JULIUS P. MILLER, attorney at law, Washington, is a native of the county, having been born May 22, 1839, in Hopewell township, and is descended from a stalwart North-of-Ireland family. His paternal great-grandmother, then a widow with sixteen sons, came from the shores of Erin to those of Columbia, and established a new home in Washington county, Penn, where she died. One of the sons, Patrick Miller, bought, in 1810, the first piece of land in Hopewell township, where he carried on farming the remainder of his life, dying in 1830. He was the first superintendent of the Upper Buffalo Presbyterian Sabbath-school. He was married to Margaret Templeton, and they had children as follows: Thomas, of whom mention is made further on; Margaret, wife of Col. McNulty; Hannah, married to James Montford, of Washington county, which family is extinct (James Montford, son of James and Hannah, was captain of the company in which our subject served during the Civil war, and afterward he was appointed assistant assessor of Internal Revenue); Eliza, married to Rev. James Marquis; Mary, who never married, and Matthew all deceased. Thomas Miller, on leaving school, attended Washington College and Indiana University, graduating from the latter institution in 1831, when he went to Lexington, Ky., where he taught school for a time, and then moved to Missouri, having been persuaded to proceed thither by a prominent Missourian, James S. Rollins, who had been a fellow-student of his at both the college and university. Here Mr. Miller founded a school which afterward developed into the University of Missouri, at Columbia, Mo. On account of impaired health he set out on a trip to Mexico, but died on the Plains, and was buried in New Mexico, at Round Mound. Matthew Miller, father of our subject, was a farmer by occupation, and in 1838 was married to Mary McNulty, by whom he had two children, Julius P., and a daughter that died in infancy. In 1843 the father died at the age of thirty years, and the mother married again, the result of this second union being three children; she died March 23, 1890, aged seventy-six years, and is buried in Washington cemetery. Julius P. Miller was but four years old when his father was called from earth, and in the following year (1844) he was taken to West Middletown, where he attended the common schools, subsequently taking a course at an academy in West Virginia. In the fall of 1861 he enlisted in Company A, One Hundredth P. V. I., serving three years, chiefly with the Ninth Army Corps. In 1870 he was appointed deputy collector of Internal Revenue, for Washington county, serving until 1872, when, at the State election, he was elected prothonotary of the county, taking the office in January, 1873. He was re-elected in 1875. During his second term in the prothonotary's office, Mr. Miller studied law, and in October, 1879, he was admitted to the bar, since which time he has been successfully practicing his chosen profession in Washington, of which city he has been a resident since 1870. In November, 1864, Mr. Miller was united in marriage with Miss Harriet Hamilton, daughter of Dr. A. C. Hamilton, a practicing physician in the borough of West Middletown, and to this union ten children were born, viz.: Horatio H. (cashier of the First National Bank of Claysville), Mary Emma, Harry M., Julius P., Martha S., Charles F., Anna B. and Ulysses Grant all living in the county, and two unnamed that died in infancy. In politics Mr. Miller is a stanch Republican.

Text taken from page 235 of: Beers, J. H. and Co., Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., 1893). Transcribed April 1997 by Neil and Marilyn Morton of Oswego, IL as part of the Beers Project. Published April 1997 on the Washington County, PA USGenWeb pages at http://www.chartiers.com/.

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