William Miller

GEDCOM Note

per Pam Knight 3-13-03

He served a while in the Revolutionary War. He was at the battle of White Plains.

He married Elizabeth North in 1777. Early in June 1778 he placed his wife and infant daughter Ruth [then only 2 weeks old] in Lackawanna Fort [Pittston] where were also her mother and stepfather UTTER, and her sister, Mrs. Sarah LEWIS and her 3 children.

On Sunday before the battle Mrs. UTTER died of dropsy and was buried outside the fort. On Friday, July 3, 1778, the great battle was fought . . . The morning after the battle the fort was surrendered . . The Indians were plundering the fort, when, an Indian taking down a saddle near Mrs. MILLER hit the infant Ruth on the head with a stirrup and cut a deep gash, the scar of which she carried until death . . . They [apparently the MILLERS] took the "upper road" through the "Big Swamp" the Capon's Meadows [Providence], and Cobbs Gap to Coshtook [?] on the Delaware. There they washed off the paint with which the Indians had painted their faces to insure their safety before leaving the fort, crossed and went to Orange County, NY, where they remained until about 1784, when the war being over, they returned to Wyoming. But they were yet to suffer much from the hand of Yankee and Pennymite.

Elizabeth, wife of William Miller, was born January 1, 1760, and died at Mr. Pleasant, Wayne County, Penn. in June 1845. John North, father of Elizabeth MILLER, married Esther Davous [or David], served in the old French and Indian War, and died at Otsego of the camp fever in the summer of 1759, five months before Elizabeth's birth. Esther, the widow of John NORTH, married for her second husband, Abraham UTTER, and with him and his children moved from Orange County to Wyoming about 1776, DAVOUS [or David], the father of Esther, was a Frenchman; he married Mary MANN in Bridgewater, MA; going to Boston one time for remittances he was there taken ill and died. Mary, the wife of DAVOUS [or David], died in Orange County about 1790 at the advanced age of 107 years. William and Elizabeth MILLER had many children younger than Rugtimock.