Abner Miles Grave Marker

In a wooded area of Westminster, a solitary official military headstone indicates the final resting place of Abner Miles, a private in the American Revolution.

Private Miles served for three months and five days in a regiment known as the Jackson Company. In August of 1777, his company responded to an alarm in Bennington, Vermont, marching 200 miles in ten days from Westminster to East Hoosuck (present day Adams, Massachusetts) and back under the command of Major Ebenezer Bridge.

Abner Miles died of smallpox on July 23, 1778, cutting short his third term of enlistment.

Because he died of smallpox, Private Miles was buried on family-owned land as opposed to a town cemetery. The grave marker itself was not erected at the time of his death but placed by the federal government in 1951.

Its inscription reads:

ABNER
MILES
MASSACHUSETTS
PVT
JACKSON’S CO
REV. WAR
JULY 23, 1778