Albert President Miller

Born enslaved in 1855, in Ripley, Mississippi, Albert President Miller received a BA from Fisk University and was ordained in Nashville in 1878. That same year, he married Ada Roberts in Nashville and they had two children. Ada died in 1883. Albert President Miller was the brother of Walter Scott Miller, who graduated from Yale Law School in 1897.

Miller was a missionary at the Mende Mission in the country now known as Sierra Leone from 1878 to 1881. According to Simeon Baldwin, he conducted the funeral of Sengbe Pieh (also known as Joseph Cinqué, leader of the Amistad rebellion) in 1879. He spent time In England in 1881 making speeches and promoting missionary work in Africa. He also took a year from Divinity School (1882-1883) to preach and teach in Lake City, Florida.

According to Simeon Baldwin, Miller came to New Haven in 1883 to be pastor of the Temple Street Congregational Church. Sources diverge as to the exact years he preached there; according to a Yale Divinity School alumni directory, he was minister there from 1881 to 1896, and according to the Yale Obituary Record, he was there from 1885 to 1896.

In 1885, Miller married a second time to Minnie Louise Sherwood in Fairfield, Connecticut, and together they had five children. From 1896 to 1901, he served as minister at Lincoln Memorial Church in Washington, DC. From 1901 to 1903, he was minister of Lincoln Memorial Congregational Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Miller next moved to pastor the Fifth Avenue AME Zion Church in Jersey City, New Jersey, from 1903 to 1906. From 1906 to 1907, he was pastor of the AME Zion Church in Somerville, New Jersey. He spent one year (1908) at St. Thomas Methodist Church in Newark, New Jersey, before moving to serve as minister of the Nazarene Congregational Church in Brooklyn from 1910 to 1918. Miller moved to Jersey City, New Jersey in 1918. For a few months before his death, he was associate pastor of Grace Congregational Church in Harlem. He also served as “hall man” at the Municipal Building of Jersey City from 1908 until 1923. He died in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1923.