I
last mentioned the Miller family in a blog post on 18 August 2015 when my 2nd
great-grandparents, John Conrad Miller and Hannah Tunstall Mayfield were
married and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. John and Hannah met in Indiana. I have a
marriage license dated 5 May 1838 from Tippecanoe County. I assume the actual
marriage occurred shortly after that date but no record of the event has yet
been found.
The
family lived for a while in Jefferson County, Indiana, probably near her father
and siblings. Their first child, daughter Matilda Ann was born there in 1839.
They then relocated to Cincinnati where their three sons were born: Thomas Benton
in 1841, Isaac Mayfield, my great-grandfather, in 1843 and John Conrad Jr. in
1846. I believe that John Conrad Sr. died in 1846 but no death record or
grave-site has been found to confirm the date and place of the event. He would
only have been about 31 at the time.
John
was born in Germany about 1815. We do not know when he immigrated to the
US. He apparently was a tradesman.
Information from different sources, if they are correct and for the right
individual, indicate he was a blacksmith (Cincinnati City Directory for
1839-40), involved in “manufacture and trade” (1840 US census) and saddler
(Cincinnati Directory for 1843).
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| Migration routes of the Miller families |
After
John’s death, Hannah remarried to a man named Daniel Boone Watson, in 1854. They had two children together, in 1855 and 1857. The photo on this blog is of Hannah
and all of her children, taken about 1886. Most of the Watson family packed up
to go west in 1866 ultimately landing in Kansas. By then, Hannah’s three oldest
children were married. Isaac’s oldest child was born in 1867, in Illinois,
possibly along the route they travelled to Kansas.
By
1870 all of the Millers & Watsons were in Kansas. My grandfather, Edwin
Miller was born in Manhattan, KS that year. They farmed in Riley County for
over 15 years. In 1893 Edwin applied for a homestead in 1893 near Yukon,
Oklahoma with the support of his father. I wrote about this homestead in a blog
post on 1 April 2014.
In
1895 Ed and Mattie McDaniel met, fell in love and got married. Mattie had
arrived in the Yukon area only shortly before with her sister, Rebecca, and her
family, as I indicated in my last post here. Their courtship was a short one. According to ‘Becca, “Ed was a
prosperous, young farmer with a fast team, and shiny, red-wheeled buggy, the
catch of the county!" Through family correspondence, we even know what the
bride wore: “…wedding dress was of tan challis, with mutton-leg
sleeves, a snug-fitting double breasted bodice with four large cove red buttons,
and a floor-length skirt.
The
farm was to remain his but over the next decade Isaac apparently reneged and
took back the lands, eventually giving them to his youngest daughter, Mabel.
That caused some bitterness in the family and probably was the main reason why
Ed packed up his young family in 1903 and went back to Kansas.
In
1914 the Miller family moved to Corvallis, Oregon. In a letter written to a
cousin by my aunt, she described the trip as by train. There was a week’s
stopover in Denver, Colorado, as one of my uncles fell sick with mumps.
My
mother was born in Corvallis, OR in 1917 and spent much of her early childhood
there. But the wanderlust and availability of almost free land in Alberta got
to my grandfather and, in 1928, they made their way north, settling near a
little town called Irricana (short for irrigation canal). There Edwin farmed
until his 80s. He died of a stroke in 1953. My grandmother lasted only a few
years and died in 1956.
Over
three generations the Miller families had migrated almost 4,500 miles, from
Ohio to Kansas to Oklahoma to Oregon and finally to Alberta, Canada.
Wayne
Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in
England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has
published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past
Editor of Chinook, the quarterly
journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides
genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated
