| Description | This collection comprises papers of and relating to Walter Richard Samuel Miller as a CMS missionary in Sierra Leone 1897-1897 and Northern Nigeria 1899-1935. It also includes a few papers of his sister Ethel Pady Miller, also a CMS missionary in Northern Nigeria, 1908-1918. The papers of Walter Miller include letter and diary extracts to family and friends, some of his articles, essays and sermons and printed papers including copies of articles he wrote, together with some correspondence with missionary colleagues. The papers of Ethel Miller comprise extracts of some letters to family and friends and letters of condolence on the death of her brother in 1952 |
| Administrative History | Walter Richard Samuel Miller (1873-1952) MRCS, LRCP, was educated at University College, Bristol and St Bartholomew's Hospital. He was a travelling secretary of the Student Volunteer Missionary Union. He was accepted as a CMS missionary in 1897 and left for Sierra Leone as a member of a pioneer party to Hausaland under the leadership of Bishop Tugwell. In 1898 he went to Tripoli to study Hausa and after a spell in England returned to West Africa. He served variously at Zaria, Kano and Gierku. He was the author of a grammar, Hausa Notes and compiled Labarim Allah, Bible Stories in Hausa. He also did translation work. His sister, Ethel Pady Miller (b 1878) was educated at London University, gaining her B.A. in 1900. She was accepted as a CMS missionary in 1908 initially serving as a teacher at Ibadan Girls School, Yoruba Mission and then in 1910 she moved to the North Nigeria Mission to re-open women's work at Zaria.
Reference: Register of missionaries (clerical, lay & female) and native clergy from 1804 to 1904 (Church Missionary Society, 1905) and unpublished additions to this register in the CMS archives |
| Custodial History | Deposited with the CMS in 1970; transferred on permanent loan to the Special Collections Department by the CMS in the 1980s |