The Hyphen Family Lineage

Note: Researching John T. Miller and wife Henrietta (Ach) Miller

In all my time reviewing the files, notes, and records for our family history from Jane Anne Thomas, I had found no information on the presumed parents of Henrietta (Miller) Forst and her siblings - not even their names, nor where they had lived, their birth or death dates, etc. In her notes, Jane Anne had written that Henrietta came to America with her parents in about 1837, and had been born in Bavaria. She also had recorded significant amounts of information about some of Henrietta's siblings, and included in those files was a one-page handwritten family genealogy, written by Jane Anne's mother, Mary Alice (Bayha) Thomas and likely from information from Jane Anne's grandmother (and Henrietta's granddaughter), Elfrieda (Stuver) Bayha. This genealogy was a partial list of the siblings of Henrietta and her husband (George Washington Forst), along with some named spouses and subsequent children. Along with other information found in the files, this formed the basis for my research into the Miller siblings and thus into their parents John and Henrietta.

The first record I found that contained information about John and Henrietta was the 1860 US Census listing for the household of their eldest daughter Sophia (Miller) Minnich in Roanoke, Huntington Cty, Indiana - at the end of the listing are John Miller, age sixty-four, and Henrietta Miller, age sixty-eight. Following that find, I went back to the 1850 US Census and found Sophia's household in Liberty Twp, Crawford Cty, Ohio with her husband and children, as well as her younger brother John Miller. Looking further, I found John also listed in his parents' household (along with his younger brother Frederick) in neighboring Holmes Twp in the same county. In that 1850 listing, the head of household is John T. Miller, age fifty-three, with his fifty-seven-year-old wife, Henrietta.

Coming back to Indiana records, I found a burial listing for John T. and Henrietta Miller in France Cemetery in rural Huntington Cty, Indiana - just outside the town of Roanoke - with death dates given for the two of them as 15 Jan 1864 and 3 Oct 1860. The ages given on the headstones seem to line up with the ages given for the two of them in the previously-mentioned US Census records, and I felt confident that these two graves belonged to the John and Henrietta in our tree.

Further research into the descendants of their daughter Sophia led me to find an article written in 1997 by a fellow descendant of John and Henrietta Miller, Patti Ruth-Marsicano, who provided additional information as well as confirmation of my work so far. She provided me with Henrietta's maiden name (Ach) and said that she had previously visited France Cemetery and found their graves, unearthed them and cleaned them off for photos, and had also visited cemeteries and churches in Ohio to find further evidence of the family's history. (One item of note is a baptismal record for Sophia's firstborn, daughter Eliza, from 21 Apr 1844 in the Zion Reformed and Lutheran Church, North Canton, Stark Cty, Ohio - the record names the sponsors Johann and Henriette Miller.)

The family's immigration date is not among the confirmed information I have, though all oral history accounts seem to indicate that all five of their known children (Sophia, Elizabeth, Henrietta, John, and Frederick) were born in Germany and came to America as children and teenagers. In our family, the history generally recounted that daughter Henrietta was ten years old at the time of their immigration, which would indicate the year was about 1837. The family must have arrived prior to 1842, when eldest daughter Sophia was married in Stark Cty, Ohio.

The specific geographical origin of the family is not entirely known; aside from family notes and oral history, the primary sources I have so far are the birthplaces as given by John, Henrietta, and their children in the various US Census records for their households. The family notes from Jane Anne, along with her published writings, give the family's homeland as Bavaria, which is the second-most common response given as a birthplace for the foreign-born members of the family - specifically naming it Bayern, the German name for the state which was typically misspelled along phonetic lines by the presumably English-speaking census taker. The most common answer for the households was simply "Germany," and the lone exception found so far is the 1870 US Census listing for son Frederick's household, in which he gave his birthplace as Württemberg. Being the youngest of the known children of the family, it seems possible that he might have been born elsewhere compared to his older siblings, if the family migrated for any particular reason. It is also possible that their home was somewhere on or near the border of Bayern and Württemberg, potentially in the general region around the city of Ulm. Obituaries, immigration records, or domestic German records (birth and baptism) might help answer this question for specifically.

The family's actual surname is also in some question, in my mind - "Miller" seems to be an obvious anglicization of what was likely Müller, but I have yet to find any confirmation of this guess of mine. Searches of German records may turn up more information on this.

At the time of John's death in 1864, he and his wife had four surviving adult children and at least eleven surviving grandchildren (with several more to follow after his death); none of their great-grandchildren were born in their lifetimes. Of those four adult children, Jane Anne's files contained photos of three of them (Sophia, Henrietta, and Frederick).