Mitt Adkins
Mitt Adkins is a Scott Countian mentioned in Esther Sharp Sanderson’s County Scott and Its Mountain Folk as a member of the James-Younger Gang who rode with outlaws Jesse James and Frank James under the alias Clell Miller and was killed during a daring daylight bank robbery attempt. However, there is considerable doubt that Clell Miller was actually Mitt Adkins.
The Backstory
Jesse James’ stay in Huntsville around 1867 was discussed at length by both of Scott County’s well-known 20th century historians, Sanderson and H. Clay Smith in his Dusty Bits of the Forgotten Past. It has also been mentioned by other writers. As the story goes, James rode into Huntsville under an assumed name (Dave Moore), lodged at a Huntsville hotel owned by William “Uncle Billy” Sharp, and opened a grocery store. This particular time period was after James became wanted for crimes committed in Missouri, but before he was a nationally-renowned outlaw. During his time in Scott County, as the stories go, James stabled his horses at the farm of George Marcum on Smith Creek, near Buffalo.
Read: Raiding the Marcum graves in search of Jesse James’ money
Sanderson’s account included the story of Mitt Adkins. She wrote that he was a Buffalo man who was frequently seen with Dave Moore. After newspaper reports later emerged that a Clell Miller had been killed during a daring bank robbery by the James-Younger Gang in Missouri, Scott Countians came to assume that Clell Miller was actually Mitt Adkins.
Who was Mitt Adkins?
It’s impossible to say with certainty, based on available records, who Mitt Adkins was. However, the likeliest possibility is a man named Milton Adkins, who was born and raised in eastern Scott County.
Born in 1841, Milton Adkins was the son of Henry and Elizabeth Adkins. His father was born about 1817, and may have been a brother to John Stanton Adkins of Jellico Creek. John S. Adkins was a prominent resident of eastern Scott County during the mid 19th century. Milton Adkins appeared in the 1850 census as 9-year-old “Melton Adkins,” the only child living in the home of Henry and Elizabeth Adkins. He appeared in the 1860 census as 19-year-old “Millon Actkins,” still living in his parents’ home. Also living in the home in 1860 was an 18-year-old Nancy Adkins, who may very well have been his wife.
Henry and Elizabeth Adkins had moved from Scott County to Campbell County by the time the 1860 census was taken. They were also found there in the 1870 and 1880 censuses, then died between 1880 and 1900. (Elizabeth Adkins filed a widow’s Civil War pension claim in 1893.) But Milton Adkins disappeared from the public record after 1860. Given that suspicions were aroused in Scott County that Adkins was actually Clell Miller after Miller was killed, Milton Adkins’ disappearance from the public record after 1860 lends credence to the idea that this Milton Adkins, son of Henry and Elizabeth Adkins, was the Mitt Adkins referenced by Sanderson.
Who was Clell Miller?
The possibility that Mitt Adkins was actually Clell Miller appears to be very slim, according to available public records.
Clell Miller was born in December 1849 or January 1850, the son of Moses S. Miller and Martha Ann Willhite of Kearney, Mo., according to available census data. His real name was Cleland Miller or Clenand Miller. He appeared in the 1850 census as Clenand Miller, age 0, and in the 1860 census as Cleeland Miller, age 10. He was listed in the 1870 census as 21-year-old Cleander Miller.
At the age of 14, according to written historical accounts, Clell Miller joined Bloody Bill Anderson’s band of guerrillas, which sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. He was captured during the skirmish in which Anderson was killed on October 26, 1864. He might have been executed if not for his youth. Instead, he was sent to the Gratiot Street Prison in St. Louis, Mo. His father later obtained his release in April 1865 by testifying that his family had always been Union supporters.
The first time Clell Miller is known to have appeared with the James-Younger Gang was on June 3, 1871, when the Ocobock Brothers’ bank was robbed in Corydon, Ia. Miller was subsequently captured by an agent from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. However, a long list of witnesses testified on his behalf when he went to trial, and he was acquitted. He denied being in the gang at the time, but said later that he “might as well join them because his reputation had been ruined by the trial.”
Miller was involved in a number of other robberies committed by the James-Younger Gang in the early 1870s. He was shot and killed by townspeople in Northfield, Minn. during a robbery attempt at First National Bank of Northfield on September 7, 1876. Fellow outlaw Bill Chadwell was also killed. Frank James, Cole Younger, Jim Younger and Bob Younger were all wounded. So was Charlie Pitts, who later died.
Miller was initially buried in Northfield. His father later claimed the body and moved it to Muddy Fork Cemetery in Kearney, Mo. One night after he was buried the second time, his body — along with Chadwell’s — was exhumed and placed into a wooden barrel labeled “paint.” It was shipped to a medical school in Ann Arbor, Mich., where a medical student used the body as a cadaver and displayed the skeleton in his office.
Clell Miller had a younger brother, Ed Miller, who also served in the James-Younger Gang and was murdered by Jesse James in 1881. He was portrayed by Dennis Quaid in the movie The Long Riders.
The Adkins-Miller link
Mitt Adkins may well have been familiar with Jesse James; after all, there must have been some reason that James chose Scott County as his hideout in 1867. And he may well have ridden with the James-Younger Gang. However, there is no compelling evidence to suggest that Mitt Adkins was actually the outlaw Clell Miller, who was killed in the Minnesota bank robbery attempt in 1876.
Nevertheless, there’s no denying that Adkins disappeared from Scott County at around the same time that Jesse James left the community in the late 1860s, and he never resurfaced in the public record — here or elsewhere — after that time.
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