My Genealogy Hound

William H. Mitchell, farmer and stock-raiser, of Rock Prairie Township, was born in Grainger County, Tenn., in 1836. His father, Preston Mitchell, was probably born in New York in 1808, but came with his parents when quite young, to Grainger County, Tenn., where he was reared and married, and in 1855 came to Dade County, where he died in 1875; he was a farmer and deputy sheriff in Tennessee, and justice of the peace in Dade County some years. His mother, daughter of Edward Churchman, was born in Grainger County, Tenn., in 1812, and died in Tennessee in 1878, where she went in 1876. His grandfather, Greenberry Mitchell, was English, and his grandmother German; both came when young to the United States, afterward working to pay their passage, and were among the first settlers of Grainger County, where Mr. Mitchell died a year or two before the war, at the age of seventy-three. He was a soldier in the War of 1812, was justice of the peace many years, and among the wealthiest men in the county at his death. The subject of this sketch, the third of a family of six, was educated at the common log school-houses, and, coming with his parents to Dade County, in 1856 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Archie and Mary Poindexter, natives of Kentucky, who came to Dade County about 1845, where they died. They have ten children, three sons and five daughters living. Since marriage he has lived on his present farm of 265 acres, it then having five acres cleared, whereas now there are 150 under cultivation. He served about two and a half years in the Union Army; was in Company E, Seventy-sixth Enrolled Missouri Militia about six months, in the Provisional service some six months, then twenty months in the United States service, Company E, Fifteenth United States Cavalry, in Southwest Missouri, and, having been captured in Jasper County, after one day and night was exchanged. He is a Republican in politics, and religiously a Presbyterian; his wife being a Cumberland Presbyterian.