Product Code Database
Hugh Miller (10 October 1802 – 23/24 December 1856) was a Scottish geologist, writer and folklorist.Henderson, Lizanne (2003) "The Natural and Supernatural Worlds of Hugh Miller", in Celebrating the Life and Times of Hugh Miller. Scotland in the Early 19th Century Ed. Lester Borley. Cromarty Arts Trust. . pp. 89–98.
In 1834 he became accountant in one of the local banks, and in the next year brought out his Scenes and Legends in the North of Scotland. In 1837 he married the children's author Lydia Mackenzie Falconer Fraser.Marian McKenzie Johnston, 'Miller, Lydia Mackenzie Falconer (bap. 1812, d. 1876)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2008 accessed 8 December 2014 In 1840 the popular party in the Church, with which he had been associated, started a newspaper, the Witness, and Miller was called to be editor in Edinburgh, a position which he retained until the end of his life. He was an influential writer and speaker in the early Free Church. From 1846 he was joined at "The Witness" by Rev James Aitken Wylie.Ewing, William Annals of the Free Church
Among his geological works are The Old Red Sandstone (1841), Footprints of the Creator (1850), The Testimony of the Rocks (1857), Sketch-book of Popular Geology. Of these books, perhaps The Old Red Sandstone was the best known. The Old Red Sandstone is still a term used to collectively describe sedimentary rocks deposited as a result of the Caledonian orogeny in the late Silurian, Devonian and earliest part of the Carboniferous period.
Miller held that the Earth was of great age, and that it had been inhabited by many species which had come into being and gone extinct, and that these species were homologous; although he believed the succession of species showed progress over time, he did not believe that later species were descended from earlier ones. He denied the Epicureanism that new species occasionally budded from the soil, and the Lamarckism of development of species, as lacking evidence. He argued that all this showed the direct action of a benevolent Creator, as attested in the Bible – the similarities of species are manifestations of Baraminology in the Divine Mind; he accepted the view of Thomas Chalmers that Genesis begins with an account of geological periods, and does not mean that each of them is a day; Flood myth was a limited subsidence of the Middle East. Geology, to Miller, offered a better version of the argument from design than William Paley could provide, and answered the objections of sceptics, by showing that living species did not arise by chance or by impersonal law.Miller, Hugh (1857) Testimony of the Rocks, Lecture Five, et passim.
In a biographical review about him, he was recognized as an exceptional person by Sir David Brewster, who said of him:
In 2022, a historic ring was discovered on the beach of Gordon's Bay, South Africa, by Cornell Swart using a metal detector. The ring features an outer engraving that reads "In memory of," while the inner inscription commemorates "Hugh Miller, Born Oct 10, 1802, Died Dec 24, 1856."
Swart returned the artifact to Miller's descendants, and it is now preserved and exhibited in the museum at Miller's family home in Scotland.
Miller died by suicide, shooting himself in the chest with a revolver in his house, Shrub Mount, Portobello, on the night of 23/24 December 1856. That night he had finished checking printers' proofs for his book on geology and Christianity, The Testimony of the Rocks. Before his death, he wrote a poem called Strange but True. He died on 24 December 1856.
Miller's wife Lydia Miller played a major role in editing and securing posthumous publication of compilations as books of many of his Witness articles and public addresses, thus gaining for him a continued wider readership for another 50 years after his death. Hugh Miller and Lydia Miller's second daughter, Harriet Miller Davidson was a published poet who married a clergyman after her father's suicide. Harriet Miller Davision moved to Adelaide where her husband was a minister and she published poems and stories in both countries about temperance and of daughters left by inspirational fathers.W. G. Blaikie, 'Davidson, Harriet Miller (1839–1883)', rev. Pam Perkins, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 8 December 2014
There is a bust of Hugh Miller in the Hall of Heroes at the Wallace Monument in Stirling.Carter, Owain F. (2002) The Wallace Monument. tesco.net His home in Cromarty is open as a geological museum, with specimens collected in the immediate area; a weekend event at the site in 2008 was part of celebrations marking the bicentenary of the Geological Society of London. Hugh Miller Museum & Birthplace Cottage Museum. National Trust for Scotland "Local hero's shores 'fossil rich'". BBC News. 12 April 2008.
The Hugh Miller Trail starts at a small car park on a minor road just past Eathie Mains, about south of Cromarty, and leads about down a steep slope through woodland to the foreshore at Eathie Haven on the Moray Firth, where Miller began collecting fossils. It was here that he found his first fossil Ammonoidea, in Jurassic rocks. The haven was originally a salmon fishing station, and a former fishermen's bothy, open to the public, has a display board about the geology of the area and Miller's fossil discoveries., supplemented by information from notice boards at the car park and in the bothy. See also WalkHighlands.
review of Hugh Miller by Julie Morrice, The List, Issue 75, 26 August - 1 September 1988, pp. 22 & 26
|
|
