DANIEL A. MILLER, ATLANTIC.
An almost ideal life in the United States is that of the farmer, who, after many years of unremitting and ably-directed work, retires to some pretty, bright center of life and activity, and there in comfort retains the guidance of his affairs without being weighted with the active toil and the immediate responsibilities. There is no country in the world where the faithful husbandman has a surer guarantee of reaching this enviable position than in the United States; to attain it is the general ambition of the Western farmer, and the average business man of the cities looks upon its realization with jealous eyes, as comprising solid comforts and health-giving enjoyments which can never be his.
Daniel A. Miller, our subject, is a retired farmer of Pleasant township, residing in a comfortable residence at Atlantic, and is therefore one of the favored ones mentioned. He is a native of Lafayette county, Ind., born September 13, 1841, and a son of George and Harriet (Bloomhart) Miller. His parents were both natives of Virginia and were of the agricultural class. The father migrated to Indiana when that State was a wilderness, there clearing a farm and residing for many years. George Miller was twice married. By the first wife, who died in 1856, there are three sons and four daughters still living; his second wife died in 1871, and he himself passed away, at the home of a son in Kansas, in 1903.
Daniel A. Miller was reared in Indiana and assisted his father in clearing his farm and in the general operations of the homestead. Shortly before his twentieth birthday, September 2, 1861, he enlisted in Company F, Fourth Indiana Volunteer Cavalry, and served, with an honorable record, for the entire period of four years. He then joined Company I, Eighth United States Volunteer Infantry, and continued in active service at Washington and elsewhere until his discharge from military duties.
Although a full-fledged soldier, Mr. Miller returned to Indiana and resumed with new ardor his work in the fields. In 1867 he removed to Warren county, Iowa, being married in that year, and in 1870 settled on a fertile prairie farm in Pleasant township, this county. For nearly thirty years he made that tract of land his care by day and his thought by night -- sometimes working upon it by day and night. The result was that he made it a model farm, and resided upon it until 1899, when he retired to his city home in Atlantic to enjoy the fruits of his wise labors.
On the 12th of November, 1867, our subject was married to Mary E. Wakefield, who bore him the following children: Flora E., now Mrs. E. T. Neer; Minnie E., wife of W. A. Neer; Mary S., single; Daniel C.; Alice A., unmarried; and James E.
Mr. Miller is a Republican in politics and, although he has taken the interest of an intelligent voter, has never served in office. The family are identified with the Presbyterian Church.
From "Compendium and History of Cass County, Iowa." Chicago: Henry and Taylor & Co., 1906, pp. 450-451.
