From Proud Heritage, Volume III by DCPA. This 352 page hardcover book is available online.
Fourth Corporal James Lemon Miller, CSA, served in Company B (Captain Allen Beard’s Company), 19th Texas Cavalry (Col. Nathaniel Macon Burford’s Regiment), Parsons Texas Cavalry Brigade, Confederate States Army. The unit saw heavy fighting in Arkansas and Northern Louisiana along the Whit and Cache Rivers. It fought at Jenkins Ferry, the Cotton Plant, and at Mansfield. It was stationed at Alexandria, Louisiana, when news of the surrender at Appomattox was received.
James Lemon Miller’s company commander, Capt. Allen Beard, was Justice of the Peace in Southwest Dallas County. His Colonel, Nathaniel Macon Burford, was a well-known Dallas County politician who went on to prominence in Texas politics after the war. Most, if not all, of the men in the unit appear to have been from Dallas County.
James enlisted as Fourth Corporal in Company B, 19th Texas Cavalry at Dallas on 21 May 1862. His enlistment was for the duration of the War. He is described in the muster documents as being 5’10 ½” in height, with gray eyes and black hair.
He was born October 1, 1830, in Kentucky, at or near Lexington, to the home of John and Cordelia Athelston Hanks Miller. His mother was from the same Hanks family as Nancy Hanks, the mother of President Abraham Lincoln. James married Mary Margaret Daniel on April 9, 1854 in Dallas County. They reared a large family on their farm near Duncanville, and their descendants were pioneer families in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. Their daughter, Mary Elizabeth, married James Crawford Mauk, and a son of that union, John Virgil Mauk, married Ida Franklin Moss. The only daughter of that union, Jane Elizabeth, married John Kinchen “Kent” Hilliard. The eldest son of that union, John Mauk Hilliard is the author of this biography of his great-great-grandfather, James L. Miller.
The children of James and Mary Margaret in birth order were: Cordelia Frances, 2 February 1855; Robert Preston, 6 June 1856; Mary Elizabeth, 30 January 1858; Ann Langley, 3 November 1859; James Lemon, Jr., 26 October 1862; Araminta Ermina, ? October 1865; Ellison Daniel, 30 January 186?; Henry Richardson, 3 April 1870; Annabel D., 29 March 1872. (All Miller children are believed to have been born in Dallas County, Texas.)
James L. Miller’s wife, Mary Margaret Daniel, was the daughter of a well-known family from Mount Sterling, Montgomery County, Kentucky. Her grandfather was a prominent Montgomery County farmer and veteran of the War of 1812, Major Jesse Daniel. Her father was the Reverend Ellison Armistead Daniel, a Baptist minister, who was a descendant of the Montague, Daniel, Armistead, and Ellison families of colonial and Revolutionary-era Virginia. Her mother, Frances Ringo, was a descendant of the early New Amsterdam (New Netherlands)/New Jersey Ringo family of Dutch origin. The Rev. Daniel immigrated from Kentucky to Texas in the early 1850s, and settled in southwest Dallas County.
James Lemon Miller returned to his family, and resumed farming in southwest Dallas County after the War Between the States. He died in Dallas County on 22 July 1881. He and his wife, Mary Margaret, who died 7 April 1880 in Dallas County, are buried side by side in the famous Daniel Family Cemetery (founded by her father, The Rev. E. A. Daniel) on Bolton Boone Road, near DeSoto, Texas in southwest Dallas County.
By John Mauk Hilliard
