William Moore, who served during the American Revolutionary War in the militia from Rockbridge County, Virginia, across the Cumberland Gap from his great-grandson's birthplace.
[4] Young Francis Miller was educated in Rockbridge County and attended Washington and Lee University, from which he received a B.S.
In his 1948 application for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution, Miller characterized his occupation as "MI-Res" and as a writer.
After President Harry S. Truman took office upon President Franklin D. Roosevelt's death, and particularly after Truman was elected on his own behalf in 1948 (despite the opposition of the Byrd Organization which was appalled by his support for civil rights legislation), Miller thought he and other "anti's" (including state senators Robert Whitehead and Lloyd M. Robinette) could take over and liberalize the state Democratic party.
Senator Byrd technically remaining neutral), John S. Battle defeated Miller and two lesser opponents in the Democratic primary.
Battle depicted Miller as a liberal and controlled by labor unions, and nearly ignored his other opponents (Horace Edwards and Petersburg businessman Remmie Arnold).
Prominent Republican Henry Wise of Virginia's Eastern Shore even urged his supporters to vote for Battle in the Democratic primary to repel the "invasion by aliens."
The University of North Carolina Press published Miler's autobiography Man from the Valley in 1971, which he dedicated to his wife, correspondent Helen Hill Miller.
John H. Leith extolled Miller's patriotism and love of the Commonwealth and its liberal democratic tradition (ranging from Thomas Jefferson and Rev.
John Witherspoon to James Madison, George Mason and Woodrow Wilson), as well as describing how Miller worked for economic justice but never played it off against liberty.
[20] His son Andrew P. Miller had become a lawyer, and in 1969 had been elected Virginia's attorney general to succeed segregationist Robert Young Button.