Miller, Oliver W.

MILLER, OVERHOLSER, WOLFE, MCCLUNG, THOMPSON, TALLMAN

Posted By: Volunteer Subscribers
Date: 4/15/2003 at 21:48:11

Source: "The 1901 Biographical Record of Clinton Co., Iowa, Illustrated" published: Chicago : S. J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1901.

OLIVER W. MILLER.

One of the honored veterans of the Civil war and a highly esteemed citizen of Camanche, Oliver W. Miller is well worthy of representation in the history of his adopted county. He was born in Winchester, Ohio, December 29, 1841, and is a son of Peter and Amanda (Overholser) Miller, natives of Virginia and Pennsylvania, respectively. The father was a plasterer by trade and followed that occupation throughout life. During the cholera epidemic in 1851 he died of that dread disease in St. Louis, Missouri. His wife long survived him, passing away in 1894, at the age of eighty years. Her mother lived to the extreme old age of ninety-eight years.

Oliver W. Miller is the fourth in order of birth in a family of seven children, all of whom are still living. In 1855, at the age of fourteen years he came alone to Iowa and found employment as a farm hand near Camanche, where he remained until the country became involved in civil war. He enlisted at the Union school-house, August 14, 1862, in the Twenty-sixth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, under Captain Johnson, who was later succeeded by Captain J. E. Crozier, the commanding officer being Major Milo Smith. The first engagement in which Mr. Smith participated was the battle of Yazoo Bluffs, north of Vicksburg, and later with the Army of the Tennessee participated in some severe engagements. He was with Sherman all through the Atlanta campaign and on the march to the sea, and at the close of the war took part in the grand review at Washington D. C., and was discharged at Clinton, Iowa, in June, 1863. During his active service he was wounded in the back while lying on the ground, a cannon ball shooting off a limb of a tree and it falling upon his back. He also lost the use of his left ear by the concussion of a cannon at Big Shanty. On leaving the army Mr. Miller came to Clinton, and engaged in farming upon rented land for about four years. He then removed to Camanche, where he has since resided, having a pleasant home at that place.

On the 11th of September, 1867, Mr. Miller was united in marriage with Miss M. Wolfe, a native of Pennsylvania and a daughter of Andrew and Lydia (McClung) Wolfe. She is the fourth in order of birth in a family of ten children, seven of whom are living at the present writing in 1901. Her father, who was a farmer by occupation, came to Iowa in 1855, and purchased eighty acres of improved land near Le Claire, Scott county, which he placed under cultivation and successfully operated for several years. He died February 14, 1887, at the age of sixty-eight years, and his wife passed away in August, 1899, at the age of seventy-nine. Unto Mr. and Mrs. Miller were born three children: Libby, who is now the wife of John L. Thompson, of Elk River, Minnesota, and has one child, Nina; Essie, wife of Robert Tallman, a merchant of Camanche, Iowa; and Everett, who was drowned at the age of twelve years while swimming in the Mississippi.

Since casting his first presidential vote for Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Miller has always affiliated with the Republican party and on that ticket was elected to the city council of Camanche. Fraternally he is a Master Mason and has held office in the lodge at Camanche, of which he has been a member in good standing for twelve years. He is also connected with the Modern Woodmen of America, and is a man highly respected and esteemed by all who know him.