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Judge Albert Miller (1810-)
Pioneer of Lower Saginaw (Bay City).

General History of the State of Michigan: With Biographical Sketches
by Charles Richard Tuttle (1874)

JUDGE ALERT MILLER
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ALBERT MILLER was born at Hartland, Windsor county, Vermont, May 10, 1810.

His father, Jeremy Miller, who was of English descent, was a native of Middletown, Connecticut; and his mother was a native of Hartland, her maternal grandfather having been the first settler in that town, and her ancestors on her father's side were among those who landed at Plymouth Rock, in 1620.

Jeremy Miller died in March, 1817, leaving the subject of this sketch who was the youngest of our children, to the care of a devoted mother, with but limited means; and whatever success has attended him is attributable along to his own exertions and the judicious training received from his mother.

Until he was nine years of age, he attended the district school in big native town the three summer months of each year, and from that time until he was eighteen, he attended six months in the year. At this age, he had acquired sufficient education to teach a district school, and occupied himself at that work the two succeeding winters. Determined to receive a thorough education, in 1830 he entered the Kimball and Union Academy, at Meriden, New Hampshire, to prepare himself for college, but, within four weeks after entering the academy, he was prostrated by a severe illness, which so enfeebled him that he was obliged to give up his long cherished wish to obtain a collegiate education.

Mr. Miller, upon recovering his health, decided to come West, and started from his home on the 2d of September, 1830, and arrived in Detroit, Michigan, on the 22d of the same month. The people of that town then pointed to its size with pride — it contained 2,222 inhabitants.

Being joined by his father's family in the spring of 1881, he located and settled on eighty acres of land at Grand Blanc, Genesee county. ln 1833, he purchased from the government a tract of land on th east side of the Saginaw river, at the junction of the Shiawassee and Titabawassee rivers with it, and settled there in February that year.

At the spring election of that year, he was elected to an office which constituted him one of the inspectors of election for his township, and during his residence there of fifteen years, he was a constant member of the board of inspectors, and never absent from a single election. Upon the organization of the county of Saginaw, in 1835, he was appointed judge of probate for the county, by Stevens T. Mason, then acting governor of the territory, which office he held for nine years. Ho was also a justice of the peace for the township of Saginaw for thirteen successive years. In 1847, he represented the county of Saginaw in the State legislature. At this session, the capitol was removed from Detroit to Lansing. He was one of the committee of arrangements at the laying of the corner stone of the new State capitol.

Judge Miller was married to Miss Mary Ann Daglish, of Detroit, February 6, 1838. Of this marriage, there has been six children, only one of whom is still living.

In December, 1838, Judge Miller and wife both united with the Presbyterian church, and to-day they are still members of this denomination. He has materially aided the churches of the Saginaw valley from their infancy, and has twice represented the Presbytery of Saginaw in the general assembly at Philadelphia, in 1863, and in 1870.

Judge Miller is now residing at Bay City, where he caused the town of Portsmouth to be laid out in 1836, and near where he built the second saw mill that was put in operation on the Saginaw river. He has resided here since 1848.

Judge Miller has always sustained the highest reputation for integrity, and, as a consequence, has enjoyed the fullest confidence of the communities in which he has lived. He is gentle and affable in his manner to all classes; he has ever been in fellowship with the good, and full of sympathy for the poor.

Though he has borne the burden and seen all the vicissitudes of pioneer life, he has not been demoralized by its vices nor prematurely aged by its hardships. He is enjoying in competence a contented retirement. He witnesses with fatherly interest the varied activities that distinguish the Saginaw valley, without permitting the serenity of his old age to be disturbed by an unseemly greed and scramble for more wealth.