Monday, April 30, 2012

James Miller

General James Miller (1776 - 1851), a native of New Hampshire, was a Commandant at Fort Harrison, in October and November of  1811.  He was known as the Hero of Lundy's Lane.  He was also a prisoner of war (exchanged in 1813) for Lord Dacres.

In 1819 he was appointed as the first governor of the Arkansas Territory (his bio there indicated that he received a commission as a major in the Fourth United States Infantry in 1808. In command of the Twenty-first United States Infantry by the time of the War of 1812, Miller distinguished himself at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane, where he was known to have said “I will try sir!”...).

Mr. Miller's portrait was found in Makers of Arkansas History...

"But it is with Nathaniel Hawthorne and General James Miller the hero of Lundy's Lane that the present Custom House is chiefly associated. General Miller was Collector of the Port from 1835 to 1849 and in 1846 Hawthorne was appointed Surveyor of Customs by the new Democratic administration.... ." [Source]

On a genealogical note:

Genealogy of the Descendants of John White of Wenham and Lancaster ..., Volume 3, mentioned General James Miller's mother:

...Martha R. Wilder occupies the home farm, and has in her possession a teakettle which her great grandmother brought on horseback from Boston, Mass.; she [the great grandmother] was the mother of Gen. James Miller, who was the hero of Lundy's Lane in the War of 1812....

James Miller was born in Peterborough, New Hampshire, on April 25, 1776, to James Miller and Catharine Gregg Miller. He married Martha Ferguson, with whom he had one son, James Ferguson Miller, a noted naval officer. After Martha’s death, he married Ruth Flint.

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