Hugh Miller. Hugh Miller (1802–1856) was a self-taught Scottish geologist and writer, folklorist[1] and an evangelical Christian. Life and work[edit] Born in Cromarty, he was educated in a parish school where he reportedly showed a love of reading. At 17 he was apprenticed to a stonemason, and his work in quarries, together with walks along the local shoreline, led him to the study of geology. In 1829 he published a volume of poems, and soon afterwards became involved in political and religious controversies, first connected to the Reform Bill, and then with the division in the Church of Scotland which led to the Disruption of 1843.[2] Among his geological works are The Old Red Sandstone (1841), Footprints of the Creator (1850), The Testimony of the Rocks (1856), Sketch-book of Popular Geology.
In a biographical review about him, he was recognized as an exceptional person by Sir David Brewster, who said of him: "Mr. Illness and death[edit] He is buried in the Grange Cemetery in Edinburgh. Legacy[edit] Overview of Hugh Miller. Born in Cromarty, Miller was a stone mason turned geologist, writer, journalist and religious reformer. He collected and described fossils from many Scottish localities, many of which are now in the Royal Museum in Edinburgh. His 1841 book "The Old Red Sandstone" remains a classic work. He was also a notable collector of Scottish folklore. Miller started as stone-mason working for his Uncle and came to Edinburgh in 1824 to help rebuild the city after the Great Fire of that year.
Settling in Edinburgh, Miller lived in the Marchmont district of the city and became friendly with geologist Sir Roderick Murchison (1792 - 1871). Miller became a leader of the 'Disruption' of the Church of Scotland in 1843 and his strong religious principles led to his bitter opposition to the emerging theories of evolution. The Scots-American environmentalist John Muir (1838 - 1914) named a glacier in Alaska in Miller's honour.
EDINBURGH ROYAL MILE - HUGH MILLER. HUGH MILLER (1802 - 1856) Hugh Miller began his career as a stone-mason, working first in Edinburgh from 1824 to rebuild areas of the city destroyed by The Great Fire of that year. He had to return to Cromarty, his place of birth and childhood home, owing to ill health caused by breathing dust in the course of this work. Only when he recovered did he return to Edinburgh to work as a bank-clerk, an occupation that allowed him to devote his spare time to geology and fossil research. He befriended the great geologist Sir Roderick Murchison (1792 – 1871) when living in the Marchmont district of Edinburgh and became an established writer of geological articles and essays. Miller was also leader of the Disruption of The Church of Scotland in 1843, and took a stance which fervently opposed emerging theories of evolution.
Hugh Miller. Miller, Hugh genealogy family history Scotland. Hugh Miller, the respected geologist, author and Free Churchman, was born in Cromarty in 1802 and apprenticed as a stonemason - an occupation which stimulated his interest in geology. Later, Miller edited the evangelical newspaper 'The Witness' and went on to produce many publications. These included 'Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland' (1835), 'The Old Red Sandstone' (1841) on fossils found in the Cromarty area and 'My Schools and Schoolmasters' (1854), his autobiography.
Miller''s collection of over 6,500 fossils formed the basis of the Royal Scottish Museum''s national collection. Although Hugh Miller died intestate (by his own hand) on 24th December 1856 at his house in Portobello, near Edinburgh, there is an inventory of his estate in the records of Edinburgh Sheriff Court (National Archives of Scotland reference SC70/1/93). View transcript. Discover Hugh Miller - Hugh Miller was a tall (nearly 6ft) man with a great mass of flaming red hair and "sapphire" blue eyes (according to his wife, Lydia).
He possessed immense physical strength, and most importantly a questing intellect of extraordinary range. He was a self-taught geologist, and wrote about the history of the earth with an eloquence, breadth of imagination and descriptive power like no one else has then or since. His fossil collection of over 6,000 specimens became the founding core of what is today's Scottish national collection in the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh. His books, such as The Old Red Sandstone, The Cruise of the Betsey, Footprints of the Creator, Testimony of the Rocks, Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland, and My Schools and Schoolmasters (autobiography) became bestsellers in many editions. Hugh Miller was an evangelical Christian. Discover Hugh Miller - I have pleasure in inviting you to consider subscribing to a charity, named The Friends of Hugh Miller, to support the Hugh Miller Museum & Birthplace Cottage. The Friends’ annual subscription has been set at £10 per person.
We will also seek donations from time to time in aid of specific projects. Among the exciting projects which may be the subject of future appeals are: A natural sciences-themed Garden at the rear of Miller House; re-publication of Miller’s geological masterwork, The Old Red Sandstone; temporary exhibitions, and “Living History” events in the museum buildings and grounds. Subscribers will receive a Membership Card, a copy of the constitution, a periodical newsletter and an annual report. The organisation will be run by an NTS staff-based Management Committee, supported by three distinguished Patrons (see below). I look forward to welcoming you as a Member of the Friends, a very worthwhile new venture which I am sure will generate significant benefits. 7.1 DISSOLUTION. Discover Hugh Miller - The purpose of the archive page is to keep a record of major events in the life of the Museum, including news stories and feature articles The Friends of Hugh Miller has just been officially registered as a charity.
A letter, dated 12 June, from the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) states the organisation meets the "charity test" under Section 72 of the Charity and Trustee Investment (Scotland Act 2005, in providing for "the advancement of the arts, culture, heritage or science. " The Friends' charity number is SC037351. It will operate under the auspices of its "parent" charity, the National Trust for Scotland, in support of the Hugh Miller Museum and Birthplace Cottage.
Its secretary is the museum manager, Martin Gostwick, and the treasurer is Sheona Leonard, finance manager of the Trust's Highlands and Islands Region. The signed up membership now stands at 103. Visitors to this website are invited to join the Friends, which has an annual subscription of just £10. Discover Hugh Miller - Home. Discover Hugh Miller - This page will feature conflicting assessments of Miller's name and reputation. While these continue, efforts go on to find and publicly "signpost" his trail, as, for example, the mounting of a plaque at the site of his "Witness" office in the Royal Mile in October 2002 (above) (see also News) In the Spring of the Bicentenary Year, a very lively exchange took place in the columns of the West Highland Free Press, which we reproduce here in full.
Loath as we were to give space to Ian Mitchell's rant, we nevertheless recognize such declamations are the very stuff of public debate - and continuing public interest. ARTICLE IN WEST HIGHLAND FREE PRESS, 19th April 2002 A leading influence in the creation of the Free Church, and thus on the history of the Highlands, Hugh Miller was born 200 years ago this year. Hugh Miller was an icon of early Victorian society, and was seen as a sage by many long after his death. MILLER was not a simple Six-Day Creationist. Why, then, did Miller shoot himself? Discover Hugh Miller - Honours. This page is entitled HONOURS, taking the word in its broadest sense, to mean all forms of recognition for Miller and his work, including his contributions to the life of the people. The contents will therefore comprise contemporary articles, speeches, talks, awards, and achievements which carry his legacy forward.
Dedication of Cromarty Emigration Stone by Dr Margaret A Mackay, Director, School of Scottish Studies Archives, University of Edinburgh 10 October 2002 AS a Canadian descendant of one of the families who left on the Cleopatra in 1831, described by Hugh Miller so movingly and carved by Richard Kindersley so beautifully, I - and my cousins who are also here today - feel a mixture of strong emotions: gratitude, pride, humility, love, admiration and celebration on this day. Ours is a family which abides by the Gaelic admonition: "Cuimhnich air na daoin’ on tainig thu" ("Remember the people from whom you have come"). They took extra provisions for the journey. Sir Guy Green. Miller. (10th October 1802 - 24th December 1856) One of Scotland's most famous geological writers Hugh Miller was born in Cromarty, Invernesshire in 1802. At the age of five, his father, a sea-captain, died tragically in stormy weather off the coast at Buchan.
An engraving by Bell from Tunny's photoograph - from the collections of the Hunterian Museum Hugh Miller's birth place, Cromarty (August 2000). A sketch of the house by Hugh Miller himself. In the garden of the house is an ornate dialstone that Hugh Miller carved as a young man. The stone Hugh Miller carved as a young man. A signature of Hugh Miller in the collections of the Hunterian Museum on the engraving by Bell. Rather than effuse endlessly on Hugh Miller's work, I shall put a few links to pages where this is done more than adequately by others. Email comments to Dr Neil ClarkGo to my other pagesThe Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery pages The University of Glasgow Home page. HUGH MILLER. Hugh Miller's Old Fish Story. In a time when the whole fossil record was starting to make sense to science, Hugh Miller was a famous voice in paleontology.
Miller was a stonemason and accountant from a long line of sea captains. He never acquired a formal college education, yet his discoveries of fossil fish and sea scorpions bear his name. There is even a mountain in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, named for him. Nowadays, we of the 20th and the 21st centuries are lucky to have many paleontologists writing for popular audiences. In the mid-1850s, Hugh Miller was one of a half-dozen such authors. He also illustrated his work with accurate, sometimes color etchings of the fishes and their skeletal components. Miller's nickname amongst scientists and publishers was "Old Red. " The formation lies conformably (in strata neatly layered atop older formations) below the Mississippian ("Lower Carboniferous" in European nomenclature).
The Pterichthys milleri Agassiz was a six-inch long antiarch, or armored fish. The final days of Hugh Miller. 04 January 2013 Hugh Miller – self-taught geologist and popular writer – was a Victorian celebrity known throughout the UK and beyond. Here James Finlayson looks at his tragic final days and draws a lesson on the importance of separating the roles of doctor and friend THE books of Hugh Miller are well known to the frequenters of a shrinking number of Scottish second-hand bookshops. Innumerable editions – solid, heavy, products of the mighty Victorian Edinburgh publishing industry – sit often forlorn on upper shelves. Miller is still read; indeed, a surprising number of his books have been recently republished. One volume, The Testimony of the Rocks, first published in 1857, even has a foreword from the eminent Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould.
Opening a first edition of this book, one will find on the first few pages a frontispiece featuring a magnificent photograph of Miller along with a notice that the book was published posthumously. A fearful dream Sense of wonder. HUGH MILLER. HUGH MILLER (1802-56)Geologist, journalist and author. A Brief Biography by Samuel Smiles. MEN may learn much that is good from each other's lives,—especially from good men's lives. Men who live in our daily sight, as well as men who have lived before us, and handed down illustrious examples for our imitation, are the most valuable practical teachers. HUGH MILLER has very strikingly worked out this idea in his admirable autobiography, entitled, "My Schools and Schoolmasters.
" We have spoken of the breed of a man. These Norwegian colonists of Cromarty held in their blood the very same piratical propensities which characterized their forefathers who followed the Vikings. What a vivid picture of sea-life, as seen from the shore at least, do we obtain from the early chapters of Miller's life! The little boy longed for his father's return, and continued to gaze across the deep, watching for the sloop with its two stripes of white along the sides.
Untitled Document. Miller | Hugh | 1802-1856 | man of letters and geologist. Hugh Miller (1802-1856) was a self-taught geologist and writer. His formal education ended after a violent confrontation with his teacher, and he took a job as a stonemason, studying literature and writing poetry in his free time. It was his profession - and more precisely his contact with quarries - that sparked off his interest in geology.
In the early 1840s, the British Association for the Advancement of Science met in Edinburgh, giving Miller the chance to meet some eminent geologists including Louis Agassiz (1807-1873). His work on Old Red Sandstone - in which he identified it as a fossil-rich rock, contrary to common belief - brought him eminence in scientific circles. Miller was a correspondent of Roderick Impey Murchison (1792-1871). Miller was an excellent and persuasive writer, which helped his scientific writing reach a lay audience. His talent was also used in writings on religion. Hugh Miller: Dukes and Hinds.
In the 1840s few names were better known in Scotland than Hugh Miller’s; and few Scottish names were better known world-wide. Miller owed his fame to his editorship of the Witness, a newspaper which rivalled, and sometimes outsold, the Scotsman. Established in 1840, the Witness was the voice of the Evangelical Party in the Church of Scotland, then locked in its bitter struggle over lay-patronage: a struggle which would culminate in the tragic Disruption of 1843. Evangelicals argued that the right to choose their own ministers was a sacred right of Christian congregations.
Their rivals, the Moderates, were happy to let that right lie with patrons, usually the local lairds. Until the arrival of Hugh Miller and the Witness. Coverage ranged from Afghanistan to the Crimea, from church history to literary theory and from philosophy to the franchise. Part of the reason for this was the Gaelic language. It fell to the Free Church, then, said Miller, to expose the evil. But this is not all. Am Baile - Hugh Miller and the Early Geologists. HUGH MILLER.
Am Baile - Hugh Miller's early life. Overview of Hugh Miller's Cottage. Hugh Miller's Birthplace Cottage and Museum - Cromarty. Hugh Miller Museum and Birthplace Cottage (Church Street, Cromarty) Hugh Miller's Birthplace Cottage & Museum. Hugh Miller's Cottage | Black-Isle.info. Hugh Miller Cottage and MIller House Museum. Hugh Miller Museum & Birthplace Cottage, Cromarty. Hugh Miller's collection - a memorial to a great geological Scot - Research Repository.
Hugh Miller: fossils, landscape and literary geology. Hugh Miller: Autobiography (1852). Celebrating Hugh Miller - Celebrating Hugh Miller sm.pdf. Hugh Miller, 1802 - 1856. Geologist and author − Robert Adamson − A. Hugh Miller, 1802 - 1856. Geologist and author − William Brodie − B. Hugh Miller in the National Museum of Scotland.