Died 5 February 1910

Published in Tribune on 9 February 1910

Veteran-Mexican War

Jacob Miller, one of the valiant soldiers of the Mexican war who died in the Douglas county hospital at noon, Feb. 5, 1910, came from Washington territory to Ft. Calhoun about 1868. In 1871 he lived in a log cabin where John Moeller now lives on West Moore's creek and upon our first call took us out to his pig pen and gave us a fine pig as a souvenir; and when he lived where Otto Frahm now lives one summer and we needed an extra horse he was very kind and let us have one days at a time. In those days before he had the misfortune to become mentally weak, he gave us many scraps of his history that we had no means of preserving in those days but he said that in one stretch of the war from St. Louis to Mexico they saw but one cluster of buildings (a Catholic mission) in 600 miles, and one night on picket line near the City of Mexico an officer on horseback wanted to pass him without the countersign and made all kinds of threats, but when he cocked his gun and was about to shoot, the officer rode back into his own line, and when an officer told him he had come near shooting Gen. Zack Taylor, who was in undress uniform, he was a badly scared soldier, and the next morning when a soldier with a gun marched him up to headquarters he expected to be shot. Taylor said: " Young man, are you the soldier who was going to shoot me last night?" and with his knees knocking together he managed to stammer out, "Yes," when the general got up from his camp stool, put his hand on Jake's shoulder and said: " If all my men are like you we will whip the Mexicans sure."

He leaves a wife, who was 80 years old about two weeks ago, and a married daughter. His son Benjamin was buried in Omaha a year ago.

A transcript I got from Jefferson City, Mo., Jan., 1908, states that Jacob Miller, age 23, was enlisted on the 8th day of May, 1847, at St. Louis and mustered in on the 10th of May, 1847, as a corporal in Co. A, Col. A.R. Easton's Mexican war battalion infantry Mo. volunteers, for during the war with Mexico unless sooner discharged. Honorably discharged at Independence, Mo., Oct. 9, 1848.

It does not tell his birthplace, but he was born in Pennsylvania and was a tailor by trade when he came west. We sent him a birthday card on his birthday the 20th of last month and learned that he was very feeble. He went to Omaha in 1902.

W.H.Woods

~~~ Obituary courtesy of the Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file in the Blair Public Library at Blair, Nebraska.~~~