Miller Family

MILLER HADDOCK MEANS TRESHAM

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 9/6/2010 at 23:53:50

History of Woodbury County, Iowa 1984

Miller Family
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Fanchon Rebecca Miller-Haddock was born at Hornick, Iowa, July 7, 1915. She was the fourth child of Clayton Ernest, 1881-1947, and Zula Lorene Means-Miller, 1887-1957. C Ernest was born in Palmyra, Dallas County, Iowa, the oldest of nine children of Isaac Newton Miller and Elizabeth Jane Tresham-Miller, married March 11, 1880. Their children were Ernest, Dora, Clifton, Herbert, Claude, Glenn and Ethel – two died in infancy. The Millers were English-Scotch Quakers. Isaac was the son of Lafayette and Nancy E Neal who was Scotch and a member of the McNeal clan. Elizabeth Tresham, born in Greenfield, Ohio, was the second of eleven children of John Anderson Tresham and Nancy Cowman.

The Tresham ancestors are from Rushton, Northamptonshire, England, where the Tresham Manor of the 1600’s is still in use today. (History records that several Tresham brothers left Italy in the 9th century in their own boat and sailed west to Southhampton, England. It was one of the Tresham brothers, a surveyor, who surveyed a road straight through the north of the British Isles. It was one of the early Roman roads paved with large slabs of stone. That road was later paved and is now the main thoroughfare across England.) Two Tresham brothers left England for America sometime between 1750 and 1761. One brother died enroute and the other brother, Henry, arrived safely. He settled in Virginia where he enlisted for army service during the Revolutionary War.

John and Nancy Tresham and three children came form Greenfield, Ohio, to Palmyra, Iowa, where John, a carpenter, helped build a church. In 1895 Isaac and Elizabeth Miller and two children, Ernest and Dora, moved to homestead at Atkinson , Holt County, Nebraska. However, they were unhappy with the prospects there and sold their claim and moved to Rodney, Iowa, in 1889. During the winter in Nebraska they experience the historical ‘blizzard of 1888’. They later purchased a farm at Ticonic where they farmed in the fertile Sioux Valley and were lifelong residents.

Zulu Lorene Means was the daughter of John William Means and Gertrude Edith Smith-Means. She had one brother, Bert. William was the son of John Means and Nancy Cox. John’s great grandfather, Clarence Means, was a widower with three children who came to America from Scotland to Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1718. He was Scotch and Irish and may have spent some times as a Welsh ‘bond-boy’. John and Nancy Means came west from Bucks County, following the Morman Trail though St Louis to Council Bluffs. There William was born, August 19, 1867. Later the family came north along the ‘bluffs’ to Woodbury County and Smithland where William married Gertrude Edith Smith, February 14, 1885. He purchased land five miles southeast of Hornick, near Brown School, where he farmed until his retirement in Hornick. Gertrude Edith (her twin, Bertha, died in infancy) was the oldest daughter of Willard and Rebecca Pennington-Butler Smith. She was the grandniece of Orrin B (‘Old Buckskin’) and Ed Smith who were early pioneers of Woodbury County, settlers of the town of Smithland, and also started the first school in Woodbury County. They had come to the Little Sioux Valley from harmony, Chautauqua County, New York, in 1852, living for a while in Ohio and later in Janesville, Wisconsin.

C Ernest Miller and Zula Lorene Means were married February 14, 1906, on her parents anniversary – a tradition carried out by two daughters and a granddaughter. They bought eighty acres of land southeast of Hornick and lived on an adjoining farm until the crops were planted and cultivated. During the summer they cut the corn off the northeast corner of the farm, planted trees, and built a new home for the family. After a move to the (Madden) farm a mile and a half southeast of Hornick, the Millers bought the Charles Metcalf farm one-half mile east of Holly Springs where they lived and farmed until retirement in Sioux City in 1946. Their children were: Audrey Imogene (Mrs Dr Ray Harrington); Madalene Victoria (Mrs Orville Berg, (deceased) 1980; Dean Isaac Miller (married to Ruth Squires); and Fanchon Rebecca (Mrs R Keith Haddock).

R Keith Haddock and Fanchon R Miller were married February 14, 1939 at Scotland, South Dakota, by Rev Fred Ray, an uncle of Keith’s, who had married Fanchon’s parents thirty-three years before on that date. Their children: are Lyndon Keith Haddock; Randall Miller Haddock, (deceased); Manon Fanchon Haddock-Church; and Rochelle Kathleen Haddock-Wilson. They have nine grandchildren.

(Further details are found with the history of Ronald Keith Haddock.)