Anson W. Miller, biography c. 1910
[Historical Review of South-East Texas]
 
 
 
 
  Hardy, Dermont H. and Ingham S. Roberts, eds. "A.W. Miller”, The Historical Review of South-East Texas. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1910. Vol. II, pp. 950-951.
 
     
     
 

A. W. MILLER is president of the Miller & Vidor Lumber Company, whose business offices are at Galveston. This firm of exclusive manufacturers is one of the largest in the South. Its mills have a combined daily capacity of about half a million feet, and its products of rough and dressed yellow pine lumber, shingles, ties, piling and railway material are exported to Europe, Canada, Central America and Mexico, while the domestic trade embraces all the Southwest to Colorado and New Mexico and as far east as Pittsburg and Buffalo.

The company’s mills are at Orange, Milvid, Timber and Beaumont. Approximately a thousand men are on_ the payroll, and the industry comprises several departments, each of which is a considerable business of itself. A general merchandise store is conducted at several of the mills, and there is also a well equipped system of railway lines used primarily for the transportation of the company’s raw and finished material and supplies.

The timber lands are located in Orange, Jefferson, Jasper, Hardin, Liberty, Polk, Montgomery, San Jacinto, Grimes and Waller counties, and the company controls about 130,000 acres of timber land. The capitalization of the different plants in the corporation is $1,500,000, while the total investment in all properties exceeds three million dollars. The principal officers of the Miller & Vidor Lumber Company are: A. W. Miller, president; C. H. Moore, vice president; C. S. Vidor, secretary and treasurer.

Mr. Miller has made lumbering his business career, having begun soon after he became of age. His individual success measured from his different official connections with the industry is notable among the careers of many lumbermen in Southeast Texas.

He was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. February 26, 1866. His father, T. L. Miller, a native of Philadelphia, who died in 1892, was a capitalist and financier: his mother, Catherine (Lane) Miller, also of Pennsylvania, is still living.

After an education in the common schools of Pittsburg he became, in 1880, an employe of the Green Bay Lumber Company at Des Moines, Iowa. The years spent with this company was in the nature of an apprenticeship to the business, and soon after he came to Texas and located at Galveston in 1889, he organized a corporation known as the Darlington-Miller Lumber Company, wholesale and retail, with a capital of $300,000. This company was the predecessor of the Miller & Vidor Lumber Company, the corporate title having been changed in 1905.

About 1900 Mr. Miller began making extensive purchases of timber lands, and in 1901 the company disposed of its retail business and has since been exclusively engaged in the manufacturing and wholesale branches of the industry.

Mr. Miller is an official of the following lumber industries: Vice-president of the Beaumont Sawmill Company, president of the Orange Sawmill Company, vice-president of the Miller & Vidor Sawmill Company, vice-president of the Peach River Lumber Company, vice president of the Peach River Lines (railroad). He is also a member of the Galveston Chamber of Commerce and of the lumbermen’s fraternity, the Hoo Hoo’s.

Mr. Miller married, in 1908, Miss Donella Campbell. Her father, Donald Campbell, was a citizen of Port Perry, Ontario, Canada.

 
     
     
     
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Text and images were digitized and proofread from the original source documents by Murry Hammond. Contact Murry for all corrections and contributions of new material.