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Jacob Miller and His Descendants

         The Miller Cemetery, Claysville, PA

On a winding narrow road on a densely forrested hillside leading to Dutch Fork Lake lies a small well kept cemetery surrounded by a wrought iron fence. (This cemetery may have been restored by
Mrs. Elizabeth Hack, a Miller historian in the mid 1960's.). Modern headstones and a granite historical monument stand among the ancient
gravemarkers.   Here rest members of the Miller family and their pioneer neighbors.



Miller Cemetery, near Clayesville, PA

Here in a single grave, rest Jacob Miller and John Hupp who were slain by Indians
on Easter morning March 31, 1782 during a raid on the Miller blockhouse.

Mrs. Hack*  writes: "Miller's frontier fort was described as one of the strongest and most exposed on the western frontier, built by Jacob Miller, Sr. about 1774 on Miller's Run, a small tributary of the Dutch Fork of the Buffalo, in what was then Westmoreland County, Maryland."

Again, from Hack taken from
L.R.Smith "Rice Colony":
"Jacob Miller was born of German
descent in Switzerland His ancestry
may have been Bavarian, but his
ancestral emigration to Switzerland
was probably caused by
religious differences.




Jacob Miller was known to have suupported the United Brethren Church. Martin Boehm,  
its great bishop, was a Swiss. Bavaria was Catholic at the time, almost one hundred percent in the 18th century. The establishment of a new Protestant religion would not have been tolerated. In free Switzerland it would meet little if any opposition. Other Swiss settled in the same region where Jacob Miller built his blockhouse. The first U.B. church in the region stands in this area. Millers for generations are buried in its cemetery. Further evidence that he was a Swiss is borne out by testimony of his immediate descendants who arrived in Indiana early in the last century. These children of Jacob Miller stated that the German which they themselves could speak was not always understood by the Palatinate Germans who settled on the Ohio River. There were Italian and French elements in their colloquial speech which
would account for the variation. At the time Jacob's name first appears in the history of
the western frontier of Pennsylvania there had been in the previous years a great emigration
of Swiss, Scoth-Irish and Germans through Hagerstown to the great Monongahela Valley. There names are still stamped on the region."
---- from "The History of the Jacob Miller Family of Donegal Township
Washington County Pennsylvania" by Elizabeth Jane Miller Hack. ca 1960's



A tall modern monument seen at the back of the cemetery, dedicated to all those who rest within the wrought iron fence.
Engraved at the top:
"WHOSO IS HEROIC WILL ALWAYS FIND CRISES TO TRY HIS EDGE"

Beneath:
"Here lie in the peace of God, members of the family of Jacob Miller
and his wife, Mary Miller, the original proprietors of this land. C. 1774, their
fellow patriots and in unmarked graves other resolute pioneers who
established, defended and preserved the western frontiers of Pennsylvania.
                                               1776    1783
                       FROM  THESE  OUR  STRENGTH"

DUTCH FORK Lake covers most of what was once Miller Land
   near Claysville, PA. Continue on down the steep winding road
from the cemetery to this quiet spot which gives no hint of the
terrors of that long ago Easter Sunday.


Jacob Miller Descendants
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Jeanne Cook Walsh   
Modified Jul 2015


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