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Miller House

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Mid-19th century. 313 E. Burke St. (northeast corner of East Burke and Centre sts.)

Vinyl siding now covers the brick walls of this sadly disfigured house, but impressive limestone foundations along the Centre Street side are still visible. A three-bay town house with a long rear ell, typical of middle-class housing of its time and place, it served as Henry Miller's home and school during the 1860s. Its moment of fame came on July 3, 1864, when Miller's wife, Mary, confronted Confederate troops marching by. James Taylor, who interviewed “the largeframed masculine-looking woman” later that summer, drew the house and recorded the moment when Mrs. Miller “rushed from the house with the Stars and Stripes wrapped about her and planting herself in the street, in vigorous Anglo-Saxon reviled them as shame-faced traitors in fighting against the flag of their country, while defying them with clenched fist to harm her, or pollute the flag with their touch.” She held her pose “unintimidated by their threat of bullet and bayonet,… till the last man had passed.”

Writing Credits

Author: 
S. Allen Chambers Jr.
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Citation

S. Allen Chambers Jr., "Miller House", [Martinsburg, West Virginia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WV-01-BE15.

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