Oliver Miller Homestead

A visit to the Oliver Miller Homestead in South Park near Pittsburgh has been on my to do list for several years as Oliver's wife Mary was a Tidball. We have meet a few Tidballs during our travels and wanted to check out the family tie to the homestead residents.

Oliver Miller and many of his Tidball relatives moved here from Eastern Pennsylvania in the 1770's. Many of the family were Revolutionary War veterans and were active in the Whiskey Rebellion. Oliver and Mary's son Oliver was killed in the rebellion.  

When the Miller family arrived in what is now Pennsylvania, the land was claimed by Virginia. They first built a two story log cabin that had a wood shingled roof, a rarity at that time. In 1803 they began building this stone house as an addition to the log cabin.     

On Sundays at the homestead they have guides dressed in period clothing. I was greeted by a Tidball but I failed to remember the first name of this long lost cousin. The flag is the Whiskey Rebellion flag like the original one I wrote about in the last post about the Century Inn.

This room is filled with spinning wheels, a loom and other equipment used by pioneer families. When the last Miller lived here, until 1927, this room was the kitchen.

A demonstration of weaving the yarn into material.

The Keeping Room is furnished with period pieces but not furniture that belonged to the Millers.

The second floor is not always open to the public but they let us upstairs because we were relatives. This was the children's room.

The other bedroom is now the quilting room where Homestead volunteers use the Miller quilting frame. This one was done for the first Miller-Tidball Reunion.

This quilt shows the names of people who lived in the area when the Millers first moved here. It has Mary Tidball Miller's name on it. Another name is Indian Peter with the mark he used.

Beside the stone house is a beehive oven where they baked bread and pies and dried fruit and vegetables.

The forge, where they make and repair tools, was built in 1991 to show what a 1800's blacksmith would make.

This replica of the Miller's original cabin with the wood shingles roof was built in 1988

The interior of that cabin sure looks a lot nicer than I think it would have looked when they lived there in the late 1700's.

This shed has woodworking tools they would have used. They were doing a demonstration on horning, making a powder horn out of a cows horn.

The barn, built in 2005, is a typical Pennsylvania bank barn, one built on the side of the hill that gave level access to two floors. There are exhibits on the Whiskey Rebellion and a trading post on the top floor and a meeting room with a library containing an extensive Miller - Tidball genealogy on the lower floor. 

In the genealogy room I did find this note on John Caldwell Tidball whose biography "No Disgrace To My Country" spiked my interest in finding out more about my family. I have an old genealogy from the University of Pennsylvania that John did in the late 1800's. We have visited his grave in West Point.

I searched the books a bit and found this page on William Tidball (1796 - 1887) who I believe was my most direct relative, but I did not find a link to my grandfather Andrew Paul. While I did not find that link, it was still interesting touring the homestead with a direct link to my family in Western Pennsylvania.