San Francisco, Dec. 8 – Joseph McKay, who is in jail at Ukiah, Cal., charged with stage robbery, has been found to be the son of Joaquin Miller, “the poet of the Sierras.” The real name of the young man is Harry Miller. He is 22 years of age and is the son of the poet and the latter’s first wife, Minnie Myrtle. On Nov. 15, the Ukiah and Eureka state was held up nineteen miles from Ukiah, by a masked man armed with a rifle. Charles Lambert, the stage driver, upon reaching Ukiah told the sheriff and the latter started on the trail. He found the empty treasure box and learned that a farm house in the vicinity of Willettsville had been robbed a few days previously of a rifle and other articles similar to those in possession of the masked man who stopped the stage.
The sheriff followed to Hopeland, fourteen miles south of Ukiah, and there learned that Miller had been cutting wood for a man named Willard, but had let four days prior to the stage robbery and returned there five days after the robbery, and, after obtaining his mail, had again disappeared. The sheriff followed the fugative to Santa Ross and arrested him at a hotel there. In relating the story, the sheriff said that Miller, after considerable persuasion, confessed and took the sheriff to the place where the rifle and an ax had been buried. Miller says that his life might have been different, but that he never was encouraged to go to school or make anything of himself. The Wichita Daily Eagle, Wichita, Kansas. Wednesday, December 9, 1891. Page 2. © Transcribed by Darren McMannis for the Kansas Council of Genealogical Societies, Inc.