653. Chiles was an important public figure, and even served on the Governor’s Royal Council in 1651. However, by 1653 he fell into disfavor with the new Cromwell—appointed Governor Richard Bennett—because of Chiles’ illegal trading with the Netherlands. Chiles was elected Speaker of the House of Burgesses in 1653, but stepped down from that position after just one day, at the insistence of Governor Bennett.
Walter’s son, Walter Chiles II, also served as a Burgess in the 1650s and 1660s.
Another early Jamestown settler, Pasco Curle, served as a Burgess in the 1690s, and at one time also held the position of High Sheriff of Elizabeth County, Virginia.
Pasco’s son, Nicholas Curle, was a Burgess from 1710-1712, and held several other public positions Naval Officer of the Lower District of the James River (a post he took over from our Jamestown ancestor Col. William Wilson).
© 2013 W. Mullins