The Marriage Record of Amzi Miller and Maria Moses
July 4, 1843
Summit County, Ohio
from Summit County Court Marriage Records, book #1

At first I was disappointed, but not surprised, to find there was no more information on Amzi's or Maria's families given. But at least, I could see, it gave the name of the clergyman who performed the marriage; perhaps I could find out more about their families by finding out about the clergyman.

At the beginning of the Summit County Marriage Records book are several hand-written pages, where the County Clerk or his deputy took down the evidence given by the clergymen stating their legal standing to perform marriages in the State of Ohio.

On page 15, item # 2, is recorded the following:

Rev'd Marshall Wilcox
May 17, 1843
Marshall Wilcox produced for Record in this office a Licence under seal from the Court of Common Pleas in Medina County authorizing him to solemnize marriages in the State of Ohio as a regular ordained minister of the gospel of the denomination called "Disciples" dated February 9, 1843.
Attest N. B. Stone Dep. Clerk

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"Disciples?" Now that rang a bell from my college Church History classes... wasn't that another name for "Campbellites," a religious denomination that had a significant presence in the Western Reserve of Ohio, about the same time the Mormons were settling Kirtland? Wasn't that the group that Sidney Rigdon had helped found and promulgate, before he joined up with Joseph Smith in late 1830?

I rushed home and looked it up on the Internet. Yes, the Disciples of Christ was founded by Alexander Campbell, who at the time was residing the the Western Reserve, and some others (including Rigdon) when they split off from the Baptist Church in 1827. The resulting religious group desired to adhere to only Scriptural teachings; they called themselves, following the bible pattern, the Church of Christ, or the Disciples of Christ, and at a later time, the Christian Church.

Available at the Disciples of Christ, History and Research Resources webpage (http://www.disciples.org/historc.htm) is the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement Resources Database. Included here are some detailed histories of the Disciples of Christ churches in the Midwest at the turn of the last century. It would appear that there were many families who migrated from Ohio to the central Illinois River Valley around the middle 1800's. While unfortunately I can find no mention of Amzi Miller or his family, there are Disciples of Christ churches near the areas in which they settled, one in particular being Rushville, Schuyler County, Illinois. Also, there are two other brethren prominent in the church who share the same, seemingly unique, first name of Amzi.

Finally, I recall that Polly Jane Miller Sell, Amzi & Maria's daughter, was herself a member of the "Christian Church" located at Mt. Sterling, Iowa. A brief consultation of the Stone-Campbell database reveals that there were indeed Disciples of Christ congregations in south-east Iowa around the turn of the last century.

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So, does anyone know where we can find out more about these congregations, and their members? This may be an important next step to finding out more about the Miller family.

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More information:

Evelyn Sell gives their names as follows: Amaziah Miller and Maria Elvira Moses.

Amzi (or Anzi, as the 1860 Brown County Ripley Twp Federal Census reports it) was a potter. There was a significant pottery center located at the town of Mogodore, in Springfield Township, Summit County, Ohio during the early part of the 19th century. Could this be where he learned his trade?

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Elizabeth Hervey Osborn
24 June 2000
liz@csd.net

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