Old Photograph Birthplace Hugh Miller Cromarty Scotland

Old photograph of the birthplace of Hugh Miller in Cromarty, Scotland. Hugh Miller, born 10 October 1802, died December 1856, was a self taught Scottish geologist and writer, folklorist and an evangelical Christian. Born in Cromarty, he was educated in a parish school where he reportedly showed a love of reading. At 17 he was apprenticed to a stonemason, and his work in quarries, together with walks along the local shoreline, led him to the study of geology. Among his geological works are The Old Red Sandstone, Footprints of the Creator, The Testimony of the Rocks, Sketch-book of Popular Geology. Of these books, perhaps The Old Red Sandstone was the best-known. The Old Red Sandstone is still a term used to collectively describe sedimentary rocks deposited as a result of the Caledonian orogeny in the late Silurian, Devonian and earliest part of the Carboniferous period. For most of 1856, Miller suffered severe headaches and mental distress, and the most probable diagnosis is of psychotic depression. Victorian medicine did not help. He feared that he might harm his wife or children because of persecutory delusions. Miller committed suicide, shooting himself in the chest with a revolver in his house on Tower Street, Portobello, Edinburgh on the night of 23rd December 1856.

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