MILLER, BURCHARD (?-?). Burchard Miller was one of the many persons interested in the 1840s in securing land grants from the Republic of Texas for colonization enterprises. On February 8, 1842, he joined Henry Francis Fisher and Joseph Baker^qqv in an application to President Sam Houston for a grant of land between the Llano and Colorado rivers on which to settle 1,000 families of German, Dutch, Swiss, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish immigrants. The colonization contract was granted on June 7, 1842, and was renewed in its main parts on September 1, 1843. As early as 1839 Fisher and Miller had become interested in colonization in Texas and had organized the San Saba Company to explore the San Saba River country and its possibilities. Mirabeau B. Lamar thought favorably of the plan. The company accomplished nothing but was either revived or reorganized in 1843, after the Fisher-Miller Land Grant went into effect. To facilitate the colonization enterprise, Fisher went to Germany in 1843 and secured the appointment of Texas consul for the port of Bremen on December 20, 1843. Before he left for Germany, he and Miller secured a renewal of their earlier colonization contract, and while Fisher was in Germany he sold to the Adelsverein an interest in the contract for $8,000 to $16,000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Rudolph L. Biesele, The History of the German Settlements in Texas, 1831-1861 (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1930; rpt. 1964). Rudolph L. Biesele, "San Saba Colonization Company," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 33 (January 1930). Henry Francis Fisher Papers, Texas State Library, Austin; Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Moritz Tiling, History of the German Element in Texas (Houston: Rein and Sons, 1913).

Rudolph L. Biesele