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NAVIGATION
LaSalle
County
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History at
Rays Place
Also see [ Railway Officials in America 1906
] NEW
Rays
Place
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The 1920 census gives this township a population of 794, an increase of ninety three from the record of the
census of 1910. Miller was a part of Mission Township until 1816, when it was formally organized, the first election
in the new township giving the following results: Supervisor, Nels Nelson; clerk, C. E. Spencer; assessor, T. H.
Erickson; collector, Lars Hayer; justices of the peace, E. T. Spencer, E. Teal; constables, Lars Hayer, H. L. Loring.
Cling Pierson came from his native Norway to the United States in the early part of the second decade of the nineteenth
century, and after returning to Norway he promoted the forming of a colony of his countrymen, their first settlement
having been in Orleans County, New York. In 1834, led by Pierson, most of these colonists, if not all, came to
La Salle County and established residence in what are now Mission and Miller townships, the Norwegian settlement
having been in the northwest part of Miller Township and the southwest part of Mission Township, as now constituted.
Among these sturdy pioneers were Mils Thompson, Yerk Haveland, Oliver Knuteson, Christian Oleson, Forson Oleson,
Ova Rostal, Daniel Rostal, John Rostal, and Ole Oleson. Cling Pierson had much of the wanderlust, and later went
to Texas, where his death occurred. Among other early settlers in this favored section of La Salle County were
Nels Nelson, Canute Olson, Lars Brenson, Andrew Anderson, E. Anderson, J. Knickerbocker, George Nicholson, Lars
B. Olson, David W. Conard, Nels Fruland and L. Latimer.
Miller Township early gained prominence as a foothold for the Latter Day Saints, and the Mormon Church, near the
center of section 15, was erected in 1863.
The little village of Danway, in the eastern part of section 7, was a postoffice point until the development of
the rural free delivery system. Its population, as indicated by the 1920 census, is less than fifty.
FROM:
History of LaSalle County, Illinois
By: Michael Cyprian O'Byron
The Lewis Pullishing Company
Chicago and New York
1924
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