Harold Miller gave Berne its history.

A man of deep intellect and quiet courage, he died on May 4. He was 82.

The second eldest of nine children raised on a Berne dairy farm, he had deep roots in the Helderberg Hilltowns. He embraced his heritage and loved his hometown — yet felt he couldn’t live there.

We once asked him why he left.

“Basically because I’m gay,” he answered in his usual straightforward fashion. “I didn’t feel comfortable. It wasn’t a great place to be gay.”

This week, Harold’s older brother, Ralph, recalled how, when they were both students at Cornell’s agricultural college, “Harold was feeling upset when he kissed a girl and happy when he kissed a guy.”

Harold asked himself, “Why? Why would I chose to be gay and hated by two-thirds of the world?” Ralph concluded, “He didn’t have a choice.”

Ralph went on, “My father was very upset to find Harold was gay. My mother told him to keep his mouth shut.”

Both brothers were in the Reserve Officer Training Corps and, after graduating from Cornell, Harold, a lieutenant in the Air Force, was stationed in Greenland for two years.

“I always wanted to be a farmer,” said Ralph. From his home, he can see the house where he was born and can look up Cole Hill to see the spot where his great-great-grandfather is buried. “Harold did not want to farm,” he said.

Harold went to Washington, D.C. to work for the National Park Service. He became a budget officer for the country’s capital region, which includes the White House, the Washington Monument, and the National Mall.

“Sometimes, he’d sit in the White House and have Johnson’s daughters looking over his shoulder,” said Ralph.

While living in Washington, D.C., Harold fell in love with Ed Davidson, who worked for the Smithsonian Institution. The couple held a commitment ceremony on Dec. 31, 1967, which was both New Year’s Eve and Harold’s birthday. 

Forty years later, when same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts, they were married at the Village Inn in Lenox. The Enterprise was pleased to run the couple’s wedding announcement, which caused several subscription cancellations as well as angry phone calls.

Everyone in Harold’s family attended the wedding ceremony, after which his mother said, “Thank God. Now all of my children are married.”

After their wedding, the couple cruised the Danube, to Budapest and back.

“They loved to travel,” said Harold’s sister, Carolyn Wright. “They were planning a trip around the world when Ed got sick.” Harold himself suffered from Parkinson’s and they had nurses who helped them at their home in Mexico.

The couple lived first in San Miguel de Allende and then in Oaxaca for 20 years. They wrote a “Gay Guide to Mexico.” “It had places gay men could go and just be themselves — to go dancing and have fun,” said Carolyn. Her son Garth, who is gay, told her, “Mom, there’s only certain chapters I want you to read,” she recalled with a laugh. “I liked the book,” she said.

Carolyn submitted an obituary to The Enterprise, written by John Williams, a dear friend of Harold and Ed’s from Mexico, which she wanted to run with their wedding picture. It’s on our obituary page this week.

Since their boyhood, Harold and Ralph shared a love of history. Ralph became the Berne town historian. Asked this week what led to his passion for local history, Ralph answered with one word: “Family.”

He went on, “I started out doing a genealogy of our family. I quickly found out we were related to everyone.” His graduating class at Berne-Knox used to joke about all being related. “I found out that 17 of 30-some were relatives,” said Ralph.

Ralph entered the information he found into his computer and ended up with 40,000 names. “I got Harold into it. He started working on it from Oaxaca and spent literally thousands of hours on it, interpreting what he was seeing and doing research …. He brought it all together.”

In 2013, as Harold was publishing a book on the German heritage of Berne and Knox — upending the Hilltowns’ accepted history — he told us, “At first, Ralph was criticized by the Albany County historian for doing genealogy. But, without genealogy, I never would have found out the history was wrong,” said Harold.

Researching digitized records on the internet from his home in Mexico, Harold went back to the early 1700s and found the settlers were all German-speaking. He also discovered that the long accepted view of Berne’s history — that seven families settled Berne in 1750 — was not true. His book details the complex series of events, stretching over decades, that led to the European settlement of the Hilltowns.

The account in “Our Heritage,” published in 1977 by the Town of Berne Bicentennial Commission, states, “It was 1750 when Jacob Weidman led a small band of settlers along an old Indian trail through the Helderbergs.”

That account was taken from Howell and Tenny’s “The History of Albany County,” written in 1886. Harold’s study of vital records revealed, instead, that the early Berne families arrived individually over a period of more than two decades.

Some local historical society members were angry; one told him he was “trying to change the history of Berne.” Rather, Harold said, “I’m trying to correct it.”

He started a website, now hosted by The Enterprise, dedicated to the genealogy of the Hilltowns and he was instrumental in having Berne celebrate its history with a Heritage Day.

Through a flurry of emails sent from Mexico, Harold built a network of people interested in assembling an association of Helderberg farmers and business owners that would act as a virtual chamber of commerce for the Hilltowns.

He envisioned low-impact tourism as being an economic boon for the rural area that would preserve its natural beauty. “One of the reasons why visitors come is because of the beautiful scenery …,” Harold told us in 2008. “They want to see the farmland; they want to see the waterfalls, the creeks; they want to go into the mountains; they want the beauty of the Hilltowns.”

The Helderberg Hilltowns Association was formed and still leads events like this month’s “After the Sap” 5K run and annual tours, featuring local farms and businesses.

Harold Miller’s most lasting legacy though may be in the history he researched and wrote. 

Ralph Miller said what he will miss most about his brother is his knowledge. “He worked so hard in learning all these things. There is no replacement for what he knew,” said Ralph.

But Harold left a written record from which we can all learn and benefit. By understanding our past, the ugly parts as well as the noble parts, we can plot a richer future.

Ralph also said, “There were people that resented Harold was doing this, that he was gay, that he wasn’t here and part of the comunity.”

But, really, Harold Miller extended our idea of community. Through his website and through his letters and words on the pages of his hometown newspaper, The Altamont Enterprise, he brought together people who cared about the Hilltowns — about its history and its future.

Carolyn described her brother as “very kind, very generous, very loving.” She went on, “When he was happy, he was very bubbly. He loved life with Ed. They respected each other. They loved each other dearly.”

Ed Davidson died on Nov. 10, 2021, five months before Harold. Carolyn said their ashes are mingled and will be buried in Berne this summer.

So, although Harold Miller felt he couldn’t comfortably live in the Hilltowns, he will be buried there. We hope the prejudice that kept him away will be buried as well.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer