Henry Miller

Henry Miller is a bit of a rarity; a professional in our ancestry.  All of the others may have been hard workers and decent people and even very clever but there is no-one one else, at this stage of research in any of the trees, who has belonged to the professions before the last couple of generations.  It's surprising therefore to see his daughter marrying a ploughman who couldn't even write his own name.  Of course, he might not have approved and the daughter ostracized from the family.  Indeed, that could be a contributary factor to James and Elizabeth Cooper moving away from the area altogether, to the Mull of Galloway, but that is just pure conjecture on my part as I can see no other valid explanation for the move.

I have yet to investigate Henry's professional qualifications in any depth and my first attempt at finding him in the Edinburgh University annals, as I assume that's when he would have studied, was unsuccessful.  It then occured to me that maybe there was no regulation of the profession, that anyone who felt he could do the job and who built a successful reputation could practise.  I just don't know yet but will try to find out.

I think we can recognise his birth in Kirknewton in 1779 as the date, location and parent names are good but neither the birthplace in what looks like Suter or any further ancestry can be identified.  The 1841 census is the only one he features in but this gives us a huge amount of information about him.  He was in West Calder and he and his son William are listed as veterinary surgeons.  However, there are many other people in the house, eleven in fact, and his wife Jean Potter isn't one of them.  We know that Jean Potter was Elizabeth Miller's mother and a search shows that Jean Potter was the mother of Elizabeth and her twin brother Robert, a sister Isabel and a brother Matthew in Ratho while Jean Pater had children John and William to Henry Miller in Kirknewton, John before the others and William after.  I think it's unlikely that there would have been two Henry Millers married to two different women named Jean Pater and Jean Potter so we can assume it's just down to the church clerks' different spelling of the surname.  Interestingly, on Marion Binnie's marriage certificate her mother is noted as Jane Patter Cooper and I had assumed that Patter was an error.  It seems now to be inherited from her grandmother and links the Pater and Potter variations.

Going back to the census, although there is no Jean, there are six youngsters including a 6 month old girl.  There is also a 42 year old Elizabeth, 19 years his junior, and my first thoughts were that this could be  a second wife.  This proved to be true and he had married Elizabeth Meikle in Falkirk or Polmont, had the first child of that marriage christened in Falkirk before having another seven back in Mid Calder.  This means he had fourteen children in total so hopefully the surgery was lucrative enough to support his brood.

A 74 year old Agnes Sommerville is in the house and my research suggests that this was his brother's mother-in-law.  His sister Elizabeth is also staying with him.  Add to all this, Hugh Donaghue (40) and Thomas Donaghue (15), both Army and Irish and you have a very interesting household.

Henry died in 1850 but as this was before compulsory registration all I have is that he was from Mid Calder but buried in Kirknewton, his birthplace, presumably beside his parents.