pmiller

Thomas Marshall Miller, 1847-1920

 TMM Family
Mar 232011
 

Thomas Marshall Miller, 1847-1920. This is Daddy’s grandfather. Born 19 January 1847 at Port Gibson, Mississippi to William Trigg Miller and Emily Van Dorn. There is a more detailed biography is three formats: HTML (best for on-line viewing, 13 Kbytes plus pictures), PDF (best for printing, 236 Kbytes), and Microsoft Word (284 Kbytes) .

He enlisted in the Confederate Army in the summer of 1862 at age 15 when Port Gibson was threatened, but his mother Emily Van Dorn Miller succeeded in getting him discharged. (She had already sent his older brother off to Port Hudson, Louisiana, as a cadet.)

Miller received LL.B. from University of Virginia in 1869. Married Letitia Dabney 11 April 1872. He was Attorney General of Mississippi 1886-1893, and known as "General Miller" thereafter. With son John Dabney Miller he founded Miller, Miller and Fletchinger in New Orleans in 1895. Died 31 August 1920, buried in Live Oak Cemetery in Pass Christian, Mississippi.

See letter on US politics addressed to "Marshall Miller, ESQ" in "Memorials of a Southern Planter" by Susan Dabney Smedes, p. 312 of the 1965 edition or p. 321 of the electronic edition. The University of Virginia Law School annually awards the "Thomas Marshall Miller Prize" to an outstanding graduate.

Miller argued two cases before the US Supreme Court, the first in 1898 and the second in 1916. As best I can tell, he won the first but lost the second. In both cases, the Court affirmed lower rulings. See Grant v.Buckner and Causey v. US.

Thomas Gregory Dabney, 1844-1929

 TMM Family
Mar 222011
 

Thomas Gregory Dabney was born in Raymond, Mississippi to Philip Augustine Lee Dabney and Elizabeth Osborne Smith. He is the brother of our great-grandmother Letitia Dabney Miller. His seven-page autobiography is available in three formats: HTML (best for on-line viewing, 53 Kbytes plus pictures), PDF (best for printing, 55 Kbytes), and Microsoft Word (66 Kbytes) .

The autobiography describes growing up in Raymond and covers only through age 15. Annotation to the autobiography describes his involvement in the Civil War (enlisted at age 16, traveled to Virginia with the 12th Mississippi, discharged for being underage, re-enlisted, captured, and paroled.)

The autobiography includes a 1901 letter from Thomas to the The Confederate Veteran magazine.

Homer and Charles Brown, World War I

 EMM family
Mar 212011
 

Margaret Brown’s sons. Charles, "Little Bubba", is the sailor. EMM says that Homer, "Big Bubba", is right front, the one apparently holding hands with Charles. The back of the original picture says "Homer, Charley, and Dave [Blake], Chicago".

Letitia Dabney Miller and Son Thomas Marshall

 TMM Family
Mar 212011
 

1878 photo from Mary Ware’s book "Mexico to Russia", showing Letitia Dabney Miller (wife of Thomas Marshall Miller and daughter of Philip Augustine Lee Dabney) and child. The book describes the picture as the author’s sister with her second child. We now know the child to be Thomas Marshall Miller, Jr., born in 1877, lived only to the age of 25.

Homer T. Brown

 EMM family
Mar 202011
 

Big Bubba came home from the war with TB and died from the disease in about 1926. EMM, about 13 at the time, remembers the scary experience of having the open casket sit in the living room of 2820 Throckmorton for a week, apparently the custom of the day. PALM remembers Margaret Brown telling about how horrible WWI was for her son, sleeping, eating, and fighting in the mud.