WILLIAM MILLER, PROPHET WHILE READING Potter's Story of Religion, I discovered on page 539 the statement that William Miller, the protagonist of the so-called Millerites, or Adventists, when he was twenty-one (in June, 1803), married a Miss Smith of Poultney, Vermont, and set up housekeeping there on a farm. The author further says: "The young man began to prosper and joined the Masons, advancing rapidly to the highest degree." In the Memoirs of William Miller, by Sylvester Bliss, Boston, 1853, apparently the official "Life" of the prophet, I found on page 21 the following: "It was here (Poultney) that Mr. Miller became a member of the Masonic fraternity, in which his perseverance, if nothing else, was manifested; for he advanced to the highest degree which the lodges then in the country, or in that region, could confer." It is likely that he became Master of his Lodge. In a letter from Grand Secretary A. S. Harriman of Vermont, dated May 17, 1938, I was advised that the records of Morning Star Lodge No. 27 of Poultney, had been lost at about the time of the Morgan explosion, during which period the Lodge in Poultney died. It was reorganized in 1856 under the same name but number 37. This Lodge is still in existence. The Grand Lodge records of Vermont show that William Miller was present during the session of 1809 as proxy for the Master and both Wardens of Morning Star Lodge. The following year, in 1810, he was present as Senior Warden and as proxy for the Junior Warden of the Lodge in Poultney. No other mention of William Miller's name occurs in the Grand Lodge records. WILLIAM M. STUART, New York Transactions The American Lodge of Research Free and Accepted Masons. vol. iii, no. 1 October, 31, 1938 - October 30, 1939. New York. p. 182.

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