brother of poet Joaquin Miller

GEORGE MELVIN MILLER. To George Melvin Miller more than to any other individual is due the development of Florence, the seaport of Lane county. His labors have directly and indirectly benefited this part of the state and the consensus of public opinion places him with the leading citizens of Eugene. He was born in Lane county, Oregon, May 22, 1857, and is a son of Hulings and Margaret B. (Witt) Miller. His paternal grandfather. Hulings Miller. Sr., laid down his life on the altar of his country while serving as a soldier in the War of 1812 under command of General William Henry Harrison. His son and namesake was born in Ohio, whence he removed to Liberty, Indiana. He was a well educated man for
his day and engaged in teaching school in Indiana, in which state he married and there four of the older children were born. After living for a time on the Indian Reserve in western Indiana, where he also engaged in teaching, he emigrated to Oregon in 1852, with his family, settling at Coburg in the foothills, where he resided until his death, which occurred in 1884. Unto him and his wife were born five children: John D., who was a dentist and practiced in Philadelphia but lost his health through his service in the Civil war; James, living at Creswell, Oregon; Joaquin, who is far famed as the poet, of the Sierras ; Ella, who became the wife of John Luckey but is deceased; and George Melvin.
The last named attended the public schools and afterward took up the profession of teaching. Desirous of advancing his own education, he later entered Monmouth (Oregon) College and also attended the University of Oregon in the year in which it was opened. He began reading law with Judge Walton and following his admission to the bar practiced at Eugene and at Independence but has given most of his time to real-estate dealings, in which connection he has become very widely known. On the 26th of May,
1887, he purchased the original town site of Florence, becoming owner of ninety acres, for which he paid ten dollars an acre. He had first visited this site in 1883, driving a wagon to a point twenty-five miles from Eugene and then walking the remainder of the distance, carrying his blankets. He was accompanied by D. P. Thompson, S. W. Condon and Professor Lee, who was superintendent of schools of Eugene. At Mapleton they found an Indian, who had a boat and took them down to what is now the site of Florence. At that time there was only a board house there and one white family—about a half dozen inhabitants in all. There was a small store in a shanty conducted by A. J. Moody. On that trip of two days Mr. Miller saw the possibilities for the building of an attractive seaport town there. Mr. Moody had obtained title to his holdings of ninety acres and when this was put on sale after his death nobody bid for it and the sale was continued until the following year. In the meantime a wagon road had been opened between Eugene and Mapleton and settlers began to move in and take up government land. Biggar Herman was attorney
for the administrator for the Moody estate and through him Mr. Miller learned that the property could be bought but only through public sale at auction. Mr. Herman also said that the land would not be put up for
sale again without a guarantee of at least one bid and Mr. Miller guaranteed the bid. He proved to be the only bidder and secured the title to the property. Later he secured a homestead claim adjoining the site and subsequently purchased a half interest in the Chicago addition and one hundred and fifty acres in another tract. He has since been selling lots and buying acreage, and has dealt extensively in that district. His sound judgment and keen prescience were manifest in his purchase of the land at Florence, for he recognized its possibilities and wisely used the opportunity that came to him. Operating extensively in real estate there through the intervening years, he has derived therefrom a handsome and well earned
fortune.
He was the pioneer in cutting up the large donation claims into small tracts for higher tillage, beginning in 1887 with the Solomon Zumalt donation claim near Eugene. Mr. Miller spent the greater part of four years, from 1898 to 1902, in southeastern Alaska, following various occupations from practicing law to stampeding for mining claims in close proximity to the disputed boundary line between Alaska and Canada, and naturally, as an American citizen, took a deep interest in the settlement of the question pending between the British and American governments. He happened to be in Skagway on a morning in June, 1901, when the Canadian customs officials raised the British flag over their improvised customs house in that town. Mr. Miller, seeing the flag floating over what he knew to be American soil, promptly cut the halyards and lowering the British colors, carefully folded them and laid them aside. Asked by what authority he did this, he replied, "By the authority of an American citizen," and added that the British flag could not be raised again in Skagway unless the flag of the United States floated above it. The incident very nearly led to international complications. The government sustained Mr. Miller in his action and the British government repudiated the act of its officials in Skagway. President Roosevelt sent out a body of soldiers and established a post at Haines Mission on the Chilcat peninsula. A commission was appointed and a boundary line established substantially as claimed by Mr. Miller, and Skagway remained in American territory.
Mr. Miller was one of the organizers of the Presbyterian church in Florence, and was for a time one of its elders.
In 1885 he married Lischen Coggswell, a daughter of John Coggswell, of Eugene. [The Centennial History of Oregon by Gaston Vol 4 p259-60]