My grandmother had a few genealogy-related items that her sister had copied for her in the early 1970s. Most were obituaries or biographies of known family members. There was one item that I could not fit into the rough family tree I had created in the early 1980s: a biography of a drugstore owner in Quincy, Illinois whose last name was Miller. My grandmother’s great-grandmother was a Miller which explained the possible connection.
The Miller name is extremely common, none of the names in the biography resonated with me, and none of my family during that era had any sort of occupation outside farming. He could not be a relative because nothing fit. Early in my research, I decided that the biography was something my aunt had simply collected because of the last name. I kept it, but forgot about it. It’s been sitting in a folder for decades.
Until a few days ago when I happened upon a reunion notice in a newspaper that mentioned my Miller ancestor being a cousin of the well-known pharmacy owner in Quincy, Illinois.
The same one mentioned in the biography. My aunt had been correct about their being a connection after all.
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