HISTORY CORNER

MILLS DARDEN

BY RIDLEY WILLS II

Mills Darden is alleged to have been one of the largest men in history. Darden was born near Rich Square, North Carolina, on Oct. 7, 1799.

He was reported to have stood about 7’6” and was said to have weighed between 1,000 and 1,100 pounds. He settled in Henderson County, Tenn., about 1830 where he was an innkeeper and farmer. His second wife, Mary, who died in 1837 at age 40, stood 4’11” and weighed 98 pounds. The tallest of his seven children reached a height of 5’11”.

Despite his gargantuan size, Darden was fairly active. He was known to be able to toss 500-pound bales of hay and carry 12 seed sacks weighing 1,200 pounds for over a mile. Some men in Henderson County once measured his

weight by marking the exact point his one-horse cart, which had springs, lowered to when he sat in it. Later, when Mills was not there, they placed large rocks on the cart to see just how much weight it would take to match Mills sitting on it. They concluded that he weighed over 1,000 pounds.

Mills died in 1857 at the age of 56. Physicians reported that he died of strangulation due to fat around his windpipe. Some accounts say that it took 17 men to put Darden in his coffin and that an entire wall had to be removed to get the coffin out. He was buried near his home on Mills Darden Cemetery Road five miles southwest of Lexington, Tenn.