The 22 letters written by John Millis to his mother and father are rich with details of cadet life at West Point. He describes artillery drills, fencing lessons, horseback riding, meals, and his class schedule. John Millis is academically ambitious; a recurrent theme in the letters is his struggle to improve his class standing. He also discusses campus activities – a mild hazing incident (30 July 1877); "color-line entertainment" put on by first-class cadets (21 August 1878); an amateur theatrical (9 March 1879); and the graduation ceremony of 1878: "The graduates came down to dinner in citizens clothes, and most of them took leave of the Corps at the Mess Hall. Each one would call out 'attention!' swing his hat or cane, cry 'good bye boys!' 'God bless you!' or something of that kind, and go out of the great door and down the broad stone steps for the last time. And then every man would cheer and yell to the best of his ability….when a man who was well-liked went out, it seemed as though they would tear the roof off….Soldiers are not supposed to be very sentimental, but if you had been at the Mess Hall yesterday, you would have seen many eyes that were far from being dry." (14 June 1878)
In a letter of 21 August 1878, Millis relates the case of James Todd, a popular cadet who committed suicide. "He was without doubt the smartest man in the class, but he has suddenly come to a terrible end. He went to the Hospital just before examination last June, having sore eyes...it was discovered that he had the most horrible and loathsome disease that is known, the Syphilis. He was kept in a small room by himself and no one was allowed to see him. The man who treated him could barely endure the sight and the smell. Fish was the last man of our class who saw him...He said that the man could hardly speak, and was 'just rotten.'" Todd left letters for his family and fellow cadets, and his clothes were found on the banks of the Hudson, but his body was never recovered.
Millis also mentions attending the trial of Fitz-John Porter, a Civil War general whose court-martial for disobeying orders at the Second Battle of Bull Run was overturned in 1879. (11 January 1879)
John Millis was born on December 31, 1858, to Walter and Jane Millis, on a farm in Wheatland Township, Michigan. He was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point from Michigan in 1877. Millis accepted a commission as 2nd Lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers after graduating first in the class of 1881. Early in his career, Millis supervised levee and channel construction on the Mississippi and Red Rivers while stationed in New Orleans, and worked with the Light House Board in Washington, D.C. From 1908 to 1912, he was District Engineer at Cleveland, Ohio, in charge of River and Harbor Works. He then worked as District Engineer at Newport, R.I., Boston, Mass., and the Savannah District. Millis was promoted to Department Engineer, first of the Southeast Department, and then the Central Department in Chicago, Illinois, in 1918. He reached the rank of Colonel before retiring from the Army in 1922.
John Millis married Mary Raoul in 1893, and she traveled with him to his various posts. They had three children, Ralph Millis (1894-1938), historian Walter Millis (1899-1968), and Janet Millis (b. 1903). The couple separated in 1912, and Mary Raoul Millis moved to Atlanta in 1914, where she was an active member of the Socialist Party.
