Miller, Hugh, 1802-1856

Hugh Miller (10 October 1802 – 23/24 December 1856) was a self-taught Scottish geologist and writer, folklorist[1] and an evangelical Christian.[2]

Life and work

Hugh Miller

Fossils of Hughmilleria socialis
Miller was born in Cromarty, the first of three children of Harriet Wright (bap. 1780, d. 1863) and Hugh Miller (bap. 1754, d. 1807), a shipmaster in the coasting trade. Both parents were from trading and artisan families in Cromarty.[3] His father died in a shipwreck in 1807, and he was brought up by his mother and uncles.[4] He was educated in a parish school where he reportedly showed a love of reading. It was at this school that Miller was involved in an altercation with a classmate in which he stabbed his peer's thigh. Miller was subsequently expelled from the school following an unrelated incident.[5] 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.[6] ...

Miller died by suicide, shooting himself in the chest with a revolver in his house, Shrub Mount, Portobello, on the night of 23/24 December 1856. That night he had finished checking printers' proofs for his book on geology and Christianity, The Testimony of the Rocks. Before his death, he wrote a poem called Strange but True.[12] He died on 24 December 1856.