Hugh Miller
Hugh Miller was a Scottish geologist, writer, and religious thinker, born on October 10, 1802, in Cromarty, Scotland. He faced challenges early in life, including the loss of his father at a young age and expulsion from school due to conflicts with a teacher. After completing an apprenticeship as a stonemason, he developed a keen interest in geology, particularly fossil fishes, which led to collaborations with prominent scientists of his time. Miller's literary contributions included works on Scottish culture and religion, and he became an influential editor of The Witness, advocating for Scottish Presbyterianism. His notable publications, such as *The Old Red Sandstone*, contributed to the debate between creationism and evolution in the 19th century, as he defended a creationist perspective. Despite his successes, Miller struggled with mental health issues later in life, culminating in his tragic death by suicide on December 23, 1856. His legacy includes significant contributions to both geology and religious thought in Scotland.
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Hugh Miller
Geologist
- Born: October 10, 1802
- Birthplace: Cromarty, Scotland
- Died: December 23, 1856
Biography
Hugh Miller was born on October 10, 1802, in Cromarty, Scotland, the eldest of three children of Hugh Miller, a shipmaster, and Harriet, née Wright, the great- granddaughter of Donald Ross, a famous Celtic seer. His father was lost at sea in 1807, and he was brought up by his mother with the aid of two of her brothers. He was expelled from school at sixteen for brawling with a teacher—for reasons elaborately explained in his autobiographical account of My Schools and Schoolmasters—and apprenticed to an uncle who was a stonemason. He completed the apprenticeship in 1822, but found the work hard and returned to Cromarty in 1825, after a period in Edinburgh, suffering from “stonecutter’s malady.”
Miller did lighter work thereafter as a monumental mason, until 1834, but his sojourn in Edinburgh had deepened his interest in cultural and religious matters. His Poems Written in the Leisure Hours of a Journeyman Mason was unsuccessful, but he read widely and conceived a strong interest in the fossil fishes found in the local sandstones. Many of his descriptions, begun in 1830, were integrated into a pioneering book on he subject by Louis Agassiz, and he made other friends in the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
When he abandoned his trade, Miller initially obtained work s a bank clerk, but took an active interest in religious and political affairs writing for periodicals and producing Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland. He married Lydia Falconer Fraser on January 7, 1837; she became a successful writer, especially for children, under the signature Mrs. Hugh Miller. Their eldest daughter also became a writer as Harriet Miller Davidson; one of their two sons embarked on a military career, becoming the commander of the Seventeenth Madras Infantry, while the younger—also named Hugh—became a geologist.
Miller’s literary career flourished; he was invited to Edinburgh to edit The Witness, a twice-weekly periodical whose primary purpose was to defend the independence of Scottish Presbyterianism against the intrusions of secular authorities and the Church of England. In its pages, he helped to formulate the notion of, and lend strong support to, the “Free Church” that became central to Scottish religious thought in the nineteenth century, coloring the ideas of such later writers as John Buchan, Neil Gunn, and J. M. Barrie. His articles on geology for The Witness—which attracted warm praise from catastrophist geologists such as William Buckland and Agassiz, but not from their uniformitarian rival Charles Lyell—were collected in 1841 as The Old Red Sandstone.
The Old Red Sandstone became a key document in the inreasingly heated dispute between creationists and evolutionists such as Robert Chambers. Miller was a staunch supporter of the former camp. His The Foot-Prints of the Creator and the posthumous Testimony of the Rocks mounted a significant defense against the evolutionist cause, the latter offering an account of the “six days” of Creation as aspects of a “Mosaic Vision,” which attempted to reconcile them with the geological record. Miller became depressed and mentally disturbed thereafter, perhaps because of a brain tumor; he shot himself on the night of December 23, 1856.