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Hugh R. Miller Papers

 Collection
Identifier: MSS-35

Scope and Contents

A small quantity of letters written to Judge Hugh R. Miller of Pontotoc, Mississippi, on a variety of topics, mostly about matters of real estate or probate. Notable pieces include two very long letters from a widow named Eliza Merritt detailing the harassment of herself, her family and her enslaved persons by a man named Green Merritt (possibly one of her in-laws) and his enslaved persons.

Dates

  • 1834 - 1879

Creator

Access Restrictions

Open to all researchers.

Use Restrictions

Any requests for permission to publish, quote, or reproduce materials from this collection must be submitted in writing to the Manuscripts Librarian for Special Collections. Permission for publication is given on behalf of Mississippi State University as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.

Biographical / Historical

The Honorable Hugh R. Miller, son of Ebenezer Miller and Margery Reid Miller, was born in 1812 in South Carolina. He graduated from South Carolina College in 1833, and settled in Pontotoc, Mississippi in about 1835, where he opened a law practice. In 1841, Miller was elected to the state House of Representatives, where he served a two year term. In 1845 he was elected circuit judge of the Seventh District of Mississippi, a position he held for eight years before returning to private practice. In 1860 he returned once more to politics, serving as a delegate to the Mississippi Secession Convention and also as a member of the “Committee of Fifteen” who drafted the Ordnance of Secession.

Having helped start the war, Miller then fought in it, as the Captain of the Pontotoc Minute Men, also known as Company G, Second Regiment, Mississippi Infantry, Confederate States Army. When that regiment was disbanded he raised the Forty-Second Regiment, Mississippi Infantry at Oxford, Lafayette County, which became a part of Joseph Davis’s Brigade, which participated in the Gettysburg Campaign (June – July, 1863). Miller was mortally wounded at the Battle of Cemetery Hill on July 3, 1863 and died in a hospital in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on July 19, 1863.

Miller was buried on July 29, 1863, at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. He received a military funeral, and Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, attended the ceremony. Miller and his wife, Susan, who died in 1864, were later moved to lot number 156 of Aberdeen City Cemetery, Monroe County, Mississippi.

INFORMATION TAKEN FROM HTTP://MSGW.ORG/PONTOTOC/WPA/WPAPIONEERFAMMILLER.HTM AND http://opac2.mdah.state.ms.us/phpmanuscripts/z2215.php

Extent

0.33 Cubic Feet

Language of Materials

English

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