Nancy Miller

The most concrete details of Nancy's life come from the 1850 Census in Dekalb, Missouri, when she was living with her daughter Margaret Jane: Her name is Nancy Miller, age 62. She was born in 1788 in Tennessee. She could not read or write. But who was she really? And was she a Cherokee, as some suggest?

Early life in Tennessee, and marrying a Miller

Tennessee itself was fairly rural during Nancy's youth: It wasn't one of the original Thirteen Colonies, and Daniel Boone had only just blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky in 1775. It was also Cherokee country. Perhaps Nancy was too? Perhaps a young man, newly moved to the state from civilized Virginia, fell in love with the wild beauty of both Tennessee and a native woman? That would explain the lack of marriage records.

Over-eager genealogists have tied Nancy to Nancy Mitchell, who married a man named Miller on June 19, 1806, in Rockbridge, Virginia. But Nancy was born in Tennessee, and that was Henry Miller, not Andrew. Nancy most likely married Andrew Miller in 1807 or so in Campbell county.

Andrew and Nancy raised several children in Tennessee: First Elizabeth in 1809, then Rebecca in 1812, and then Isaac N in 1814. But new pastures and a new life beckoned: A new frontier was calling.

Move to Missouri

Andrew and Nancy Miller can be found in Cole county (which was freshy carved from Cooper a decade earlier) in the 1830 Census and Platte county in the 1840 census. Residence in Cooper County is supported by a statement from a family friend, John Franklin Hardcastle, to the Office of Commission on Citizenship from 1888. For what it's worth, Hardcastle's move to Missouri is documented to 1820. It would have been a dangerous journey. Did they go together?

Nancy's husband Andrew Miller died in July of 1847 in Platte, Missouri; in 1850 she can be found living with her daughter Margaret and son in law in Robert Houston George in Dekalb, Missouri -- if not next door to, at least near her son, James Miller. But Margaret and Robert moved to Texas in 1852. Did Nancy die before then? Or join them in Texas?

Cherokee?

Perhaps due to her very common name, Nancy Miller is frequently confused for other Nancy's, most often Nancy Yellow Bird Brown, a Cherokee prophetess and important leader. It's unclear where this confusion came from: Yellow Bird lived half a century earlier -- 1730-1777 -- as did her father, James "Chief Red Feather Maghpiway Lenape" Brown.

But perhaps she was Cherokee, and named Nancy Brown?