Ancestor of the Month – Nov 2007

Mizell Family History Project

Ancestors to Remember!

There are many (deceased) Mizells in the family tree that are worthy of recognition.  Let’s make this the place to do it.  Every month we will select someone in generations 5 through 10 to profile here.  Hopefully we’ll get most of the facts straight, but if you have corrections or updates, send us an e-mail. 

If you have enough information about an ancestor and want to nominate them for an upcoming month, send us an e-mail! 

Generation 7

Children:

Benjamin Robert Mizell (b. 12/1/1855, d. before 1870)

Mary Susan Mizell (b. 1/25/1857, d. Unk)

Joseph Henry Mizell (b. 8/25/1858, d. Unk)

John Elza Mizell (b. 7/10/1860, d. 10/17/1930)

Martha Janet Mizell (b. 6/2/1862, d. Unk)

Elizabeth Paradine Mizell (b. 5/26/1864, d. Unk)

William Riley Mizell (b. 10/5/1866, d. Unk)

Claudine Tery Mizell (b. 8/26/1868, d. Unk)

Samuel Smithwick Mizell (b. 11/16/1871, d. 8/16/1932)

Laura Bell Mizell (b. 3/28/1878, d. Unk)

Born in Smith County, Tennessee

John Richard Mizell (the second) is the grandson of Cader Mizell (see Generation 5, Person #41, b. 1763) and the son of John Richard Mizell (the first), (Person #105, b. 1793).  He was born in Smith County, Tennessee in 1834, as the last son and sixth child of John Richard and his first wife Prividen Pruden.  [He was the half brother to William Riley Mizell featured last month.]

His mother Prividen died when he was a baby or a young child.  His father John Richard remarried soon thereafter to Elizabeth Miller, who raised him.  Perhaps John Richard moved with his father and step-mother to Kentucky when he was a teenager (1845 to 1850).

Lived in Barren County Kentucky

He learned carpentry, and was a cabinet-maker.  In 1855, at the age of 20, he married Sarah Carline Peden at the home of her father in Barren County Kentucky (near Glasgow).  They settled on lands belonging to her family in Sanders Precinct, Barren County, Kentucky and farmed there.  They had ten children born between 1855 and 1878.  John and Sarah and their children are recorded in the 1860, 1870 and 1880 federal census living in Sanders Precinct.

During the Civil War, he reportedly did not want to fight on either side and avoided service by hiding out in the “No-Mans Land” of backwoods Kentucky.  Sarah died in 1886, which prompted John to move from Barren County to Salem, Livingston County, Kentucky. This is where his father had lived in the 1850s and died in 1864.  John Richard come down with typhoid fever and died there in June 1894.