Stephen Miller Family History

Stephen N. Miller was born on August 23rd, 1985 to his Jewish parents Michael and Miriam Miller in Santa Monica, California.  He grew up there in affluence, in a liberal Jewish household.

Stephen’s older cousin Alisa remembered him then as “an awkward, funny, needy middle child who loved to chase attention” but was “always the sweetest with the littlest family members.”  At that time he was more interested in Startrek than politics.

The Contrarian Stephen.  Something then changed.  In 1998 his father lost an important case, he went into debt, and they had to downsize.  The family became resentful.  Young Stephen abruptly told his erstwhile friend Jason Islas that they could no longer be friends because Jason was Latino.

Stephen’s contrarian spirit emerged in high school.  He rebelled against what he saw as the bleeding heart, multiculturist Jewish left in Santa Monica.  He became a rebel-rouser.  In this he found a mentor in the right-wing writer David Horowitz who, he said, gave him the chutzpah to stand up against hostile teachers and classmates.

Stephen attended Duke University and his combative style continued.  He lambasted multiculturism and the country’s immigration policies.  He was best known there for defending three members of the Duke lacrosse team accused of rape.  He argued that they had been presumed guilty simply because they were white males.

Washington Politics.  After graduating from Duke in 2007, Stephen was able to land jobs with Republican politicians, including Jeff Sessions who would later become Attorney General.

But his most important connection – through the Breitbart News – was with Steve Bannon.  They first met in 2014 and it was Bannon who led him to Trump and secured his position as a senior policy advisor in 2016.

During Trump’s first term Stephen served as the chief speechwriter, as well as being a senior policy advisor.  He was clearly part of Trump’s inner circle.  Donald Trump attended his and Katie’s wedding in Washington DC in 2020.

In Trump’s second term Steohen returned as a deputy chief of staff for policy and a Homeland Security advisor.  He in fact became the architect of Trump’s new immigration policies, planning the ICE raids around the country to carry out deportations.

This role marked him out as one of the most powerful people in the Trump White House.

Jewish Immigrants

Stephen’s Jewish forebears were on both sides – maternal and paternal – immigrants who made good in America.

They both came from the Pale of Settlement in thst part of the Russian empire now known as Belarus.  They may have been the lucky ones.  Most of the Jews that remained in Belarus were murdered by the Nazis.

In America they worked hard and were proud of their accomplishments.  Politically, they were liberal and Democrat in their thinking.

The Glosser family on Stephen’s maternal side “escaped Europe as dirt poor immigrants, joined the community, built businesses, and honestly sold goods to their fellow Johns-towners.”  They ran a family-owned department store in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

On his paternal Miller side, the first generation’s success in selling groceries and rolling cigars led to the next generation’s success in law and real estate in Los Angeles.

The Glosser Side

The Glossers seem to have started leaving Russia for America in the 1890’s.  They were fleeing poverty but also anti-Jewish pogroms and possible conscription into the Czarist army.

The elder son Moses left in 1893.  Later Glossers came in stages as money was raised each time for the passage.  A younger son Wolf Lieb, later known as Louis, arrived in 1903.

“Louis set foot on Ellis Island on January 7, 1903, with $8 to his name. Though fluent in Polish, Russian and Yiddish, he understood no English.  An elder son Nathan soon followed. By street corner peddling and sweatshop toil, Louis and Nathan sent enough money home to pay off debts and buy the immediate family’s passage to America in 1906.”

Those arriving included Louis’ youngest son Sam, Stephen’s maternal great grandfather.

Johnstown, Pennsylvania.  The Glossers made their home in the small coal and steel town of Johnstown in Cambria county east of Pittsburgh.  They were poor to begin with but worked hard on their different businesses.

Moses started up a steel-fabricating company Glosser Steel at Windber in 1899.  All four of his sons worked in the business, as did David Glosser of the next generation (until his death in 2016).

Louis began in 1906 with a tailoring shop in Johnstown.  This expanded into a haberdashery store and then in 1931 to the Glosser Brothers department store on Main Street.  After Louis died in 1927, his sons Nathan (until 1937), David and Sam and then Sam’s son Izzy would run the store.

Sam had fought in World War One and stayed on afterwards in Palestine.  There he met and married in 1920 his wife Penina from a Russian Jewish family living there.  He and Penina subsequently returned to Johnstown and raised three children, including Izzy.

By the 1950’s these Glossers may have been considered as upper-middle-class in their community.  They had a comfortable lifestyle, although not extravagant.  Politically, having lived through the Depression, they were New Deal Democrats.

Miriam Glosser, born into this family in 1948, was the second of Izzy and Ruth Glosser’s three children.  Ruth had worked at St. Francis University as the Dean of their Social Work program and Miriam followed her into social work.

The family continued to run their department store until 1989 when it was acquired and liquidated in a leveraged buyout.  Izzy was still active after the closure.  He was athletic and won gold medals in the senior Olympics in his 80’s.

Izzy and Ruth both died out in California, Izzy in 2016 and Ruth in 2020.

The Miller Side

Nison Cheinman from Hlusk in present-day Belarus became Max Miller after his arrival in America in 1904.  He and his first wife Sarah settled in Chicago where they had four children, including their youngest Jay who was born in 1914.  Max started out selling groceries and then progressed to rolling cigars.

The family later moved to Detroit.  Max and Sarah divorced in 1934 and Max remarried a widow.  He died in Chicago in 1960.

Jay and Freya Miller.  If ever there was a happy couple that would make a success of their lives, it was Jay and Freya Miller.

Jay had left his home in Detroit to join the US Navy.  In 1940, as a newly commissioned ensign, he married the love of his life, Freya Baker, in Pittsburgh.  Jay fought in World War Two and traveled the world with the Navy.  In 1949 they decided to leave the East and headed west for California.

In Los Angeles Jay built a very successful real estate business and became a pillar of the Jewish community.  In his 50’s he wanted to expand his knowledge and went to law school.  It was said of him:

“Jay embraced individuals with the same gusto that he embraced the world.  He exuded a zest for life that all wish for but few achieve.  His mind refused to be bored and his spirit refused to be discouraged.”

Freya studied painting in Los Angeles and eventually became a full-time artist, creating paintings which she shared with family and friends and displayed in her home.

Jay lived to be ninety one (dying in 2005) and Freya to ninety seven (dying in 2015).

Stephen’s Parents and Their Troubles

Stephen’s father Michael Miller, Jay’s youngest child, was a Stanford-educated lawyer.  He co-founded a firm focused on corporate and real estate law; and he also became deeply involved in his father’s real estate business.

Michael was described by friends and colleagues as mensch.  Like his father he served on board posts for a number of Jewish philanthropic organizations.

His mother Miriam, having graduated from the Columbia University School of Social Work in New York, went west to Los Angeles to work wiith troubled teens there.

Somewhere along the way she met and married Michael.  Three children followed, the middle child being their son Stephen.  In time Miriam forsook her social work and busied herself in the family’s real estate business.

California Paradise?  In Santa Monica, they lived in a well-to-do neighborhood north of Montana Avenue.  Theirs was a semi-urban coastal enclave of wealthy and mostly white liberals.

They were supported by an omnipresent labor of immigrants who were neither white nor wealthy.  The Millers themselves had Latin American–born housekeepers to cook the family meals and clean up after them.

Trouble in Paradise.  This comfortable lifestyle was disrupted in 1994 when the Millers had a run of terrible luck.  A major earthquake inflicted $20 billion in property damage in Southern California, including damage on a number of properties that were managed by the family firm.

It came at a particularly inopportune moment for them.   Michael was in the midst of an acrimonious legal battle with his former partners in the law firm that that he had started.  The upshot was that he soon found himself in debt for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In 1998 the Millers were forced to downsize to more modest premises in a less affluent area of Santa Monica off a busy stretch of the Pico Boulevard.  They were perhaps resentful of this change in circumstance; while Michael was also aggrieved by the Government starting to put restrictions on his real estate business.

Michael and Miriam thereafter became more right-wing in their views.  And this was at a time when the state of California was seeing more anti-immigrant sentiment and racial backlash.  Miriam’s brother David, coming to visit, was horrified by the changes that he saw in the family.

 

Stephen Miller’s Family Tree

• Maternal Line

• Ephraim Glatzer from Antopol in Belarus, Russia (1845-1900) m. Bessie (died in 1890)
• – Moses Glosser (1864-1949) came to America around 1893
• – Wolf Lieb (Louis) Glosser (1866-1927) came to America around 1903
• – David Glosser (1868-1930’s) m. Ida, came to America around 1905

• Wolf Lieb (Louis) Glosser from Hrodna in Belarus, Russia m. Bessie Greenburg (1861-1929) around 1878.  They too made their home in Cambria county, Pennsylvania.  Louis started a tailoring business in Johnstown that later became a department store.
• – Joan Glosser (1879-1950) m. Joseph Ossip
• – Raisa Glosser (b. 1880) m. Abraham Weissman
• – Nathan Glosser (1883-1955) m. Fanny Nisselbaum
• – David Glosser (1889-1954) m. Sylvia Sachs
• – Saul (Solomon) Glosser (1892-1944) m. Eva Hurwitz
• – Simon (Sam) Glosser (1894-1959)
• – Bella Glosser (1895-1985) m. Samuel Coppersmith

• Simon (Sam) Glosser from Hrodna in Belarus, Russia came to Pennsylvania in 1906 and m. Penina (Pearl) Apter (1893-1952) from Jaffa, Palestine in 1920.  They later returned to Johnstown.
• – Freda Glosser (b. 1920) m. Herbert Sinberg
• – Isadore (Izzy) Glosser (1922-2016)
• – Frederick (Fred) Glosser (1924-2021) m. Betty

• Isadore (Izzy) Glosser frrom Cambria, Pennsylvania m. Ruth Taubman (1923-2020) in Pennsylvania around 1945
• – Mark Glosser (1946-2013), lawyer in Pittsburgh
• – Miriam Glosser (b. 1948), moved to California
• – David Glosser, neuropsychologist in Boston

• Miriam Glosser came to Los Angeles as a social worker and m. Michael Miller (b. 1950) there.  They settled in Santa Monica, California
• – Alexis Buese nee Miller (b. 1982), lawyer in Florida
• – Stephen Miller (b. 1985), Republican political operative
• – Jacob Miller (b.1989), lawyer in New York

• Stephen Miller m. Katie Waldman (b. 1991), a conservative Washington press secretary, in Washington DC in 2020 and moved to Arlington, Virginia
• – Mackenzie Miller (b. 2020)
• – Jackson Miller (b. 2022)
• – Hudson Miller (b. 2023)

• Paternal Line 

• Maxwell (Max) Miller (formerly Nison Cheinman) from Hlusk, Belarus in Russia (1878-1960) m. Sarah Mandelowitz (1880-1942) in 1901 and they came to America in 1904, settling first in Chicago and then in Detroit, divorced in 1934; rem. widow Gertrude Gushansky (1881-1965) in Chicago in 1936.
• – Hyman Miller (1904-1980) m. Esther Waldman
• – Anne Miller (1907-1983) m. Abraham Abramson
• – Gilbert Miller (1908-1978) m. Zelda Weiner
• – Jacob (Jay) Miller (1914-2005)

• Jacob (Jay) Miller from Chicago m. Freya Baker from Pittsburgh (1918-2015) in Pittsburgh in 1940 and moved to Los Angeles in 1949
• – William Miller (b. 1942)
• – Suzanne Miller (b. 1944)
• – Michael Miller (b. 1950)

 

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