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Oscar Schultz Kriebel, Part One

Oscar Schultz Kriebel and His Connection to Wells Waite Miller The photo of Oscar Schultz Kriebel shown above was used in his passport in 1921. Oscar became part of Wells Waite Miller’s life much earlier, though, perhaps as early as 1890. That year, Wells’s daughter, Corrine, was attending Oberlin College. Here’s a bit about her. Corrine Miller was born on April 24, 1865 in Marshalltown, Iowa. So, she was about twenty-five years old while living in a place where she met a fellow student named Oscar: the town of Oberlin, Ohio. When they met, he had two great passions in

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Miller Family Mystery Solved? Part Two

Miller Family Overview So, let’s set the stage. It’s July 4, 1864 and Wells Waite Miller just married Mary Helen Caswell in her parents’ home in Castalia, Ohio. Wells Waite Miller He’d been badly wounded at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on July 3, 1863 and, on his wedding date, he was fairly new as a member of the Invalid Corps. In this corps, wounded soldiers could contribute to the war effort in “valuable capacities, such as in garrison, as military police, or on clerk duty. This freed as many able-bodied soldiers as possible for frontline service.” I’m still researching what he might

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Miller Family Mystery Solved? Perhaps

Miller Family Mystery After Wells Waite Miller was seriously wounded on July 3, 1863 at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, there were initially big gaps in my research between that date and 1894 when he became the Secretary of Ohio’s Department of Agriculture. What was he doing, exactly? I’ve slowly filled in those gaps over the past couple of years, but something continued to puzzle me. Why did documentation for his two children (Corinne and Amos Calvin) say they were born in Marshalltown, Iowa? (Yes, I get that they say this because they were born there. I mean, why?) For a while, I

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Enfield, New York

The Miller family—Amos, Emily, Lodowick, and Wells Waite—moved to Castalia, Ohio in 1852. During the first ten years of young Wells’s life, however, the family lived in the rural town of Enfield, New York. According to Enfield historian, Sue Thompson, the area was settled by John Giltner and Judah Baker in 1804. Registered as a town in November 1820 and officially registered with New York on March 16, 1821, thirty-six lots existed: the southern part of a military township lot (number 22, Ulysses). So, what does that mean, exactly? Going back further in time (July 3, 1790), Revolutionary War veterans

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Erie County, Ohio for Congress!

Erie County, Ohio: A Conversation About Politics On October 1, 1894, the Sandusky Register shares information about people being considered for a run in Congress—and Wells Waite Miller was part of this conversation. It will take a bit of introduction, though, to get to his involvement. In a piece titled “Erie County in Congress,” the newspaper notes how the county’s last representative in the halls of Congress was General William D[ell] Lindsley. Born on December 25, 1812 in New Haven, Connecticut where he attended common schools, Lindsley moved to Buffalo, New York in 1832, and then near Sandusky, Oho. He

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