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The Joseph Miller House is a historic house located on Buckhart Road in Rochester, Illinois. The Federal style house was built by Joseph Miller in 1867; it is one of the oldest surviving homes in Rochester.

Architecture

The Miller House is a square brick house built in 1867.[2][3] It sits on a low bluff overlooking the Sangamon River floodplain.[2] The bricks were handmade locally, and the limestone was sourced from Cold Springs about five miles from the site.[2] It is an example of a Federal style farmhouse.[2]

A wide verandah along the side and a kitchen addition in the back reflect Miller's Virginia ancestry.[2]

Outbuildings include a root cellar and wooden pegged barn. The summer kitchen and smokehouse no longer exist.[2]

History

The Miller family moved from Virginia to the Rochester area in 1835, when Christian Miller bought enough land to become one of the largest landowners in Sangamon County.[2][3] Joseph, Christian's son, inherited the land in 1842; his descendants remained a prominent landholding family in the area.[2] Joseph was the eighth of ten children.[3]

The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 24, 1980.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Park, June G. (August 1980). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form: Miller, Joseph, House" (PDF). Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-02-25. Retrieved February 24, 2015.
  3. ^ a b c Wallace, Joseph (1904). Past and Present of the City of Springfield and Sangamon County, Illinois. S.J. Clarke Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-608-36867-2.