Miller Grieve was born in 1801 in Edinburgh, Scotland, third of the four children of John and Marion (Miller) Grieve. The entire family emigrated to America in 1817 and settled in Savannah, Georgia. There one of the sons and a son-in-law engaged in shipping, but both died of yellow fever in the epidemic of 1820, and the surviving members of the family moved first to Liberty County and afterward to Oglethorpe County.
Miller set up as a lawyer in Lexington. In 1829 he became private secretary to George Rockingham Gilmer, a neighbor who had just been elected governor. This position he retained for two years only, but it affected his entire life in that it necessitated his definite removal to Milledgeville, then the state capital.
Grieve, in the year of his marriage, bought out Grantland, and from then till 1853 dominated the paper, making it - thanks to the force of his logic and the testiness of his phraseology - the unofficial organ of the Whig party in Georgia and a respected vehicle of opinion over the entire country. When in 1831 Gilmer was defeated for a second term as governor, Grieve vowed that his mentor should be reinstated in office, and in fact, so potent was the Recorder, that in 1837 this end was achieved.
In 1840 the Recorder was perhaps the determining factor in Georgia’s voting for Harrison and Tyler, and in 1848 for Taylor and Fillmore.
He refused the United States ministry to the Argentine Republic offered him by President Taylor, but accepted Fillmore’s offer to make him charge d’affaires in Denmark and was commissioned August 30, 1852.
His service in Copenhagen - whither he was accompanied by two young sons and a young nephew - was apparently adequate. Locally he was active, being a captain of the town militia, a promoter of railways, a trustee of public institutions, a benefactor of Oglethorpe University - to the sum of $20, 000 - and a pillar of Presbyterianism. He spent his last years in retirement in Milledgeville, and died there.
In 1833 he was married to Sarah Caroline Grantland, daughter of Fleming Grantland. He had many children.
