MILLER,
Mary Frances
(Maiden Name: Sanders)
Weekly Journal-Miner, Prescott, Arizona Territory
Wednesday, December 9, 1908, page 2, column 4
First School Girl Of Prescott Is Buried
(From Saturday's Daily)
In the presence of hundreds of her sorrowing relatives and friends,
the remains of Mrs. Mary Francis Miller were lowered into their last
resting place in the Miller Valley cemetery yesterday afternoon at 3
o'clock. Rev. L. W. Wheatley of the Marina Street Methodist church
officiated at the obsequies.
The funeral was the largest ever seen in Miller Valley and one of
the largest known in the history of Prescott. Pioneer families from
all over the county were present, many coming from distant parts to
pay their last loving tribute to the beautiful character of the
noble pioneer woman. Every available conveyance in the city was
pressed into service and those unable to secure carriages or buggies
walked from the city to the family home in Miller Valley and formed
part of the long procession to the cemetery a mile beyond.
Mrs. Miller was the first white school girl ever seen in Miller
Valley or Prescott. She arrived with her father and mother, Mr. and
Mrs. Julius Sanders, from California, March 2, 1864. The family
settled on the Sanders ranch on the north side of Miller Valley.
She was then in her thirteenth year. She rode on horseback with her
mother from Fort Rock, where the wagons were abandoned, to Miller
Valley. She shared the vicissitudes, privations and dangers of
frontier life with her parents in the trip from California, which
was through a county infested with blood-thirsty savages hostile to
the whites.
She attended private school in West Prescott two years and in her
fifteenth year was united in matrimony to Samuel C. Miller, who
survives her, and who was a member of the Walker party that arrived
in the territory in 1862.
The Ehle, Simmons, Osborne, Buckman and other pioneer families
arrived here after the Sanders and their descendants were present at
the funeral today.
Transcriber's note: Mrs. Miller is buried at the Simmons Cemetery in
Prescott, Arizona.