The Search for John Miller

or I Wish He Had Been Named Zippy

              I’ve been searching for my great, great, great, great, great grandparents John Miller and Jemimah for a long time.  I’ve been looking so intently; it’s become almost an obsession.  Below I have inserted a page from the old Miller family Bible, which was graciously scanned and shared with me by my Georgia cousins.

 

              For years the name Jemimah was misread as Clemimoh, and that name was included in a booklet for the 1983 family reunion.  I missed that one.  I was enrolled in the police academy at the time.  When my cousins scanned the page to email to me, they wrote that when they blew it up, it looked like Jemimah.  I agreed with them.  The name Jemima (Jemimah is a variant spelling) was popular among the English and Scots in the 18th and 19th centuries, but thanks to the Pearl Milling Co., makers of the former line of Aunt Jemima pancake products, the name’s popularity has cratered since the late 19th century.  It made a brief comeback during the great depression, but by 1973 was almost extinct, according to thebump.com. 

              What is interesting about this entry is the total lack of information on John and Jemimah.  No birth dates.  No date of marriage.  Just two names written in a Bible.  It’s almost as if whoever wrote this didn’t know too much about them. 

              Since I didn’t have a date of birth for John or Jemimah, I made one up.  I knew that Charles Miller was born in 1763 so I made the not unreasonable assumption that John was probably born sometime around 1733, plus or minus five years.  Jemimah may have been younger by two or three years.  I did the usual internet search and found plenty of references to John Miller in colonial America, but nothing pairing him up with Jemimah.  I read the genealogical forums and again came up empty handed.  I was starting to doubt whether these people really existed.  Granted, surviving colonial records are relatively scarce, especially ones that mention ancestors who probably didn’t live in a major (or minor) settlement, but nothing at all?  I tried a different approach. 

              I had come across references to a John Miller, an Indian trader in Augusta, Georgia in the 18th century.  I purchased a copy of Amos Wright’s book, “The McGillivray and McIntosh Traders on the Old Southwest Frontier: 1716-1815,” published in 2007 by New South Books.  Wright found references to this John Miller as being described as a “trader to the Euchee.”  In 1770 he served as an interpreter at a council held in Palachicola.  I found an old map of Georgia with a road running from Augusta southwest into Creek country marked as “Miller’s Path.” 

              In his research Amos Wright found a trader based out of Pensacola named John Miller and seemed unsure if this Miller was the same as the Uchee trader John Miller. Wright did write that the Pensacola John Miller was given some money that was supposed to be turned over to another trader.  Instead, he moved to Bermuda without turning over the money.  I don’t think they were the same man.   I also came to the conclusion that neither of them were related, if there were, in fact, two of them.   The John Miller in Augusta will come up again in a later article. 

              I found a Captain John Miller who was captured by the British in Georgia during the revolutionary war after a skirmish when most of the badly outnumbered colonials fled.  Not related. 

              A granddaughter of John and Jemimah, lived until the 1880 census.  This is important because for the first time the enumerator asked respondents where their parents were born.  Matilda Sanders reported that her parents, Charles Miller and Elizabeth Veazey, were born in North Carolina. John and Jemimah lived in North Carolina.  So I checked North Carolina records available on the internet.  Nothing.  Once again, I hit the internet genealogical forums.  Nada.  My mother suggested that the Millers followed the same pattern of emigration that the Heath/Heeth family did - from Virginia to North Carolina to Georgia.  I checked Virginia.  Zilch.

Entire page from the Bible. Note John Miller born 1801 lower right.

 

              An older brother of mine took a DNA test with Family Tree DNA, and shared his results with me.  I went to his match list and emailed four or five people.  In all the emails I introduced myself, named Miller grandparents I was descended from, and asked the person being emailed if they recognized any of the names.  One of the people I emailed was a John Miller and I emailed him because his name was…John Miller.  He was the only person who responded to my emails. 

              This John Miller who, as I recall, lived in Oklahoma, wrote that he did not recognize any of the names I sent him and then gave me an abbreviated version of his ancestry.   I recognized the names he sent me. 

              Charles Miller and his wife, Elizabeth Veazey lived in Hancock County, Georgia.  The county was formed in 1783 and Charles Miller’s name appears on the very first tax list in 1794.  In my research I frequently encountered another Miller family.  I always wondered if they were related.  Charles Miller had a son named John born in 1801.  This other Miller family also had a John in their midst born in 1805.  The patriarch of this family was James Miller.  He died in 1822 at the age of 99, was twice married, and according to a published obituary that has survived, had 20 children.  His obit mentioned he was born in the northern neck of Virginia.  Now I knew!  This James Miller was probably an uncle to Charles Miller.  Charles’ oldest son, born in 1797, was named James. 

              The next step was to go to Ancestry.com and look up the family tree of James Miller.   There are about a thousand of them with this James Miller in them.  What they all have in common is that most list a John Andrew Miller born in Northampton County, Virginia in 1726 and yes, that is in the northern neck of Virginia.  Most have him dying in Washington County, Tennessee in 1788.  He is not to be confused with a Johannes Mueller who anglicized his name to John Miller and who also breathed his last in Washington County, Tennessee. 

              Tennessee wasn’t admitted into the union as a state until 1796.  Prior to that it was known as the Southwest Territory.  However, prior to the adoption of the U.S. constitution in 1788, during the Articles of Confederation period, this territory would have been considered part of North Carolina.  John Andrew Miller died in North Carolina. 

              Most of the family trees listed John Andrew Miller as having an unknown spouse.  Those that did listed a wife not named Jemimah.  Those that did list children had this big gap between the years 1760 and 1766 where Charles Miller (born 1763) would have slotted in nicely - except that Charles Miller isn’t named in any of them. 

              If the family trees on Ancestry are to be trusted (they’re not), John Andrew Miller was the youngest child of Abraham Miller and Hannah Clapp.  The family tree trail leads back to William Miller who in 1639, at the age of 18, landed in Ipswich, Massachusetts from either Herdfortshire or Kent, England.  That fact alone suggests to me that he was an indentured servant.  He was a tanner by trade.  I’d prefer him to be from Kent because I’d rather be a Jute. 

              I still have no idea who Jemimah was.  My brother with the DNA test used to forward all ancestry inquiries he received to me, and I exchanged emails with a woman in Virginia for a month or two while we tried to figure out how we were related.  She seemed to have the idea that we were related through the Goodwin family of Virginia.  I tried to track it down with no success.  Perhaps Jemimah was a Goodwin.  I don’t know. 

              The “don’t know” list is very long, indeed.  I will probably never know. 

              I’m think of transitioning this from a weekly to a biweekly newsletter.  Future topics may require a little more research than the casual internet searching I do while writing these.  I may produce something next week or I may not.  We shall see.