By Steve Sears

Henry Wise Miller’s gravesite sits elevated on a hill, and from there you can see across Miller Road the tiny chapel he had built in memory of his late wife, the writer Alice Duer.

In 1952, eighty acres of land were bequeathed to the Diocese of Paterson by Miller and his second wife, Audrey Frazier, for the building of a future parish building. As for the chapel, Frazier recommended that Miller build the chapel for Duer.

“She (Frazier) said, ‘Build the chapel in memory of your first wife.’ That’s what it was,” Our Lady of Magnificat Parish historian, Roger Huss, says. “She was an accomplished writer,” he says of Duer. “She came from high society, and was well educated. Not that he wasn’t accomplished. They both wrote, but she came from a family of notable elites. He did, too, but not to the extent that she did.”

Duer’s most famous work was The White Cliffs (of Dover). “They were married for a long time,” Huss says. “They were married at Grace Church in New York City, and they had one son, and you don’t hear much about the son. Henry knew people in Kinnelon, and he spent a lot of time in Kinnelon, and so it goes he played bridge with some people from the local area. And somehow this lady was up here that knows these people that are living in the Butler area, and she got to meet Henry and they married.” Two prior cottages had already been built on the site, and the chapel came next.

Miller served with the Red Cross in England in World War I, and while there he often went to an Anglican chapel at Cotswold in the Harescombe Gloucester Parish. He loved the design so much and remembered it well, and therefore designed the OLM chapel to resemble it. Miller bought the property in 1925, and donated it in 1952. “Henry gave it to the Paterson diocese,” Huss says. “That came about because the attorneys for the Paterson Diocese and the attorney for Henry Miller, they knew each other. Henry Miller wanted to leave this to somebody, and so the attorney for the Paterson Diocese said they might want it. So, they met with a bishop and the bishop wanted it. It was turned over to the bishop, but the chapel had not yet been built. In 1954, he (Miller) builds the chapel, and then he dies.”

When completed, it was called Our Lady of Magnificat chapel, and it was dedicated by Bishop James A. McNulty on July 2, 1954. Miller thereafter passed away, and his was the first funeral Mass held at the chapel on September 15 of that same year. As previously stated, he is buried in the parish cemetery, and Duer is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Morristown. “Henry Miller’s remains, originally when he died, were buried down by the chapel, down in that area,” Huss says. “When the cemetery was completed, his remains were reinterred up here, and if you go to the top head of the cemetery, he’s right next to Monsignor Ryan.”

When you enter the chapel, which is open for 24 hours a day, you feel insulated from the outside world. On bright days early in the morning, the sun reaches through the blue rose window and illuminates the alter beautifully. In fact, the area the parish is located in, which includes the new church building which was built in 1983, is a rather serene tree-lined area, a nice area for walking and pondering, and if the chapel is your ultimate destination, all the better. Daily 8:15 morning Mass is held in the chapel.

There was, at one time, a tiny choir loft and confessional near the back entrance door. Both have been removed. “There were a couple of stairs going up to sort of a loft, and when you’d come into the entrance right there, you would have gone under the loft, and the confessional was there,” Huss explains. “There wasn’t enough room up there; maybe for three or four people. All of this work, that woodworking, was done by the students in Paterson. There was a Catholic boy’s school run by some priests and brothers.”

Henry Miller also wrote a book about his relationship with his first wife, titled All Our Lives: Alice Duer Miller, which was published in 1945.

For more information on Our Lady of Magnificat, visit www.olmchurch.org.