Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry continues her series on the genealogy of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, focusing on the Bearse, Pells and Mills family lines. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.

Today I continue my “Mayflower Descendants & the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe” series, featuring Mayflower descendants who married into Mashpee Wampanoag families.

To recap: My series on the Mayflower lines of Katie Crocker of Barnstable, Massachusetts, has featured a rare account book connected to the business of Zenas Crocker (1761-1807) and his descendants.

The Crocker account book includes residents of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, and the Cahoon Museum in Cotuit, Massachusetts, granted me permission to share the account book’s pages and do further research. (For previous stories see the links listed at the end of this article.)

My last story, Part VIII, covered Civil War soldier Nathaniel D.S. Bearse, a direct descendant of Mayflower passengers Stephen Hopkins, Thomas Rogers, John Howland, and Elizabeth Tilley.

He married Olive Gould Pells, a member of the Wampanoag people. She was the daughter of Jacob Asher and Mary Rose (DeGrasse) Pells and left descendants, including a daughter Christine Nelson Bearse – who married Irving Westley Coombs Oakley, son of George Thomas and Betsy Jones (Attaquin) Ockry/Oakley. His obituary can be found in Part VIII.

Nathaniel Bearse, his wife, and daughter Christine Nelson (Bearse) Oakley, are identified in this lineage chart compiled by Christopher C. Child, author and genealogist for the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) from his post, “Civil War Soldiers of Mashpee.”

Descendants of Irving Westley Coombs and Christine Nelson (Bearse) Oakley

Emma Genevieve Oakley (1893-1972), one of the daughters born to Irving and Christine, married Ferdinand Wilson Mills (1891-1973), son of James S. and Delscena Jeannette (Anderson) Mills.

Below is a photo of Emma and Ferdinand.

Here is a photo of Ferdinand’s parents James and Delscena.

Here is a copy of Emma’s obituary, courtesy of the Barnstable Library Archives. She died on 26 March 1972.

This article reads:

MASHPEE – Mrs. Emma O. Mills, 78, of Main Street, the matriarch of one of the few remaining Indian families here and a prominent participant in the town’s civil and social affairs, died at home yesterday.

Born in Carver, Mrs. Mills, who served as the Mashpee town collector and treasurer for 32 years, lived most of her life here.

After attending Amherst College, she taught school in Mashpee. She was a former chairman of the Mashpee Republican Town Committee and a member of the Women’s Republican Club of the Upper Cape, the Mashpee Taxpayers Assn., and the Mashpee Council on Aging.

A member of the Descendants of Wampanoag, she was a member of the Federal Eastern Indian League, treasurer of the Mashpee Indian Council, and an organist at the Old Indian Church.

Mrs. Mills was a Gold Star Mother, a member of the American Legion Auxiliary, and treasurer of the Old Indian Meeting House Authority.

She worked for many years with the Barnstable County Health and Heart Assn. and was a member of the Mashpee Baptist Church and the Thursday Nighters.

Surviving are: her husband Ferdinand; two daughters, Mrs. Delscena Hendricks and Mrs. Adeline Hick; and three sons, Earl, Elwood, and Carl, all of Mashpee.

Services will be held at 1 p.m. Wednesday in the Doane and Beale Funeral Home, Hyannis. Burial will be in Indian Cemetery, Mashpee.

I found a newspaper clip in the Boston Herald on Emma’s son Elwood.

This article reports:

HYANNIS – Over in Barnstable Superior Court where “Tony” Costa is being tried for a double murder, he is being guarded by perhaps the most powerful man in Sheriff Donald P. Tulloch’s employ. The pleasant-faced guy with the massive shoulders who goes everywhere that Costa goes is a full-blooded Wampanoag Indian by the name of Elwood O. Mills. [Obviously the Bearse line was not taken into account here.] Back in his high school days Elwood was such an accomplished athlete that he was known as the “Jim Thorpe of Cape Cod.” [Below is a photo of Elwood with other students at Lawrence High School in Falmouth, Massachusetts, in 1939.]

When he is not out doing the bidding of Sheriff Tulloch, the big Indian is home minding his store, which not surprisingly is a trading post – the Ockry Trading Post on Route 130 in the heart of Mashpee. [The store sits at the intersection of Main Street and Great Neck Road North at Mashpee Center.]

The place is about as general a store as you will find on Cape Cod. Elwood and his wife Josephine sell everything from kerosene to cold beer and all the odds and ends in between. Elwood’s town has quite a history and his family has been a big part of it. His mother, Mrs. Emma Mills, was appointed tax collector in 1930 and served until 1968. His father, the late Ferdinand Mills, served the town variously as town clerk, treasurer, and selectman and Elwood himself served as selectman. In tribal affairs, his brother Earl, a coach at Lawrence High in Falmouth, is chief of the Wampanoags.

Below is a photo of Deputy Sheriff Elwood Mills, walking a manacled Tony Costa from jail to the Barnstable County Superior Court.

This photo caption reads:

Antone [Tony] C. Costa, 25, of Provincetown, gazes about as he walks from jail to the Barnstable County Superior Court session yesterday where he is being tried for the deaths of two Providence, R.I., women in January of 1969. Costa, right, is manacled to Deputy Sheriff Elwood Mills, left.

To be continued…

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Note on the header image: Ousamequin, or “Massasoit” (Wampanoag term for “Great Sachem”) and Governor John Carver smoking a ceremonial pipe at Plymouth Colony in 1621. Credit: Sutro Library; Wikimedia Commons.

Related Articles:

• Mayflower Descendants: Who’s Who, Part 35 (part 9)
• Mayflower Descendants: Who’s Who, Part 35 (part 10)
• Mayflower Descendants: Who’s Who, Part 35 (part 11)
• Mayflower Descendants: Who’s Who, Part 35 (part 12)
• Mayflower Descendants & the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (part 1)
• Mayflower Descendants & the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (part 2)
• Mayflower Descendants & the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (part 3)
• Mayflower Descendants & the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (part 4)
• Mayflower Descendants & the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (part 5)
• Mayflower Descendants & the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (part 6)
• Mayflower Descendants & the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (part 7)
• Mayflower Descendants & the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (part 8)
• Richard Bourne: Missionary to Plymouth Colony Indians
• Thomas Tupper: Missionary to Plymouth Colony Indians
• “Mayflower Descendant: A Journal of Pilgrim Genealogy & History,” Volume 68, No. 1, Winter 2020