JOURNAL OF MILDRED ELIZABETH POWELL

By Mary Stella Hereford Ball

Families and friends were divided here as elsewhere in the states by this decision. One small Missouri town especially, Palmyra-afterwards to be- made famous by the inhuman massacre of ten innocent men-was eagerly discussing war news. Even children fought their sham battles in the streets, young girls and youths held their enthusiastic, though friendly debates, at evening gatherings, little drearning that soon their own lives, too, would become involved in the great tragedy of the states. Among the belles of the town was Mildreth Elizabeth Powell. Young, exceptionally beautiful, cultivated, of high parentage and distinguished ancestry, she easily swayed her young friends by reason of her eloquent enthusiasm, her expressive brown eyes and her ready ton-tic, which knew well how to employ the heated rhetoric which was so customary in those days. Her nineteen years had been spent in -Missouri with those who had reared her with extreme tenderness and affection, and her heart glowed with the loving sympathy and loyalty to those who had shared her youthful friendship. Among these was a young girl, Margaret Creath, daughter of Elder Jacob Creath, the great expounder of the tenets of the Christian Church, then in its infancy. It was while visiting at her home that she urged her young friends "to go south," as the expression was then used, and join the Confederate forces, and not to listen to the persuasions of the Union men or their newspapers. Her character was of so positive a nature and her influence was so great that she became feared by General McNeil, then commanding the Union forces at Palmyra, and without warning she was arrested and made a prisoner of war. The great lawn at Prairie Home, the name of Elder Creath's home, was one day surrounded by soldiers in numbers., commanded by Colonel Smart, who requested to see her. She fearlessly complied, but her spirited answer whetted the anger of her captors, and in a few hours she was imprisoned, to remain until months later she was banished to Nevada, then a far-away territory, where communications with her friends could but rarely be received. Extracts from her journal at that period of her life Will give a better idea of the oppression and cruelty that she underwent in her desire to aid Missouri in her struggle for liberty than anything I can say: