In 1883 in an attempt to put the Millers out of business a competing steamboat company, the Banks Line, informed the Steamboat Inspection Service (SIS) that George was acting as both the master and the pilot of his steamboat. While sailing the Saline Mary Miller would serve as the ship's clerk and bookkeeper while George piloted it and a son from George's previous marriage acted as the engineer.
During the fall, winter, and occasionally spring months of the year the Millers and their children would travel to New Orleans on the Saline and live on the boat while transporting freight and people on the Mississippi, Red, Ouchita, and Ohio Rivers. One such boat was the Saline a 178-ton steamboat. During the summer months they would live in a house in Portland where George Miller built boats on Shippingport Island. Together they had four children Lula Ann, Georgia, Emily, and Norman as well as three children from George's previous marriages.
On August 3, 1865, she married widower George 'Old Natural' Miller a well respected steamboat builder and pilot. The daughter of a steamboat engineer she was immersed into a life on the river. Miller was born in 1846 in Portland, Kentucky to Andrew and Luanna Garretson. Mary Millicent Miller ( née Mary Millicent Garretson 1846 – October 30, 1894) was an American steamboat master who was the first American woman to acquire a steamboat master's license.
