Looking for the parents, or other family members, of SARAH MILLER, b. in Davidson Co. TN, 15 July, 1809. According to her obit, written by her husband, Rev. N.S. BASTION, she came to Sangamon Co. "with family members." This isn't much help. Queries to the Davidson Co. lists, and those of surrounding counties, have turned up nothing.

According to her husband's obit, Sarah was teacher to the children of PETER CARTWRIGHT, the famed Methodist preacher and evangelist, in Sangamon Co. Cartwright mentions Bastion in his autobiography, but not Sarah. However, she probably met her future husband through her employer, since both were Methodist ministers and evangelists.

There were several Sarah Millers in Sangamon county in the 1820s and 1830s, but so far as I can tell, none of them were my Sarah Miller. She married Bastion 3 Dec, 1835 in Athens, and immediately the couple left for Dubuque, IA. He had been a circuit riding preacher there for two years, but since the fall of 1835, had been a teacher. The couple moved many times, as Bastion was transferred every 1-3 years by the Methodists. They had their only child, John Tenbrook Bastion, 14 Mar, 1848, in Paris, IL.

In 1849, Bastion was posted to Liberia as a missionary; the family arrived in Monrovia in Sept. of that year. The child, only 19 months old, died Oct. 31, 1849, of "African fever." This was probably malaria, yellow fever, or cholera; many missionaries lost their lives to it. In Jan. 1850, Bastion returned to NYC to report to the Mission Board. The plan had been for Sarah to accompany him, but she refused to leave the "female school" she had started, the first one missionaries had created. Probably she didn't want to leave the grave of her only child either. She died, also of African fever, 15 Mar, 1850. Her husband didn't learn of her death until he reached Boston the end of June of that year--he had been long delayed on the trip.

I would really like to know the stock this brave woman came from, a teacher willing to set out to a foreign land with a baby she'd waited 12 years for, who had the initiative to be the first missionary wife to do anything to stretch the role. I descend from Bastion's second wife, but I've always admired Sarah.

Doris Waggoner