Warning! This is an intermediate draft of "Mr. Sam" A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF SAMUEL POWEL MILLER WITH GENEALOGICAL NOTES ON THE POWELS, GALBRAITHS, ARMSTRONGS, RUTLEDGES AND CARMACKS, about the first 88 pages of a projected 200 page MS. Numerous stylistic changes have since been made. As for substance, William Young and his wife Carolyn Walker have been tentatively corrected to Robert Young and his wife Jenny; notice has been added of the difference in the date of Stony Point as written into a second copy -that of Annie Hoffman- of Capt. Will Armstrong's history of the family; and that the fact that Arthur Galbraith took up a Pennsylvania grant on Shaver Creek in 1766, from Annie Hoffman's copy of the Galbraith history. Time forbids me to include here the bibliography. Lewis Preston Summers, HISTORY and his ANNALS have been frequently requisitioned. It is surprising how quickly family history can become twisted, how easy it is even for one person in his own lifetime to modulate his story. Dear Reader: I have made conjectures in these pages. I have duly noted that they are conjectures, not facts. Please do not next year refer to any of my conjectures as fact. DeWolfe Miller June '89 The Germans came later, speaking roughly again, down from Pennsylvania. Peter wasn't in the vanguard. As we shall see later, he had forerunners. And of all possible names, who should have been there before him but -- a family of Pitzers! Was that a surprise? The rarity of the name at that time, even in Pennsylvania and Germany, immediately suggests some questions. Was this Sibyl's family? Had they in four years come to like the country so well they encouraged Sibyl to fetch Peter and the children? The late H.L. Cushing has researched the Botetourt Pitzers from the Palatinate to the present, and his cousin, George Lewis Pitzer, a Presbyterian of Botetourt and Roanoke, who has maintained his work, has generously made it available to me. He is six generations down from John Pitzer, Sr. "Mr. Sam" was four generations from Sibyl Pitzer. "Cush," as he is familiarly known, found nothing that makes it possible to connect the two families, but we report what he learned about John Pitzer, hoping a connection might ultimately be made -- and for the side window he opened on the name. American humorist, Sut Lovingood among them, have had fun with the inability of immigrant Germans to distinguish between the sounds of "b" and "p" as they appear in certain English words. I should have taken the hint, but I had to be bludgeoned by a 1769 will in Frederick County, Virginia, before realizing that Pitzer could be Bitzer. John Pitzer, "Cush" found, was son of Ulrick Bitzer, who in 1766 received a grant of 380 acres "on the west side of the North River of the Shanando." this is on the west side of the present U. S. Highway 11 between Mt. Jackson and Edinburg. In a 1778 deed he is called Woolery Pitzer, he having in the meantime referred to himself six times in his will as Owllery Bitzer. The father willed the grant of 380 acres to John his son or John Pitzer -- depending on the line one is reading. The wife was Mary Bitzer, his other two children Christian Pitzer and Anna Mary Pitzer. Needless to say, Owllery could not sign his name. Here we have before our eyes a name that changes from Bitzer to Pitzer, with the inconsistency unnoted by three witnesses and the principal. John Pitzer and all his descendents have maintained the Pitzer spelling. "Cush" found no trace of U[h] lrick (Owllery) Bitzer before the 1766 grant. He noted an Uhllerich Bitsserker signing the oath in 1750, Ludwig and Johannes Bitzer signing together in 1750, Michael and Matheis Bitzer together in 1752. Chronology and circumstances rules them out, leaving Ulrick Pitcha, 1727, as a doubtful candidate to mutate into Owllery Bitzer. One of the four Bitzers arriving in 1750-52 could with a name mutation have provided Peter Miller with a Pitzer bride after he arrived in America. This should temper, but slightly, our assumptions about the identity of Peter Miller who signed the oath in 1766. It is curiosly noted that John Pitzer built his home on a downstream corner of James River and Sinking Creek; that Peter Miller and Sibyl Pitzer built in a downstream corner of the Holston River and another Sinking Creek. Jim Ward [email protected]