CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: The Founding Father of the Millerite Movement

We are now to trace the high lights in the fascinating life story of WILLIAM MILLER (1782-1849), father of the Millerite, or American Advent, movement, for only as we catch an intimate glimpse of Miller himself can we sense the significance of the movement he brought forth. William was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, just following the Revolutionary War, in which his father was a captain. At four he moved with his parents to Low Hampton, New York, near Lake Champlain, in the westward tide of immigration. Here a new home was established on a hundred-acre farm with frontier environs. In his childhood and youth, as the eldest in a family of sixteen children, he was taught by his pious mother to reverence the Bible as a revelation from God to man. And his father’s home was often opened as a meeting place for preaching services. Nothing unusual is recorded of William’s earlier years except his intense love of books and his deep thirst for knowledge. ^{1This sketch is based on wm. Miller’s Apology and Defence (1845), Miller’s numerous autograph letters and manuscripts; Sylvester Bill, Memoirs of William Miller (1855); Everett N. Dick, “William Miller, ‘Dictionary of American Biography; also his founders of the Message (1938); Francis D. Nichol, The Midnight Cry (1944); Arthur W. Spalding, Footprints of the Pioneers (1947), Pioneer Stories (1942); Charles E. Weniger, ‘The Life of William Second Advent Lecturer(1948, doctoral thesis, University of Southern California).}PFF4 455.1