Miller, James, House

Stone house in Bethel, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, developed from a mid-eighteenth-century two-story log dwelling. James Miller added the smaller stone section in 1808, and his son Oliver built the larger section in 1830 to replace the log structure. Both sections are two bays wide and two and one-half stories high, with wooden shake roofs, gable-end chimneys flush with the walls, and rubble masonry laid in random courses with prominent quoins. A late-nineteenth-century one and one-half story rear addition is attached. Minor restoration, including cleaning and repointing of the stonework, was carried out in the early twentieth century, and the house remains on its original site. Its significance rests on two points. The house is regarded as an excellent example of early-nineteenth-century Western Pennsylvania architecture, with original pegged door and window frames and hand-forged interior hardware. The site is also where the first shot of the Whiskey Rebellion was fired in 1792, when revenue officers approached the Miller home and met distillers prepared to resist federal law. The Miller family owned the house until 1927.