....Catherine Miller, wife of Johannes Baer, was the daughter of Adam and Barbara Koger Mueller. Catherine was born December 20, 1734 in the Shenandoah Valley.
....She married Johannes Baer, son of Jacob Bear, Sr., a Swiss, who came to America quite early as well. Their marriage date is unknown, but estimated to be about 1750 in the Shenandoah Valley.
....Adam Mueller was born November 17, 1703 in Schresheim, Baden, Germany. Legend has it that he was the son of John Peter Muller who was born about 1680 in Lamsheim, Germany and his wife Anna Maria Margretta. He came to America very early with his wife Barbara and unmarried sister. According to Wayland, it appears that as early as 1727, our Adam Miller, along with a few other Germans staked their claim on the south fork of the Shenandoah River about where Rockingham Co, VA is now. This makes our Adam Miller the first white settler in the Shenandoah Valley, even before what is often attributed to Jost Hite. A certificate of naturalization was issued by Governor William Gooch on March 13, 1741/42 that states Adam Miller had been a resident on the Shenandoah for the past fifteen years, placing the date of his first settlement in 1726-27. In 1733, Adam Miller and seven other men asking Governor Gooch to confirm their title to 5000 acres of land in Massanutten purchased about four years ago for more than 400 pounds from Jacob Stover. In the petition it states that they had moved from Pennsylvania immediately to the land and there were now nine plantation and 51 people there, again fixing the date of the Massanutten settlement in 1729 or 1730, earlier than the 1732 date of Jost Hite’s group.
....The legend of Adam Miller and his coming to the Shenandoah Valley is described by a descendant of his in the short story I have attached. This was sent to me by Debbie Bear another Miller descendant and I thought it was well worth including. Debbie had found it in an old book. It is based on the family legend that says he was in Williamsburg, VA when he heard some of the Spotsford Knights talking about a beautiful valley, which he then went to find, found it, and took his family there and made history.
....Adam Miller was a soldier in the French and Indian War, verified by the military schedule for 1758 in Hening’s Statues. He was a Lutheran in religion and is mentioned in the diaries of Brethren Schnell and Brandmueller during their missionary tour in Virginia in December, 1749. According to the narrative:
".........Towards evening a man from another district, Adam Mueller, passed. I told him that I would like to come to his house and preach there. He asked me if I were sent by God. I answered, yes. He said, if I were sent by God I would be welcome, but he said, there are at present so many kinds of people that often one does not know where they come from. I requested him to notify his neighbors that I would preach on the 5th {of December, 1749}, which he did.
...."On December 4th, we left Schaub’s house, commending the whole family to God. We traveled through the rain across the South Shenandoah to Adam Mueller, who received us with much love. We staid over night with him.
...."On December 5th I preached at Adam Mueller’s house on John 7: ‘Whosoever thirsteth let him come to the water and drink.’ A number of thirsty souls were present. Especially Adam Mueller took in every work, and after the sermon declared himself well pleased. In the afternoon we traveled a short distance, staying over night with a Swiss. The conversation was very dry, and the word of Christ’s sufferings found no hearing."
....In 1741 he purchased 820 acres including the great Lithia Spring near Elkton where in 1764 he sold 280 of this to his son - in - law, Jacob Bear. Adam and his wife Barbara Koger Miller lived here until his death in 1783. He is reportedly buried at St. Peter’s church, about 4 miles from Elkton. They raised at least four children: Catherine, Anna Barbara, Adam Jr., and Henry. I don’t have a death date on Barbara, but it is said she is buried at Saw Mill, VA.
....For further reading on this family, it is well chronicled in Wayland’s works, especially "A History of Rockingham Co, VA" which is where I have taken a great deal of information from for this.
....Adam Miller Comes to the Shenandoah Valley
....By Gladys Bauserman Clem
....From the book "Stories of the Shenandoah"
....November, 1948 Staunton, Virginia
....Summer had almost passed when in the early 1720’s a creaking and ocean-weary ship made its way slowly to a Philadelphia wharf. Filled to the gunwales it was, with immigrants from the Old World. There were Germans from the ravaged Palatinate, Swiss from the fir-clad valleys of the Alps, and a few Englishmen, picked up when the ship touched its last post before crossing the Atlantic.
....Almost the first person to cross the gang plank was a young man dressed in sober garb and wearing the pietist black, wide-brim hat. His name was Adam Miller. Clinging to either arm, with a vise-like grip, was his young wife, Barbara and his older sister. Both were giddy and light-headed from the long voyage and both were equally fearful of this brand new country where they could see the pine forests growing up to the wharf itself.
....In tight little groups the newly arrived immigrants scattered in different directions. The great majority of Palatines, the Millers among them, going to Pennsylvania’s fertile Lancaster Valley, where many of their countrymen, fleeing from Europe’s religious wars, had preceded them years before.
....Back in the little Bade village of Shreisheim, where Adam Miller had been born in 1703, the son of Johann Peter and Anna Margaretha Miller, all his boyhood dreams had been of coming to the New World. His heart’s desire was to own land, acres and acres of it. Not just the little farms like his father and his neighbors owned, where the overlord exacted often more than was his due, but where a man could have all that he cared to work for. Adam lost no time in securing a warrant for his land, and come early spring he planted his first crops. His cabin, no doubt, was rough and crude, but Barbara made things look as homelike as she could. At night, when the back log flared and the light shone on the big, old family chest, with its row of painted tulips across the front, the pair of Delft plates and the brown teapot, Bade did not seem so far away.
....For some reason the Pennsylvania land did not come up to Adam’s expectations. So when trappers and explorers spread the word of other good land farther to the south in Virginia, he listened with open ears. It was the garden spot of the New World; a hunter’s paradise; the soil was veritably black gold - so ran their highly colored descriptions. Adam determined to see for himself.
....He would first go to Williamsburg, Virginia’s capital. Surely someone there would be able to tell him where this good land was to be found.
....For weeks he followed the banks of the streams. First, it was the small creek - twinkling by his own cabin - that led him to the smooth flowing Susquehanna and from there to the wide mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. And the row of notches, one for each day, that he cut on his calendar stick grew long, indeed, before he reached the quiet waters of Capitol Landing on the Queen’s Creek in Virginia.
....As Adam walked down the streets of Williamsburg that day, he was tired and worn and hungry, having missed Barbara’s good cooking over the long weeks of his journey. He was amazed at the things he saw there - the fine houses, the shops and the people all dressed in gay colors, which made him think of a rainbow.
....He came to a wide greensward where the grass was fine and soft like velvet. At the end stood a palace whose many windows stared haughtily back at him. Two great chimneys rose from the roof, while high up on a rounded steeple a weathercock turned lazily in the summer air.
....It must be the home of the King’s Governor, Adam thought to himself, none other could afford a place so fine!
....No doubt he stood there quite a while before he turned and went slowly up the street, searching for a lodging place.
....It was several nights later, in the tavern’s public room, that he heard the two men talking. Elegantly dressed gentlemen they were, their wigs showing all the whiter above their plum-colored coats. As they talked Adam noticed how the candle-light was reflected from some object worn on the lace at their throats. He looked more closely. They were tiny golden horseshoes.
....The men’s talk was all of an expedition they had made some years before. It must have been an important one, ran through Adam’s mind, because they made mention of how even the Governor went along. They spoke of a great Valley, between two large mountain ranges, of the smoothly flowing rivers that watered the fertile levels and the abundance of the game.
....Adam could sit still no longer. Forgetting his unfinished dram before him, he rose and went over to the Englishmen’s table.
...."Could you tell me, once, where I would find the Great Valley among the mountains of which you speak?" he made bold to ask.
....There was something so earnest about him as he stood there in his odd looking clothes and speaking in the peculiar Dutch dialect that even the two Englishmen were impressed. Besides, the colony needed such young men to settle along its Western frontier. The more settlers, the less danger to their fine capitol of Williamsburg - and the people who lived there they reasoned. They directed him as best they could. Gradually as the summer days passed, the long line of ridges had grown into a vast high wall that stretched solidly in front of his gaze. This must be the Blue Ridge and somewhere on its western side was the mecca of his dreams. He remembered….the gentlemen in Williamsburg had told him to look for the narrow gap between the mountains’ thick shoulders and to follow a small stream he would find there.
....At last he came to a spring whose waters went tumbling down over the rocks, and here the mountain wall fell away suddenly before him. Climbing a tall tree, he pushed its branches aside and looked into the distance. Thus it was that Adam Miller had his first glimpse of the Shenandoah Valley.
....He was breathless as the vast panorama spread before him. Far to the west he could see another range of mountains so distant it seemed to merge into the sky, while a smoothly flowing river laced in and out between the plains and low rolling forested hills.
....Adam lost no time in returning for his family. It was larger now. First there had been little Henry to use the walnut cradle that Adam made. Not so long after had come pudgy little Barbara Ann. Later there was to follow Catharine and Adam, Jr. He built their first cabin on the Hawksbill levels. But after living there awhile it seemed unhealthy, as both Barbara and the children were sick much of the time. Later he purchased 820 acres on the Shenandoah River. Included in this newer tract was a large spring, bubbling up from a bed of clear white sand.
....Soon other settlers had begun to find their way into this section of the Valley. There were the Stricklers and the Selzers, the Lungs (Longs), the Roods (Rhoads) and the Kaufmans, most of whom had been the Millers’ neighbors in Pennsylvania. They made up the small settlement nestling at the foot of the Massanutten peak. Of German nationality, they were mostly of the Lutheran faith and lived an existence of complete communal independence. One man helped another build his cabin and his barn, the same being true when it came time to gather in the crops, resulting in the group becoming self-supporting, but losing all contacts with the outside world.
....As time went on, Adam and his neighbors acceded to Virginia’s advancing governmental laws by formal purchase of their land - it meant protection for their homes, so hard-earned from the wilderness. And when Adam made the long trip to Williamsburg to have the title of his deeds confirmed, Governor Gooch issued to him a certificate of naturalization also. It was dated March 13, 1741, and stated that Adam had been a member of the colony for 15 years. He, Adam Miller, the German immigrant, was now a real American, and folding the paper carefully he slipped it inside his shirt before starting on the long trail home.
....Life was no easy thing for those of the settlement. At all times they had to guard against Indian attacks and even then tragedy stalked through their midst. There was the time the good John Rhoads, hi wife and five of their children were killed at their cabin just over the ridge from the Miller place. A few days afterward young Adam, Jr., did not return from the fields at the usual time and when eventually they did find his scalped and badly mangled body, there was no question but that he met his death from the same murdering savages.
....No doubt the two Miller girls, Barbara Ann and Catharine, who were both comely and industrious and good housekeepers as well, could have had their pick of any of the neighborhood beaux. But the two young Baer brothers, Jacob and John, to whom they gave their hearts and hands, came from the other side of the Valley. Originally from Zurich, Switzerland, they immigrated to Pennsylvania and from there to the Brock’s Gap section. Later they had come to the Massanutten settlement.
....Some time after Barbara Ann and Jacob were married Adam sold them 260 acres of his farmland. Included in the tract was the "Big Spring" which became known as "Bear Lithia." Nearby the young couple built their cabin.
....Catharine and John had settled at the "Mill Place" farther down on the Shenandoah, while Henry, who had married Elizabeth Cooger, set up housekeeping closer home.
....After the children had left home and other changes had come about, Adam gave in to Barbara’s insistence to build a new cabin. For it he selected a site on the "lower tract," near where the town of Elkton stands today. With great care he choose the logs for its construction. New furniture was even ordered to replace that which had been in use so many years. Time proved Adam’s good judgment in both counts, for the cabin stands today as sold and enduring as if it were made of stone. And the corner cupboard, the fall-leaf table, the secretary and the grandfather clock have all stood the test of time as well. Only since the death of Miss Lizzie Miller, a direct descendant of Adam Miller, has there been any change in the ownership of the substantial old farmhouse and its furnishings.
....And so when they laid the old pioneer to rest some time in the year 1783, in all of his 80 years he probably had never given the matter thought that it was he who forged the first link in the long chain of the Shenandoah Valley’s growth and development.
Tide Springs!
Local town of McGaheysville
Local town of Keezletown
Local town of Elkton
Local town of Harrisonburg
