John J. Miller
John J. Miller was born on May 3, 1842, in Fayette, Missouri, to James Miller and Martha Woodson. His father was a farmer who owned $48,050 of real estate and $6,191 of personal property by 1860. His mother died in the early 1850s. He grew up and attended school in St. Louis, Missouri, before enrolling at the University of Nashville. He graduated in 1860 and returned to St. Louis. He supported the Confederacy during the Civil War, and he was elected captain of the 12th Missouri State Guard Cavalry on April 2, 1861. According to family tradition, “he was severely wounded by the accidental discharge of a musket in the command,” which “caused the loss of one of his legs.”
Miller enrolled in the St. Louis Medical College in January 1862. Union officials arrested him on May 19, 1863, and imprisoned him in Myrtle Street Prison in St. Louis, but they apparently released him the following day. They arrested him again on June 22, 1863, and on July 6, they transferred him to the prison camp on Johnson’s Island, Ohio. He remained there until April 22, 1864, when Union officials transferred him to Point Lookout, Maryland. He received a parole on May 3, 1864.
As one official noted, Miller “was once in the Mo State Guard but the organization to which he belonged has been long disbanded before his capture. He never was in the Confederate service.” Soon after his release, however, he travelled to Richmond, Virginia, and accepted a position as surgeon’s assistant at Camp Winder General Hospital. He remained there until the end of the war.
Miller returned to St. Louis after the war, and he married Mary Elizabeth Burd on December 28, 1865. They had at least three children: Richard, born around 1867; Mary, born around 1870; and Clara, born around 1878. Miller worked as a physician. By 1870, they owned $6,500 of real estate and $700 of personal property, and they employed at least one white domestic servant. He served as the physician for the German Protestants’ Orphan Asylum, and he belonged to the St. Louis Medical Society, the American Medical Association, and the Missouri State Medical Association. He remained in St. Louis for the rest of his life, and he died there on September 17, 1920.
Image: John J. Miller (Irving A. Watson, Physicians and Surgeons of America)
DATABASE CONTENT
| (1549) | Miller, John J. | 1842-05-03 | 1920-09-17 |
- Conflict Side: Confederacy
- Role: Soldier
- Rank in: Captain
- Rank out: Captain
- Rank highest: Captain
- Gender: Male
- Race: White
Documents - Records: 9
- (3213) [writer] ~ John J. Miller to Mary E. Burd, 6 October 1863
- (3214) [writer] ~ John J. Miller to Mary E. Burd, 2 June 1863
- (7115) [writer] ~ John J. Miller to Mary E. Burd, 16 April 1864
- (7116) [writer] ~ John J. Miller to Mary E. Burd, 12 April 1864
- (7117) [writer] ~ John J. Miller to Alfred E. Shelton, 9 April 1864
- (7118) [writer] ~ John J. Miller to Mary E. Burd, 12 February 1864
- (7119) [writer] ~ John J. Miller to Mary E. Burd, 5 December 1863
- (7120) [writer] ~ John J. Miller to Mary E. Burd, 5 June 1863
- (7121) [writer] ~ John J. Miller to Mary E. Burd, 30 June 1861
People - Records: 2
- (1549) Miller, John J. is the [husband of] (1550) Burd, Mary Elizabeth
- (2420) Shelton, Alfred Eugene is the [friend of] (1549) Miller, John J.
Places - Records: 2
Regiments - Records: 1
- (507) [enlisted] [B] ~ 12th Missouri State Guard Cavalry
SOURCES
1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 United States Federal Censuses, available from Ancestry.com; Military Service Record of John J. Miller, available from Fold3.com; Missouri Marriage Records, 1805-2002, available from Ancestry.com; Henry Morton Woodson, Historical Genealogy of the Woodsons and their Connections (Memphis, TN: Self-Published, 1915); Irving A. Watson, Physicians and Surgeons of America: A Collection of Biographical Sketches (Concord, NH: Republican Press Association, 1896)
