Louisiana, Cameron Parish, Bios
Miller, Valerian Albert
Submitter: Mike Miller
Source: A History of Louisiana 
Date Submitted: July 26, 2007


**********************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm
**********************************************



Valerian Albert Miller.   As a physician and surgeon, Doctor Miller has lived in and worked for the
welfare of the community around Lake Arthur nearly thirty years.  He  has achieved a well deserved
success in his profession, and also as one of the leaders in the politics and public affairs
generally in Jefferson Davis Parish.
 
He was born at Grand Chenier, in Cameron Parish, February 3, 1873 .  His father, Pierre V. Miller, a
native of St. Landry Parish, was a farmer and stockman, and served with a regiment from Vermilion
Parish in the Confederate army.  He was a member of the police jury, and well known among the
democratic leaders throughout Southwestern Louisiana .  He was living retired at Lake Arthur when he
died in 1914 at the age of eighty-five.  Pierre Miller married Emilia Broussard, a native of
Vermilion Parish.
 
Valerian Albert Miller attended public schools in his native parish, was also a student in the
Montgomery Bell Academy , Nashville , Tennessee , and took his medical course in Vanderbilt
University at Nashville , where  he graduated in 1895.  From 1895 to1897 he practiced at Humphrey ,
Arkansas , and since the latter year his home has been at Lake Arthur .  He served as president of
the Calcasieu Parish Medical Society, and was one of the organizers of the Jefferson Davis Parish
Medical Society, and during the recent World war he was medical examiner on the Jefferson Davis
Selection Draft and Exemption Board and chairman of the Red Cross drives.  He has served as coroner
of the latter parish since 1918,and has been a member of the parish school board since the parish was
created in 1913, having previously served on the Calcasieu Parish Board.  Doctor Miller is one of the
owners of the Lake Arthur Pharmacy.  His recreation mostly is looking after his farm, and he is one
of the rice farmers in this locality.  Doctor Miller served as the first mayor of Lake Arthur , and
was the first president of the local Chamber of Commerce.  He is a trustee of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, and belongs to Live Oak Lodge No. 346, F. and A.M., the Royal Arch Chapter, Council, the
Knights
 
Page 258
 
Templar Commandery, the Scottish Rites Consistory and Mystic Shrine.  He is a member of the Jefferson
Davis Parish democratic committee, and has been a councillor of the Seventh District Louisiana State
Medical Society and in 1911 was chosen a delegate by the state society to the American Medical
Association.  
 
Doctor Miller married at Nashville , Tennessee , in 1895 Miss Annie May Parks, who died in 1897.  She
left one son, Lee, who while a student at the University of Kentucky enlisted in the navy during the
World war, and is now employed in the Woolworth Department Store at Boston , Massachusetts .  Doctor
Miller’s second wife was Emma Blocker, of Lake Arthur , daughter of the late  Rev. R. M. Blocker, a
Methodist minister.  By this marriage there are three children:  Lura, who graduated A. B. from the
Louisiana State University, the wife of J. E. Bullerworth, of Baton Rouge; Albert C., a student in
civil and petrol engineering at the Louisiana State University; and Melba Lou, a student in high
school.
 
Scanned and edited for republication by Mike Using the following source:
 
A History of Louisiana , (vol. 2), pp. 257-258, by Henry E. Chambers.  Published by The American
Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York , 1925.