George Miller
Lexington. George Miller, Esq., of Lexington, attained the age of 79 years, Feb. 11 and he is yet very alert and views life with the happy thought and zest of youth. There are many noteworthy episodes in his life. He was born Feb. 11, 1819, on the island of Thanet, a picturesque little spot whose shores the English Channel lave. In 1829 his parents bade adieu to this beautiful sea girt home and after a tempestuous voyage of six weeks landed at New York. The family were enroute to Mansfield and at Buffalo boarded the steamer Buckeye and while gliding tranquilly along a section of the steamer's boiler exploded, killing one man and injuring another. The steamer was repaired at Erie and finally reached Sandusky, where the family disembarked. They rode to Mansfield in a quaint five horse wagon. The driver being Simon Pearce, a famous Jehu then. They lived three months in Mansfield and the first work Mr. Miller's father did there was for Henry Leyman on the Ben Johns house. The first time George Miller attended Sunday school there he was accompanied by Charles Hedges. George was inspired with much fear one day when in the little log temple of justice by seeing Constable Billy Wilson, a noted athlete, incarcerate a prisoner in the loft which was used as a bastile. In January, 1830, his parents located three miles north of Lexington on an 80 acre tract which was covered densely with the massive progeny of the forest and he has a vivid recollection of the last bear that was killed in that region. William Hartupee, a noted nimrod, got on the trail of a huge bear and after a hot pursuit through the tangled forest and dark morasses the alert animal scaled a tree and growled defiance from its lofty retreat. But the hunter killed the bear. Sixty years ago, George Miller rode horseback to Lawrence County, in southern Illinois. He was there six months and there met Levi Zimmerman, Esq. of Mansfield. But the aspect of that modern Egypt was so somber that they decided not to remain. Justin Carpenter, uncle of George F. Carpenter, also when there, but he viewed the barren waste and did not unload his goods and returned and located near Lexington. George Miller did not find felling the progeny of the forest on his father's farm congenial to him and late in the 40's he engaged in the shipping business in Mansfield and next in Lexington, where he has lived 45 years. He has a vivid recollection of the noted campaign of 1840, when the land was lit, as it were, by the brilliancy of Tom Corwin's marvelous eloquence. He heard Corwin address a mighty throng of Gen. W.H. Harrison's partisans in Columbus and he voted for the valiant hero of Tippecanoe in Lexington. Mr. Miller was in London, Eng., over 40 years ago and there he conversed with the famous adventurer Lola Montez, the brilliance of whose beauty dazzled and entranced the world.
From The Mansfield Semi-Weekly News, February 15, 1898, Vol. 14, No. 13