W. G. (Wesson Gage) Miller

Born in upstate New York in 1822, Wesson Gage Miller later moved with his family to Waupun, Wisconsin. Sources describing his best-known book say he had experience as a Methodist teacher before being persuaded to take temporary charge of the Brothertown Indian Mission on the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago.

Miller is best known for Thirty Years in the Itinerancy (1875), a memoir centered on the early history of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Wisconsin. The book follows his work in places including Green Lake Mission, Watertown, Milwaukee, Fond du Lac, and Ripon, and it also preserves details about frontier life, church debates, camp meetings, epidemics, and Native American singing traditions.

Remembered as Rev. W. G. Miller, D.D., he wrote with the perspective of someone who had lived the story he was telling. For readers interested in religion, regional history, and firsthand accounts of 19th-century America, his work offers both autobiography and a record of early Wisconsin life.