Wesley F. Miller served as a 2nd Lieutenant in Company E of the 7th United States Infantry Regiment in the American Civil War.

Lieutenant Miller was 20 years of age when he was killed July 2nd on Houck's Ridge near the Wheatfield. He was the eldest son of Margaret and Stephen Miller of St. Cloud, Minnesota. He, along with his father, had enlisted at Fort Snelling into Company D of the 1st Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment, only two weeks after the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter. Because of his political connections, the father, Stephen Miller, was chosen to be the Lieutenant Colonel of the regiment.

He led a section of the unit in the fierce fighting on Henry House Hill during the battle of First Manassas, then later led the 7th Minnesota as its Colonel, and was in charge of the execution of 38 Sioux Indians who had attacked white settlements in Minnesota during the summer of 1862. In the election of 1863, he was elected Governor of the state, serving until January 8, 1866. He died in Worthington, Minnesota on August 19, 1881.

Wesley Miller served in the 1st Minnesota until he received a Lieutenant's commission in the 7th U.S. Infantry on December 7th, 1861. He served in this regular regiment until his death at Gettysburg.

On July 20th, 1863, Wesley's father wrote to a young woman he greeted as "My Dear Mary," who can be judged from the letter to be Wesley's fiance. Part of the letter read as follows:

"...I suppose that the relations between you and he (Wesley's) were quite intimate. I did not think that they had so fully matured. I need not say that you would have been very dear to me as a daughter, and that had Wesley lived I should always have said that he was unworthy of you; and you shall be none the less dear to me now that he has departed.

Poor lad! He had his failings but was a youth of noble impulses.

It is hard to find substantial comfort for such a terrible loss; but we have this consolation at least that he died battling for the best government upon Earth, and in the holiest causes ever vindicated by warriors upon the field of slaughter. Better that all my children and their father too -- should fall, than that the old flag should trail in the dust, or one star be erased from its field of light."

Wesley was originally buried in Section D, Site #29 of the U.S. Regulars Plot in the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Then his body was removed from that site, supposedly by family members, years after the cemetery was dedicated, and reburied 35 miles north of Gettysburg within the Harrisburg City Cemetery. Today, his grave in Harrisburg is marked by a worn and broken headstone.