Ohio County, West Virginia Biography of JEREMIAH ALEXANDER MILLER This biography was submitted by Valerie Crook, E-mail address: The submitter does not have a connection to the subject of this sketch. This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume III, pg. 435-436 Ohio JEREMIAH ALEXANDER MILLER. As an active resident of Wheeling for over sixty years, prominent as a banker, real estate operator, and with widely diversified interests, the career of Col. J. A. Miller can be noted only briefly in a suggestive outline. His friends and associates bear witness to the fact that he has been one of Wheeling's most use- ful as well as most honored and successful citizens. Jeremiah A. Miller was born near Martinsburg in Berke- ley County, Virginia, December 9, 1844. His father, John F. Miller, a native of Pennsylvania, was for a number of years a school teacher in Morgan County, and his wife, Rosanna Ellenberger, was a native of that county. They were married in Berkeley County. John F. Miller died at Martinsburg in 1852, and his widow died a number of years later in Wheeling. Jeremiah A. is the only survivor of their three children: John was a merchant and died at Columbus, Ohio, in 1919, and Belle died at Wheeling at the age of thirty. J. A. Miller acquired a public school education and was eighteen years of age when he came to Wheeling in 1862. From that year until 1868 he was a grocery salesman, and from 1868 to 1884 was in business as a wholesale fancy grocery merchant. During 1884-5 he was a member of the firm Boyd, Miller Company, wholesale shoes. Colonel Miller's active association with Wheeling banking affairs is a matter of interesting record. He has been a stockholder and director of the bank for forty years, and during this time he served as cashier and manager, then resigned to take the office of vice president and, later, president, the position he now holds. The institution under different names has been in the financial district of Wheel- ing for over sixty years. It was the first Wheeling bank to take advantage of the National Bank Act, being incor- porated as the First National Bank in 1864. Some ten or twelve years later it surrendered the National charter and has since been known as the Bank of the Ohio Valley. Colonel Miller since 1905 has been president of the bank. He is also president of the Center Wheeling Savings Bank, which was organized in 1901 and is president of the Com- munity Savings & Loan Company. Colonel Miller is presi- dent of the West Virginia Printing Company, and for a number of years was associated with the real estate firm of Alexander & Miller Land Company, also with North Park Land Company. He was one of the promoters and the president of the Board of Directors of the first electric street car lines in Wellsburg, Wheeling and Moundsville, West Virginia, being among the first electric car lines in the United States. He helped to organize and was president of the first ice manu- facturing company in this section of the United States. In his civic record one service, that stands out perhaps above all others at Wheeling, has been his continuous mem- bership of forty-four years on the Board of Education. He is chairman of the Wheeling Public Library Committee of the Board of Education, and among other services he was mayor of Wheeling in 1883-84, president of the Board of Directors of the West Virginia Penitentiary from 1890 to 1894, and regent of the West Virginia State Reform School in 1895. Colonel Miller was a delegate to the National Democratic Convention of 1912 at Baltimore, when Woodrow Wilson was nominated for his first term. He was aid-de-camp with the rank of colonel on the staff of Gov- ernor J. B. Jackson, also chief marshal of democratic parades in the presidential campaigns of 1876 to 1892, in- clusive. Colonel Miller has a distinguished record in Masonry and Odd Fellowship. He is a thirty-third degree Scottish Rite Mason, is a trustee of the West Virginia Grand Lodge of Masons, and is president of the Masonic Temple Association of Wheeling. He is the oldest past grand master and past chief patriarch of West Virginia Odd Fellows. He was grand master of the Grand Lodge in 1876-77. He is a past grand commander of the Grand Commandery of West Virginia Knight Templars, also past grand high priest of the Grand Chapter of West Virginia Royal Arch Masons and a member of the Mystic Shrine, Mecca Temple, New York, for thirty-five years. Colonel Miller married Miss Ida M. Deiters, a native of Ohio County, West Virginia. They have two daughters: Anna Isabelle, a graduate of Randolph-Macon College of Lynchburg, Virginia; and Ruth Alexandria, who is a graduate of the Wheeling High School and is now a student in Randolph-Macon College.