There is no question that Francis Miller was instrumental in the effort to build a new church for the German Catholic community in 1890. There he is, prominently goateed standing behind Fr. Glaab's right shoulder in the portrait of leaders that was sealed into the new church’s cornerstone. A copy of the photo hangs in St. Mary’s vestibule. The pure white Carrara marble and alabaster St. Anthony altar in the baptistery was donated in Miller’s memory four years after his 1907 death.

Comparatively, little information exits on his life apart from the interesting tidbits we can piece together here. After emigrating from Hesse-Darnstadt, Germany, in 1847, he probably anglicized his name from Franz Müller or some variant thereof; there being no local census records of a Francis Miller prior to 1860. We do know one key fact for sure that underscores his prominent role in the parish and community. He rose in the ranks of the business community, as the owner of a bookbinder shop, to become the treasurer and a member of the board of directors of the Home Savings Bank of Washington, once the leading retail bank in the city, just up the street from St. Mary’s at Seventh and Massachusetts, NW. It merged with the American Security Bank in 1919.

Savings banks and neighborhood-based ethnic financial institutions were the backbone of Washington’s immigrant communities, providing targeted capital and investment in their booming post-Civil War city. These were designed to allow small businesses and average savers to pool resources and offer credit. The executive roster of the Home Savings bank in 1900 reads like a German Who’s-Who with well over half of the board having German names, several of these from leading St. Mary’s families; Miller, Ruppert, and Geier among them. Without a doubt, Miller’s access to financial institutions played a vital role in financing construction of the church building we have today.

While we know of Miller’s prominence in the Home Savings Bank, the rest of his life story comes from scant but compelling evidence. His grave site in St. Mary’s parish cemetery paints an interesting and sad picture. Miller had seven children and not a single one survived him when he died at eighty years old. Two children never made it past their first birthdays. A girl died at five. His three sons all died in or shortly before their twenties. Only his daughter Elizabeth lived into middle age and died in 1902, never marrying. He left no descendants.

His first two of three wives predeceased him as well. Catherine, his first wife, from Baden and the mother of all his children died in 1884 at the age of 56. His second wife of only a few years, Frances, died in 1888, the same year as one of his sons. She was only 48.

It is important to note here that, while nineteenth-century mortality rates overall in the United States were far better than in Europe, the death toll in cities like Washington was 10 to 15 percent higher than in rural areas due to tuberculosis, fevers, and other infectious, communicable diseases. This statistic could be even higher in certain years. The average life expectancy for adults was considerably shorter than it is now and children had a far greater risk of not surviving to adulthood. Death was much more a part of family life then than it is now.

Miller remarried a woman from the parish, Annie May, twenty-five years younger than he and the same age as his daughter, Elizabeth. She was the child of Phillip and Elisabeth May, also prominent figures in the founding of the parish (described in a previous post). Francis, Annie, and Elizabeth lived in the home Miller owned for years at 636 L Street, NW, five blocks northwest of the church, just behind the site of the old, well-known A.V. Italian Restaurant (for those who remember the old neighborhood).

He died beside his wife on April 4, 1907. An article from the Washington Post that day reports that he was active in the Home Savings Bank to the very end, having “…been present at a meeting of the executive board…[the day before] with no complaints of ill-health.” He went to bed the night of his death “…having eaten of Welsh rarebit and had complained of not feeling well.” He died in his sleep.