Miriam Angle was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, one the six children of German immigrants Myer Angle and Catharine Pallen Angle. When she was nine, her father together with other German congregants who were feeling excluded by the Sephardi congregation Beth Shalome, defected to start their own congregation, which they dubbed Beth Ahabah. Althoguh her father initially took the role of lay leader, by the time she was fourteen, the congregation had decided to send off for someone with greater knowledge to lead and teach in their community—their choice, Bavarian immigrant Moses Michelbacher, would do just that. He founded a school, charities, and consecrated a synagogue for the congregation.

In 1849 Moses’s wife, Mary, mother of his three children, died. The following year, he married seventeen-year-old Miriam. They had five children, including Emma, who would marry Charles Millhiser, the son of another prominent German Jewish Richmond family.