KATHERINE ‘KATE’ (AVERY) MILLER

1888 – 1979

Parents:   A. Charles Avery and Minnie Easton

Grandparents: William Weeks Avery – Susannah Gilbert

Click photos to enlarge.

Katherine was born in 1888 and was the 4th child born to A. Charles Avery and Minnie Easton.  She is a grand child of William W. Avery and Susannah Gilbert.  Katherine had 6 sisters and a brother.  In 1902 at age 14, her mother died while giving birth to a 9th child.  At the time of her mother’s death, her siblings ranged in age from 4 years to 20.  Their father was not capable of raising and taking care of them and so the children were separated and placed in homes of other family and friends to be raised.  Katherine lived with a family in New Jersey and she suffered terribly with homesickness.  Over my many years of research I always carried a feeling of sorrow that these children lost their mother and then were separated and not able to grow up together.  I do not know how much contact they had while growing up, but it was special in my later research to find pictures of them together as adults.  In 1918 and 1919, two of Kate’s sisters died during the world wide flu epidemic - Susan Alice (Avery) Nearpass (1884/1918) and Lulu H. (Avery) Munsen (1886/1919).

After high school, Katherine went to a teacher’s college where she graduated with honors.  She later taught at Liberty School in Englewood, NJ from 1911 to 1915.  She also taught at Rye Seminary in New York during the 1916.  That is when she met Howard.    In 1917, at age 29 she married Howard P. Miller Sr. (1888/1975), and that ended her teaching career since it was not proper for a married woman to teach in those days.  They moved into the Miller family home which was a large Victorian home in the small town of Warwick, NY.  They would share the home with Howard’s mother.   Katherine would not become the woman of the house until some 25 years later when her mother in law died.  

The Miller family was very affluent.  The founder of the family fortune was Howard’s grandfather, John Dolson Miller, who was in the milk brokerage business.  As such he was called “Captain”.  He shipped milk from the upstate dairy farms down the Hudson River to New York City.  His son, (Howard’s father), Joseph Elizah Vail Miller later opened a haberdashery business in Warwick.  Howard served in World War I and when he returned, he carried on his father’s haberdashery business.  Over the years however, it became more of a sporting goods store, following his own interests in upland gunning (bird hunting).  Unfortunately, much of the family wealth was lost during the great depression. 

Katherine and Howard had two sons, Howard ’Dick’ Miller Jr. (1919/   ) and David P. Miller (1921/1992).  Both were born in the old Victorian home in Warwick.  While growing up, they were very close to each other and they both later attended Storm King prep school.  They served in World War II where Dick was wounded as he fought in Northern Africa, Sicily and up through Italy.   Sadly, Dick and David had a falling out after the war and they would go their separate ways.  The separation broke Katherine’s heart and she so hoped her funeral would bring them back together, but unfortunately it did not. 

After her husband died, Katherine continued to live in the old house.  One of her grandsons, Mark Miller* remembers as a young boy visiting ’Nana’ which is the name Katherine was called by her family.   Her house was always tidy and neat.  She was of Christian faith and an excellent cook and a person that felt things very deeply.  Mark remembers that Nana made the best vanilla and molasses cookies anywhere.  Nana’s daughter-in-law Carol (Mark’s mother) wrote that Katherine was “….a lady, gentle of spirit, conscientious and very hard working.  The only time I heard her get really riled up was when the auctioneer sold off her collection of recipes which she had hidden in the oven to keep them away from being sold.  When she discovered that her lifetime collection was gone, she fumed the closest thing I ever heard to her swearing - that ‘jackass’.”  Fortunately, the recipe for the vanilla and molasses cookies survived and still remains in the Miller household.

Mark often passed time while visiting Nana looking through the foot lockers in the attic which contained old family photographs, newspaper clippings and family correspondence going back many generations. Even at his young age, he had a feeling for the family value of all these items. Sadly when Katherine could not live in her house any longer most everything in the house was auctioned off, including the foot lockers and most of these family treasures are now gone forever.   After Katherine’s house was sold, she moved to Williamsport, Maryland where she lived with her son’s family, David and Carol Miller and their 5 children.  She would live with them until she fell and broke her hip.  She was placed in a hospital and not long after that passed away in 1979 at age 91.

There are so many wonderful family stories of our ancestors yet to tell.  I hope that we will be able to profile many more of our family members in the months to come.    If you would like help in profiling a family member, please let me know.

Bill F. Avery, Avery Family Historian
Hot Springs Village, Arkansas

*The Mark Miller referred to in Katherine’s profile is the son of David P. Miller and Carol (Lovell) Miller.  Mark is our family webmaster and the person largely responsible for getting our family information published to the Internet.

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