Return to the Land

PART I

The Descendants of Charles T. Miller ---------------------------------

In The Beginning

The Miller name is widely spread throughout the world and particularly in America. It is an honorable name since it was adopted by those who earned their living by plying their skills as operators of mills, which processed food, grains for men and their animals. Millers were part of a technology that brought civilization into the industrial age. As the population expanded in Europe the Miller name was frequently taken. In America, in the 1820 census of Virginia, there are listed 87 John Millers alone. So it becomes obvious that tracing our particular Miller ancestry is a daunting task. However, I have attempted to piece some of the early knowledge into general information on the Miller family at-large. Was there an original Miller? There is evidence of multiple family lines and it is improbable that there was a common singular origin. The question then is from which line did Charles T. Miller, our earliest ancestor found in records, originate? The Millers who immigrated to America mostly came from England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany and smaller European countries. In early English records the spelling of Miller varies as follows: Milner, Mellere, Meller, Millar, Millere, and Miller. The name is also known in Germany in such forms as Mulloer, Mueller, Muhler, Moehler, and Muehler. In England the Miller name is recorded as early as 1273 in Oxfordshire and in 1300 there is mention of a George Miller of Warwickshire. 3 Millers were also among the earliest settlers in colonial America. There was a migration of Millers in Europe that eventually led to immigration to America. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648), fought mostly in Germany, left Switzerland unscathed. Many people sought refuge in Switzerland during this conflict between the Catholic and Protestants. By the late seventeenth-century they began moving northward toward the “lowlands” or the Netherlands. Karleen and Tom Miller of Morrisville, Pennsylvania researched the lineage of a Johann Michael Mueller, Jr. of Switzerland. According to their information Johann Michael Mueller, Jr. moved from a small village of Zollikofen, Switzerland, just north of Bern, and became part of the Reform Church. This particular family line moved north most likely because of religious beliefs. Their migration took them along the Rhine River where they settled in the Rhineland-Pfaltz area of Southern Germany. Church records list the respective families of this Miller line. Johann Michael Mueller, Sr. was born in 1655 in Zollikofen,

3 Roots Research Bureau, L.T.D., Genealogy and Historical Sketch: The name and family of Miller, Millar (Roots Research Bureau, L.T.D., 1984), pp. 1,3.

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