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Redfield, Georgia B. Words 1.260
5/13/38
JIM MILLER
Built First School for Roswell Community
Pioneer Sheepaan and Randhaan
Promoter of Agrioultural Development
41100111111.0!••••11111•••
J. M. Miller, affectionately called "Uncle Jim Miller"
and as such, will probably always be remembered, first
came to Roswell to visit a brother, during the month of
March 1878. Besides visiting, he was also in search of a
suitable location in which he could establish and develop
a ranch home in which he and his family would be able to
dwell in peace and hnrmony of surroundings.
In Roswell he found every thing esle but peace, and
quiet and harmony.
Shooting contests, and practice with sixshooters and
Winohesters were the chief diversions of both old and young
for Roswell, and the country roundabout was seething with
unrest and excitement over recent killings of John Tunstall,
a young Englishman who was killed February 18th, 1878, just
a month before the coming of Mr. Miller, by a posse, which
was the climax of bitter feuds and fi hting of rival cattle-
men that formed the two factions of the Lincoln County War.
The shooting of Morton and Baker a few weeks following the
Tmnstall murder was the cause of much excitement on the ar-
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rival of Mr. Miller. Billy the Kid, a youthful desperado,
had made his appearance at Old Seven Rivers during the spring
of 1877 and had gone to Lincoln where he made his home and
worked for John Tunstall for whose shooting he swore to have
revenge. He was like a firebrand in blowing the hatred and
lust for murdering, to estremes of almost frenzy, and to him
more than any other persons, belongs the credit, or dis-
credit, of bringing about the Lincoln War which was in full
blast. No one dared venture out without a sixshooter or
gun of some kind. Mr. Miller being a quiet peaceable man,
after a short visit, returned to his home in Colorado. How.
ever, he had liked all that he had seen in this section of
Southeast New Mexico. He remembered the great wide un.
fenced lands dovered with green grass and the rivers, he
had crossed filled with fine clear water. He knew the
possibilities of this country which seemed to him to be
ideal for the sheep business, he desired to enter into.
After reaching his former home in Colorado, he turned his
prairie schooner around and cme right back again to New
Mexico.
The Berrendo two miles north of Roswell was running
bank fall. North Spring River, now a bog hole, where Mr.
Miller watered his team before entering the town, ran over
the hubs of his wheels, while his four horses were drinking,
just about where the Roswell Museum stands at the present
time on the corner of North Main and Eleventh Streets. In
the town of Boswell there were only two buildings. They
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were built of adobe, one for a store and one for a hotel.
Captain Lea had arrived a year earlier, February 120 1877 and
had purchased all the holdings of Smith and Wilburn and in
August before Mr. Miller's return, Major W. W. Wildy pur-
chtved the holdings of Marion Turner, which included the
store which contained the postoffice, a few drugs and a few
dry goods and groceries. He oould buy (when he returned the
flour, sugar, coffee and whiskey (if he desired) all of which
Marion Turner, the previous store keeper had run out of, on
Mr. Miller's previous visit.
Captain Lea had established the home for his wife, and
Wildy the baby and only son, in the adobe built for a hoi44
by Smith and Wilburn, in which Elinor, his daughter, the
first white girl baby born in Roswell, was born.
Since the coming of Captain.Lea who insisted on having
law and order, the town (all of which was owned by Captain
Lea and his wife Sally Wildy Lea) had become the place of
peace and quiet sought by Mr. Miller. He located on what is
now known as the old Chisholm Hog Ranch, eleven miles south-
east of Roswell. Mr. killer talked with Captain Lea and
Judge Stone, who owned a small bunch of sheep, and quickly
realized that there was a promising future here for sheep
raising, handled on a large scale, where they could range
on hundreds of acres of fine open pasture land, the most of
which from Seven Elvers to the Bosque Grande thirty-five miles
Northeast of Roswell was used as free grazing land by John
Chisum.
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Mr. Miller bought his first bunch of sheep in 1880,
and at last, as he desired, was launched in the sheep busi-
ness for practically all of the remainder of his life. 114
knew that the best blooded stook he could procure would pay
better in the end. He paid a large sum of money for one of
the finest rams that could be bought* for his own use, and
the use of other smaller sheep men.
He continued in the sheep business about eighteen yeals.
In 1897 he sold twenty-one thousand head, practically re-
tiring from the sheep business, retaining only a very few
head. He again entered the sheep business two years later,
in 1899, on a large scale, in partnership with his sons bed.
and Sherman* thereby aiding in establishing what has become
one of the best paying industries in the Pecos Valley of
Southeast New Mexico.
Property interests of Mr. Miller were fifteen blocks
(from thirty to fifty acres each) in all about 525 in the
Pomona Farm Tract, and 1,920 acres along the eight miles
southeast of Roswell on the ecos River, which was used by
him for agricultural purposes and grazing.
In 1881 he contracted and built the first school house,
a one room adobe with a dirt floor, and sod roof, where his
boys went to school, (about thref miles east of Roswell)
and were taught by the first teacher for the Roswell communi-
ty, who was an attorney by thc name of Asbury C. Rogers.
Mr. Miller was known as a man that was a friend of all
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well-meaning men. It is said by old timers, that no one
else could have run sheep on cattle land and keep friendly
as he did, with cattlemen.
He helped other small sheep and cattle men in getting
a start where it was hard to get established on land al-
ready ursurped by large cattle holders. His home was open
hospitably to the cowboy and small herd cattle.meni as well
as to the big cattle owners. Me was generous to e.fault in
sharing with the poor and needy, During the hard days of
depression, before his death in February, 1936, he gave aid.
to the poor and needy whenever he sal where it was needed*
He was a level headed business man and one of the lead.
ere in all important business afairs of the town, especially
in securing educational advantages, for the town childre*,
as well as for his own children and the farming communities.
While his older boys, Hugh, Fred and sherman, received the
best education a new country could afford, Prager and Jaffa
Miller the two younger some, both graduated from the New
Mexico Military Institute, and college.
Mr. Miller is eurvived by his wife who lives in Okla.
home at the present time, and three earns Sherman who lives
in Roswell, and Prager who lives in Albuquerque, and Jaffa
who lives in Santa Fe.
The last years of Mr. Miller's life were spent in the
old Bankhead Hotel that was knwon as the cattleman's favo-
rite rendezvous, and until his last days he enjoyed talking
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of the old days when Roswell was only a postoffice trading
post, for cattlemen, and children walked the cattle trails
around the town with sixshooters strapped to their belts.
His funeral in Roswell was attended by people from
long distances and from all walks of life, who came to pay
their last respects to their honored friend.
S-urces of Information
From the subject himself as told to the Writer and History
of New Hexico, Pacific States Pub. Co., Vol, 2