Kings County Biographies


This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm



 
MILLER, WILLIAM R.
 
     It was in England that William R. Miller, who now lives eight miles south 
of Hanford, was born October 26, 1843. When he was about eighteen months old his 
parents brought him to Troy, N. Y., and he lived there and at Saratoga, in the 
same state, until he was nineteen years old. Then he enlisted in the One Hundred 
and Twenty-fifth Regiment, New York Volunteer Infantry, with which he served 
until June, 1865, when he was honorably discharged at Alexandria, Va. As a 
member of Company C of that organization he was included in the second army 
corps of the army of the Potomac, participating in many engagements, including 
the fight in the Wilderness, the battle of Spottslvania Court House, where he 
was wounded; the fighting in front of Petersburg, where he cast his first 
Presidential vote for Lincoln, and other encounters no less important. His wound 
caused him to be in the hospital three months. After the war he farmed in New 
York state until April, 1870, when he located sixteen miles north of Webster 
City, Iowa, and there farmed and raised stock until 1887, when he came to 
California. After stopping a short time at Tulare he went to the west side, near 
Dudley, accompanied by his immediate family, his father and his wife�s mother. 
He and his father and brother took up land there which soon proved so 
unpromising for farming purposes that his father and brother abandoned their 
claims, but he retained his, which after he had sold part of it proved to be 
valuable oil land, but this holding is not the least of his possessions. 
Returning to Tulare county, he soon went to Delano, where he put in two crops, 
and in June, 1899, came to Kings county and worked for a year near Armona. In 
his second year there he bought twenty-two and a half acres, eight miles south 
of Armona, on which he built a house and put all other improvements, settling 
six acres to vineyard and a family orchard and giving the remainder over to 
alfalfa, and this is his present home place. He began here as a stockraiser and 
was successful for some years. His son, Fred C. Miller, now operates a dairy on 
the place. In 1911 Mr. Miller bought forty acres of the Jacobs tract, south of 
his ranch, on which there are improvements.
 
     In 1867 Mr. Miller took for his wife Caroline A. Chesterman, of English 
birth, who was brought to the United States when three months old and grew to 
womanhood in New York state. They have five living children: The Rev. Charles N. 
Miler, who is blind, is an ordained minister of the gospel and resides at 
Bakersfield; Carrie M. married John C. Goodale, of Denair, Cal.; May M. married 
E. W. Houston, of Visalia; Fred C., the youngest so of the family, married Anna 
J. Erni and is ranching and dairying on his father�s land. William R., Jr., was 
accidentally killed by a boiler explosion, aged twenty-five years, and Mina M. 
was married to E. R. Houston and died about twenty. 
 
     Mr. Miller keeps alive memories of the days of the Civil war by association 
with his comrades of McPherson Post, G. A. R. He is a genial man, given to 
pleasant reminiscence, and is welcomed as a friend wherever he may go. His 
interest in the welfare of the community makes him a citizen of much public 
spirit. 
 
 SOURCE:  History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical 
Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913 Pp 360, 361
Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn