McDonough ILGenWeb

MILLER, Marvin. — During his active life Marvin Miller supported the claim that country life offers great inducements to the man of purpose and energy, bringing him not only substantial financial reward, but possibilities of comfort and happiness beyond the ken of dwellers in the thickly settled metropolis. For fifty-five years he has been a resident of McDonough County, and for half of that time has been a School Director in Bethel Township, where was located the farm upon which he lived until retiring from active life to Macomb, in the fall of 1901. Mr. Miller, who is the second youngest in a family of eight children, was born in Summit County, Ohio, September 15, 1834. His father, Charles Miller, was a native of Connecticut, who at an early age settled in Summit County, where he married Sally Bryan, a native of Ohio, and a daughter of Robert Bryan, who came from Ireland. Marvin, who thus far had led an uneventful life on the home farm, with intervals of attendance at the public schools during the winter season, joined the independent wage-earners at the age of sixteen years, and in McDonough County, which he reached in the spring of 1850, found employment among the pioneer farmers. Twelve years later (1862) he married Sarah Shoopman, of Bethel Township, and with his wife went to Cass County, Ill., where he engaged in farming for two years. He then bought forty acres of land in Bethel Township, McDonough County, adding later to his original holding until he owned 236 acres in one body. He also owns a farm of 160 acres in Kansas, which came into his possession in 1887. Under his able management his property took on value and importance, was furnished with modern labor-saving machinery, and had a residence and buildings in keeping with the tastes and ambitions of its owner. He made a careful study of agriculture in all its phases, observed method and order in the arrangement and assignment of his property, and was known as a man who did his best in house and field, and in association with his fellowmen.

Ever since the beginning of his voting life Mr. Miller has been a stanch Republican. Aside from serving as School Director for a quarter of a century, he has been Road Commissioner one term, and has filled other local offices of importance. Since retiring from the farm he has lived at 602 South McArthur Street, Macomb. Mr. and Mrs. Miller are the parents of four children: Patica, wife of Edward Dunsworth; Fred, Jesse and Henry. Mr. Miller is an agreeable and approachable man, faithful to the friends and interests which have come into his life, retaining, at the age of seventy-one, that capacity for sympathy and kinship with others which marks the broad-minded and useful citizen.

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Source: The Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of McDonough County, compiled by Dr. Newton Bateman, and Paul Shelby, 1907, volume 2, pages 959-960, extracted 12 Sep 2019 by Norma Hass.