Mildred spent her early years at the home of her Venable grandparents, "Longwood", the Maria Nash, Sally Kollock Nash & Sarah Kollock Boarding and Day School in Hillsboro, N.C., and various military postings with her father. According to a letter written by her daughter Elise she met her husband while she was visiting her uncle Prof. Charles S. Venable at the U. of VA. She married April 10, 1867. Her observation of the struggles that her parents endured pre and during the American War Between the States prepared her well for the pioneer role she was to play with her husband and nine children in Anderson and subsequently Houston, Texas. Her husband purchased a home for her in Anderson on the SE Corner of Houston & Spring (Lot 2, Block 11) on 2/29/1868 and later purchased 150 acres in her name on 6/2/1868. In 1874 she and the family moved to Houston on Travis Street. As the family grew, the construction of a large victorian style house was being planned for her by her husband, but she did not live to enjoy it nor the beautiful mountain home that was built to replace their original summer home on Walden Ridge, Signal Mountain in Tennessee.

She was a cultured woman, well educated for her time, and the following was said of her by her brother Allen Carrington in his 3/25/1883 memorial letter to his niece: "Your mother, Elise, had many, very many, as fine qualities of heart & head as a woman ever had. She was blessed with a rare amiability and sweetness of temper. Impulsiveness and occasional petulance, she inherited; but no ill temper, even under severe trials, lasted long, or became permanent. She possessed a great deal of fortitude, more than you knew or know, and her devotion to what she deemed her duty was, constant and unswerving." She died within a day of the birth of her last child. (Bio by Jim Hutcheson)