The Palatine German Origins of the Miller Family

The discovery that the Miller family was a Palatine German family was quite a surprise. For generations the Miller descendants thought that our ancestry was English. My Uncle Allen always kidded us that we were part Indigenous. I assumed that since Andrew Miller was a prominent Loyalist that he was English. He was not English. He was one of the many Loyalists who were Palatine German. From marriage and baptism records it is clear that Andrew’s parents, Peter and Margaret were born in Germany and married in Kingston, New York and Andrew was born and baptized in Ulster County, New York.

At first glance it does seem strange that two people born in Germany should be married in a Dutch Reformed Church and their son baptized in a Dutch Reformed Church. But in the context of the great migration of Palatine Germans to America this was not strange at all. The story of the Palatine emigration has been told many times and is of great interest to descendants of United Empire Loyalists since so many Palatines eventually found their way to Canada. The Palatine consisted of over a dozen regions in southern Germany near the Rhine River. War had decimated the area for years, but in the first decade of the 1700s French armies invaded the German southwest destroying crops and vineyards and villages. And there was a harsh winter in 1708-09 that was totally devastating. Poverty and hunger prompted a massive migration out of the country. In 1708 a book written by John Kochertal, a Lutheran Minister hinted that Britain’s Queen Anne might give free land in America to settlers. Known as the “Golden Book,” it stirred the dreams of farmers yearning for a new start, so they left their homes, sailed down the Rhine to Holland and on to Britain. By October 1709 there were 13,500 poor, ragged Palatines camping out near London. Roman Catholic Palatines were sent back. Protestants, Lutheran and Reformed, were sent to Ireland and also to the Carolinas. The largest group sailed for New York.

The marriage registry of the Kingston Dutch Reformed Church (#1412) lists Pieter Muller and Margriet Schercherin as married in 1761. And they were both born in Hoogduitschland, which was the Dutch way of referring to Germany.

Andrew or Andries was born in 1766 and his baptism took place on Sept. 20, 1767 in the Dutch Reformed Church at Rochester, Ulster County, N.Y. His father’s name appears on the registry as Peter Miller, and his mother as Margriet, and his godfather is listed as Andries Shurger, Andrew’s uncle who was killed along with his father at Pine Bush on Sept. 5, 1778.

Governor Robert Hunter of New York had arranged for the Palatines to settle on land along the Hudson River north of New York City, at a place named West Camp. Their task was to make tar for repairing ships and the promise of having their own land would have to wait. But this project failed and the governor was compelled to let them go. The bulk of the Palatines travelled north to the Mohawk and the Schoharie Valleys. Some went to New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And some went a few miles southwest to the Rondout Valley and settled along what became known as the Old Mine Road between Kingston on the Hudson River and Port Jervis on the Delaware River. The Dutch had settled in this valley decades before and had built strong stone houses. The Dutch Reformed Church already existed in Rochester, so it was easy for new German families to attend. When the Palatines arrived in New York in 1709 they organized themselves into their old denominational groups. The Lutherans had their own minister in Rev. John Kochertal and the Reformed had Rev. Haeger, but there was no conflict between them. They lived side by side. Members of the Reformed Church and the Lutheran Church intermarried and showed little interest in theological differences. It is not surprising to find our German ancestors, Peter and Margaret getting married in the Dutch Reformed Church. One of the most famous Palatine Germans, Conrad Weiser, was baptized a Lutheran, was married by a Reformed minister, and a Lutheran minister baptized his first child, and a Reformed pastor baptized his second child, and a Lutheran pastor his third. Weiser actually moved quite freely among Reformed, Lutheran, Moravian, Quaker and other sects. There was an independent spirit and extensive religious experimentation among the German emigrants.

It is probably the case that the Millers were not a part of the earliest migration of Palatines. Married in 1761, they probably emigrated in the 1750’s. However, ships bringing Palatines to America continued to sail every year after 1710. What town they came from and when exactly they arrived in America will perhaps remain a mystery. Nevertheless, the Miller family settled down in the Rondout Valley at Rochester in Ulster County. This valley was south of the Catskills and followed the Rondout River from its source in the Catskills beside the Shawungunk Mountains to its outlet into the Hudson River. In the 17th and 18th centuries land was consolidated into huge blocs called Patents, which were owned by absentee landlords, some living in England. The Hardenbergh Patent was a huge bloc that included land on both sides of the East Branch of the Delaware River. John Burch purchased 5000 acres of the Hardenbergh Patent between the years 1773 and 1775. The Rochester Land Patent was granted by Queen Anne in 1703. It was an enormous chunk of land, and the Queen granted the Town Trustees the right to give settlers ownership of land in the Town of Rochester. However even at the time that the Millers were farming their portion of land at Rochester many were still considered tenants of huge farms owned by absentee landlords.

We can only imagine what it was like for young Andrew to live the first 11 years of his life on a farm near the small village of Rochester. The Old Mine Road that went past their home was well travelled in the 1770s. Such notables as George Washington and John Adams were said to have travelled this road on the way to Philadelphia stopping at the many taverns on the way. In 1777 Governor George Clinton took supplies along this road to Washington’s army at Valley Forge. And the buildup of the militia and the building of fortifications in the area must have impressed the young Andrew.

Did he attend a one room schoolhouse? Did he go hunting with his father and his uncle? It was common for young frontier boys to experience the whole gamut of planting and harvesting crops on the farm and learn skills with muskets and traps in the pursuit of small game such as rabbits, woodchucks, ducks and geese. Did he accompany his father taking grain to the nearest grist mill? Did he meet John Burch who was building a grist mill in Marbletown, about 15 miles east along the Old Mine Road? Was his primary language German, as it was for most of the Palatine Germans?

And how much contact did he have with the local Indigenous people before the fateful day of Sept. 5, 1778? After the Esopus Wars (1658-1664) there was relative peace between Indigenous people and the colonists. The many Delaware Nation names of towns in the Rondout Valley (Esopus, Honk, Neversink, Kerhonkson, Lackawack, Naponach, and of course I must mention the most famous Delaware name of all, Manhattan) suggests that colonists and Indigenous people lived side by side. There were many skirmishes and the 1665 Nicoll’s Treaty contained a dispute resolution procedure. Animosity did not become extreme until the American Revolution when the Esopus Nation supported the British. It is quite possible that Andrew as a young boy interacted with Indigenous children his own age. It is even possible that he knew the Esopus War Captain Ben Shanks. What must be emphasized is that Indigenous people were a part of the Loyalist settler biography from the outset.

According to the sources, after Andrew’s father and uncle were killed Andrew’s mother Margaret and his older sister Maria (born in 1762) and his older brother Henry (born in 1764) continued to live in Rochester. I have not been able to find out anything about Andrew’s mother. Did she remarry? How long did she live? I know that from the records Maria married Cornelius Bush and they had 5 children, and Henry married Maria Krom and they had 7 children. Perhaps more digging of genealogical information will uncover more surprises. But what we do know is that on Sept 5, 1778 when Andrew’s father and uncle were killed, Andrew himself survived and his story, the story of a Niagara Pioneer began.

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Speech to the Edmonton chapter of the United Empire Loyalist Association of Canada

Speech to the Edmonton chapter of the United Empire Loyalist Association of Canada on Nov. 5, 2012.

Christmas at Fort Niagara, 1779

Loyalist Refugees

Like the many thousands of refugees today coming from the Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan and many other countries, our Loyalist ancestors were refugees. 60,000 American colonists who maintained their loyalty to the crown were forced to leave their homes. Fearing persecution and even death at the hands of rebel neighbours they were forced to begin their long trek to Canada. 40,000 went to the Maritimes and 7,500 came to Upper Canada. Stephen Davidson, who has written many articles for Loyalist Trails and the Loyalist Gazette points out that the largest refugee camp was on Long Island, but there were three refugee camps in Canada: two were in Quebec and the third was at Fort Niagara.

Fort Niagara was an important trading post, especially with Indigenous allies and a military base, the home base of the 34th Regiment and Butler’s Rangers. However, as Stephen Davidson states, in the fall of 1778 the ability of the fort to exist as a refugee camp was being severely tested. Captain John Johnson, the oldest son of Sir William Johnson and the organizer of a Loyalist military unit, the King’s Royal Regiment of New York wrote a letter to Col. John Butler,

Understanding that there are a number of helpless friends…on the road for Niagara, I must recommend to you to use some means for their relief before they can possibly arrive…I think that if a party could be sent with provisions from Niagara…it would be a means to relieve these distressed families.

Within a month of this letter, Lt. Mason Bolton, the Commandant of Fort Niagara wrote to Frederick Haldimand, the British Commander in Quebec, expressing the wish to send some of the families on to Montreal since they “suffered a great deal of distress.” He writes,

Many of them have not only been driven from their lands, but plundered of everything they had in the world and came in here in a ragged, starving condition.

Most of the Loyalist families stayed at the fort. By February 1779 there were 64 (quote) “distressed families” receiving provisions from the garrison’s commissary.

Loyalist Indigenous Refugees

The situation of the refugee camp at Fort Niagara was made even more severe by the influx of thousands of Six Nations refugees. After a series of raids on rebel forts and towns by Butler’s Rangers and Brant’s Volunteers, raids on Wyoming Valley and Cherry Valley, and numerous other raids, General Washington vowed to stop the raids. He declared his intentions (quote),

…to carry the war into the Heart of the Country of six nations; to cut off their settlements, destroy their next Year’s crops, and do them every mischief of which time and circumstance will permit.

This led to the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign and the aftermath of what became known as “the Winter of Hunger.” During the summer of 1779 General John Sullivan led 3000 Patriot troops deep into Six Nations territory. His troops methodically located, looted and burned more than 40 villages around Seneca and Cayuga Lakes and in the Genesee Valley. They torched everything, log cabins, fields of corn, and orchards of apple, peach and cherry trees, and killing cattle, pigs and horses. Six Nations families fled as refugees to Fort Niagara. By October 1779 there were 5000 Indigenous refugees at the fort. It was said that there were Indian camps around the fort as far as the eye could see, extending 8 miles along the Niagara River from Fort Niagara to the present day city of Lewiston. What made matters worse was the weather.

Winter 1779: the Year of Hunger

The winter of 1779 was horrific. Mary Jemison who had been a captive of the Senecas, adopted by them, and who had a family of 6 children exclaimed that 1779 was the hardest winter she had known. She wrote,

The snow fell about five feet deep, and remained so for a long time, and the weather was extremely cold; so much so indeed, that almost all the game upon which the Indians depended for subsistence, perished, and reduced them almost to a state of starvation through that and three or four succeeding years… Many of our people barely escaped with their lives, and some actually died of hunger and freezing.

The Niagara River remained frozen from January to March. Indigenous families huddled in their makeshift tents, lean-tos, dugouts, digging caves in the ground and piling up stones to keep out the cold wind. Hundreds died.

 Loyalist families also eked out an existence in crowded conditions, in the fort or just outside the fort. It was said that the snow piled on the parade ground was 8 feet high (reminiscent of the recent storm in Buffalo!). Many refugees died from starvation and exposure and also disease. The only doctor at the fort, Dr. James McClauseland faced a medical crisis. Refugee loyalists, refugee Indians, British soldiers, Butler’s Rangers, and prisoners were suffering from exhaustion, malnutrition, and scurvy, given the scarcity of fresh meat and vegetables. Colin Calloway summarizes the doctor’s work:

Although the fort seems to have escaped smallpox that winter, McClauseland treated scurvy, malnutrition, nausea, diarrhea, constipation, dysentery, stomach complaints, bowel pains, bladder infections, dropsy (from spoiled meat), gout, croup, headaches, tetanus, hernias, chilblaines, colds, fevers, ague, rheumatism, skin diseases, and various wounds, bruises, and burns.

With inadequate medical supplies the soldiers assigned to medical duties also had to cut wood, feed the horses, sweep the chimneys, make coffins and bury the dead.

 The biggest challenge was providing food for all of the refugees. The traditional Indigenous diet focused on the Three Sisters: corn, squash and beans.. American colonists did not understand the importance of the three sisters. During a treaty negotiation an American commissioner said to a group of Senecas, “When the white people came to this island, the Indians lived chiefly by hunting and fishing,” “and the white people immediately began to till the ground, to grow corn, wheat, and other grain…” He was speaking to the chief Iroquois negotiator named Cornplanter. What irony! Indigenous people had been planting corn for thousands of years.

 For Indigenous people, growing the three sisters, corn, beans and squash a normal meal would consist of succotash: corn, beans plus onions, turnips, peppers augmented with wild game. Normally they had maple sugar, and gathered wild onions, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and ginseng. And from fishing there were eels, salmon, trout and whitefish. But in the refugee camp outside Fort Niagara the usual food didn’t exist. Rations for 5000 people would not go very far. A stew of elm bark and acorns was more likely the only food available. And I came across a reference to the fact that they lived on the feet and entrails of small animals like squirrels which were rancid and maggoty.

Staple foods were shipped from England. We know from reports of shipping in the 18th century that British ships transported barreled pork and beef, beer and rum, bread, butter, oatmeal, peas flour, suet and vinegar. And the basic daily ration for soldiers was a pound of flour, a pound of fresh beef or salted pork, peas and rice. They would pool their resources and take turns cooking. At Fort Niagara the soldiers were limited to what the sutlers could sell from the warehouse. And during the American Revolution shipments from England to posts on the Great Lakes were sporadic, given the realities of the war. British ships sank in the Atlantic or were captured by the Americans. The policy set years before by Lord George Germain was to give massive gifts of cattle, flour and rum to Indigenous people to ensure their allegiance as allies. But there were constant scarcities. Fort Niagara was constantly running out of provisions and depended on shipments from Fort Detroit (the ribbon farms or strip farms on both sides of the Detroit River had corn crops, pigs and cattle). But there were very few ships bringing provisions across Lake Erie to the Niagara Portage. In fact only one supply ship made it to the fort in 1779, in November, with a cargo of cornmeal, salted pork, and blankets. In 1779 the whole food system was close to collapse.

Christmas 1779

In the 18th century Christmas was not celebrated like today. The celebration of Christmas had been outlawed in New England. Calvinist Protestant Puritans abhorred the entire celebration and likened it to pagan rituals and Popish observances. The Assembly of Connecticut had prohibited Christmas Day celebrations including the playing of cards, the making of mince pies or performing on any musical instruments. A visitor to Philadelphia in 1749 remarked that,

the Quakers did not regard Christmas Day any more remarkable than other days. Stores were open, and anyone might sell or purchase what he wanted… There was no more baking of bread for the Christmas festival than for other days; and no Christmas porridge on Christmas Eve! One did not seem to know what it meant to wish anyone a merry Christmas.

A colonist stated in his diary, “Kept Christmas at home and did a good day’s work.” However, soldiers in the garrison were likely to ignore the bans on Christmas. They were far from their homes and what they did enjoy was a good dinner. The tradition of a “soldier’s dinner” existed in 1779, a tradition in which senior officers would serve junior officers.

What did they have for Christmas dinner in 1779. Let’s review the kind of food that was possible for the soldiers and the 64 Loyalist families at Fort Niagara.

Christmas Dinner Menu:

-Rum: the most important item for a Christmas dinner; imported from the Caribbean through Montreal. Paintings of Fort Niagara from this period show buildings between the fort and the Niagara River. During the Revolution the Indian Department constructed many new buildings to support their dealings with the Six Nations. This civilian area of warehouses was known by many names, “lower town,” “trader town,” and most frequently, “the Bottoms.” Alan Taylor in The Divided Ground writes,

Beyond the walls and beside the river, crude taverns, stores, and bordellos sprouted on ‘the Bottom.’ A pious Quaker described Niagara as a ‘strong fortification, but a dark, noisy, confused, dirty place.

The sutlers at the fort had a very successful business selling rum to soldiers. Rum could be bought wholesale in Montreal for eight shillings a gallon and sold at Fort Niagara for twenty shillings. Annual rum consumption at Fort Niagara exceeded 7000 gallons a year. We can be sure that for Christmas dinner 1779 there was plenty of rum.

-Salted Pork: Barreled salt pork or beef was shipped from Britain for the military. The barreling method was practiced in Britain and the U.S and consisted of the following steps: After slaughter the carcass was hung up in a cool, dry place until it became stiff, then it was butchered by taking off the head, then the hind-legs and forelegs, and the rest of the carcass was cut into pieces. All meat joints were rubbed with clean salt and packed with more salt into a barrel as tightly as possible and then filled with a strong brine. Thenk in order to prepare it for eating it has to be soaked in water for hours and perhaps days to get rid of the salt, and then boiled making a soup or porridge. Salted pork was quite popular among the earliest pioneers, not because they liked it: pork for breakfast, for lunch and for dinner. Susanna Moodie exclaimed many years later in disgust, “pork, pork, pork!”

-Beef: Loyalists did manage to bring some cattle with them, and there were cattle from farms around Fort Detroit. In a January 1778 letter from Lt. Col. Mason Bolton to Sir Guy Carleton, the Commandant of Fort Niagara said that there were 2700 Indians gathered at the fort and he had received a small supply of beef from Fort Detroit but it was all consumed in six or seven days. He went on to say that “he felt obliged to buy up all the cattle the Indians had to spare and pay a price much larger than the cost of getting provisions from Fort Detroit. Along with salted pork, boiled beef was a staple dish.

-Sheep and Poultry: Lt. Governor John Graves Simcoe commenting on the poor conditions of Fort Niagara in 1794 observed that the sod work of the fort had been damaged by the sheep and poultry which ran freely about the yard. But in 1779, the fort was so crowded with refugees I am not sure how many sheep or chickens were running around.

-Peas: Ships from Britain during the 18th century, besides barrels of salted pork and beef, and barrels of rum & beer, also included peas, which led to the nursery rhyme (1760):

Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old; Some like it hot, some like it cold, Some like it in the pot, nine days old.

Pea soup every day, and even nine days old.

-Vegetables: There were gardens around the fort, maintained by the soldiers, so meals could be augmented with lettuce, cucumbers and cabbage during the summer, and root vegetables could be preserved for the winter such as turnips, carrots, beets and potatoes, but not enough for 5000 refugees.

-Wild game and Fishing: In the summer they hunted for deer, but as Mary Jemison reported wild game was scarce during the severe winter of 1779. In the summer they fished for sturgeon and whitefish in Lake Ontario and the Niagara River. Ice Fishing? It had existed among Indigenous people for thousands of years, and since during the winter of 1779 the Niagara River was frozen, perhaps in desperation starving refugees practiced ice fishing.

-Grains: Corn was stored in the warehouse, and they received some corn, wheat and oats from Fort Detroit. There was a bakehouse at the fort, but flour was scarce. Decay and disease was a constant problem. Shipments of American flour via England were too old and too wet, from sitting on wharves too long, and quite inadequate for the troops at Niagara, and the thousands of refugees. Christmas dinner at Fort Niagara in 1779 was quite meager.

General Haldimand’s Agriculture Plan

Fort Niagara is on the east side of the Niagara River on the shore of Lake Ontario. The west side of the river had not yet been developed before 1778. Navy Hall and the barracks for the Butler’s Rangers were the only buildings on the west side. On June 26, 1778 General Frederick Haldimand replaced Sir Guy Carleton as Governor-in-Chief of the Province of Quebec that included all the territory ceded by the French to the British. Col. Mason Bolton complained to Haldimand that the number of recruits to Butler’s Rangers and the number of Loyalist refugees were increasing and this coupled with the demands of the Indians caused a huge expense for provisions at the fort. Haldimand responded in a letter dated October 1778 urging the cultivation of land around the fort to supply the fort with crops and raise cattle. On March 4, 1779 Bolton wrote Haldimand explaining that because of promises made by Sir William Johnson in 1767 to the Indians that no land would be taken from them without their permission it was Bolton’s view that the land on the west side of the river would be better for development. Haldimand’s response on March 8, 1779 was that no time should be lost in beginning a settlement on the west bank, and he recommended that Col. Butler get busy settling families. He considered Butler best suited because of his influence with the Loyalists and his knowledge of farming. And Haldimand’s letter of June 7, 1779 reads,

…if you can find amongst the distressed families, three or four who are desirous to settle on the opposite side of the river, who are good Husbandmen and who discover Inclinations for improvements of land only, exclusive of every other view or pursuit, I would have you establish them there…

Settlement of Niagara West Begins

Col. Butler did not wait for the official purchase of the land from the Mississauga Indians to take place. He asked Col. Mason Bolton to choose three or four families from those living around the fort. And in the summer of 1780 the work of clearing the land began. Winter wheat that was ordered came too late for summer and fall planting in 1980 and it was returned to the commissary’s store at the fort. Col. Butler wrote on Dec. 17, 1780, “I have got four or five families settled and they have built themselves houses.” These families included the names of Michael Showers, Peter and James Secord, Adam Young, Thomas McMicken and Philip Bender. The Commanding officer of the fort would provide provisions for one year and no rent would be charged and in exchange all crops in excess of the needs of farmers were to be sold exclusively to the Crown. On August 25, 1782, Col. Butler made a survey of the settlement and listed 16 families. Most were settled on the strip of land between Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake) and Queenston, and three families settled close to Niagara Falls, above the escarpment: (Philip Bender, Francis Elsworth and Thomas McMicking). Finally, they could leave the experience of the refugee camp behind. Christmas dinners after the horrible winter of 1779 would be quite different.