450 



OBITUARIES, AMERICAN. (MILLER MITKIEWICZ.) 



he was military secretary to Lieut.-Gen. Miles, 

 with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. 



Miller, Abram O., physician and soldier, born 

 in Madison County, Ohio/Get. 3, 1827; died in 

 Lebanon, Ind., April 25, 1901. He was graduated 

 in medicine at the State University of Kentucky 

 in 1856. At the outbreak of the civil war he 

 organized a company of three-months men for the 

 10th Indiana Infantry, and was its captain 

 through its term of service. When the 10th In- 

 diana was reorganized for the three years' service, 

 Capt. Miller was made major, and he served in 

 that capacity till Aug. 14, 1802, participating in 

 the battles of Mill Spring and Shiloh and the 

 siege of Corinth. He was then appointed colonel 

 of the 72d Indiana Infantry. When Gen. Wilder 

 was compelled to retire on account of ill health 

 after the battle of Chickamauga he left Col. Miller 

 in command of the famous Wilder brigade, which 

 he commanded from that time till the close of 

 the war, during some of its most arduous cam- 

 paigns and in some of its severest battles. He 

 was severely wounded while leading the charge 

 on the works at Selma, Ala., and was several 

 months in the hospital in Montgomery. He was 

 brevetted brigadier-general. After the war he re- 

 turned to the practise of medicine in Lebanon, 

 Ind. For four years after 1868 he was clerk of 

 the circuit court, elected on the Republican ticket. 

 As candidate for State Auditor he was defeated 

 in 1878. 



Miller, Adam, Methodist clergyman, born in 

 Maryland in 1810; died in Chicago, 111., July 29, 

 1901. He was often called the father of the Ger- 

 man Methodist Church in the United States. He 

 was of Pennsylvania German parentage, and was 

 taken in infancy to Ohio. In 1830 he went with 

 the Rev. Joseph McDowell to Knox County, Ohio, 

 and in the autumn of that year he was licensed 

 to preach by the Ohio Conference and assigned 

 to the Nicholas Circuit, Virginia, in the Kana- 

 wha district, where he preached for four years. 

 Previous to 1834 he had preached in English, but 

 in that year he began preaching in German, and 

 after that time interested himself almost entirely 

 among the great numbers of Germans that emi- 

 grated into that region. In 1835 he was ap- 

 pointed to the Greenville, Ohio, circuit, and in 

 1837 to the Milford circuit. He was stationed in 

 Cincinnati in 1841-'42, and while there collected 

 the funds for and built the first German Meth- 

 odist church in that city. In 1843 he was sent 

 to Baltimore to take charge of the German mis- 

 sion work. Soon afterward he left the ministry 

 on account of a throat trouble, and took up the 

 practise of medicine. When nineteen years old 

 he published Footprints through Nature to the 

 Supernatural; in 1843, Origin and Progress of the 

 German Missions in the Methodist Episcopal 

 Church; and in 1859, Experience of German Meth- 

 odist Preachers. 



Miner, James Griffiths, inventor, born in Al- 

 bany, N. Y., March 27, 1816; died in Milford, 

 Ohio, May 28, 1901. His father was a wealthy 

 iron manufacturer, and the son studied at Edin- 

 burgh University. As a young man he went by 

 sea to Texas, where he became a friend of Gen. 

 Sam Houston. He fought under him, and later 

 under Gen. Taylor through the Mexican War. 

 He made a fortune in ranching in Texas and 

 gold-mining in Colorado, and invested it in the 

 iron industry. He built the Cambria Iron-Works, 

 in Johnstown, Pa., in 1855, and is said to have 

 manufactured there the first steel rails produced 

 in the United States. In 1856 he was president 

 of the Harvey Iron and Steel Company, in Mott 

 Haven, N. Y., and later bought a controlling in- 



terest in the Tredegar Works, in Richmond, Va. 

 At the beginning of the civil war Miner was placed 

 in charge of the Confederate ordnance department, 

 when the works were appropriated by the Con- 

 federate Government as an arsenal, and for a 

 time he served as assistant secretary of the Con- 

 federate navy. Later he was in charge of the 

 railroads for the Confederate Government. So 

 great was his confidence in the outcome of the 

 war that he invested his entire fortune in Con- 

 federate securities, and after its close found him- 

 self penniless. He invented a high-pressure en- 

 gine, but could not bring it to success. He also 

 had discovered a process for making pulp into 

 boards, and another for converting iron into steel, 

 for which he had received several liberal offers, 

 and with which secret he refused to part. For 

 many years he had lived in abject poverty. A 

 few weeks before his death he was taken to the 

 home of Mrs. L. M. Spencer, and there cared 

 for till his death. 



Mitkiewicz, Eugene Stanislaus Kostka de, 

 "Count," adventurer, born in Warsaw, Poland, 

 about 1844; died in Asbury Park, N. J., May 13 r 

 1901. He appeared in New York in the autumn 

 of 1863, where he registered as Count Mitkiewicz, 

 of St. Petersburg. He dressed in the height of 

 fashion, apparently had plenty of money, and rep- 

 resented that his father had sent him out to see 

 the world as a part of his education before he 

 came into the great estates in Russia that would 

 be his inheritance. He made love to many wom- 

 en, and it was not till he had robbed them of 

 their jewels that they discovered his true charac- 

 ter. One of these prosecuted him, and he was 

 convicted of grand larceny. Many efforts were 

 made to have him released from the Tombs, but 

 he remained there several weeks, finally getting 

 out on bail on condition that he would join the 

 National army. His military career was very 

 brief. In July, 1864, he disappeared from Wash- 

 ington, where he was stationed, after robbing the 

 wife of the colonel of a New Jersey regiment of 

 a gold watch and the costly jewels that she had 

 worn to a fete given in her honor. In 1874 he 

 became acquainted on a steamship with the 

 daughter of a banker of Rochester, N. Y., and 

 after a year, in which her parents endeavored 

 in every way to show her his real character and 

 to persuade her from such an act, married her 

 against their will. They had been married but 

 a short time when the " Count " got possession 

 of her fortune and spent every cent of it. The 

 three children that were born were taken posses- 

 sion of by the grandparents after the mother had 

 died of nervous prostration. In 1879 he induced 

 a wealthy merchant of Baltimore, named Cooke, 

 to join with him in the coal business. This was 

 a failure, and in the end Mitkiewicz was arrested 

 for attempting to defraud his partners by having 

 a judgment entered against himself and in favor 

 df another man. He escaped conviction, on a 

 technicality, and soon afterward attempted to de- 

 fraud William C. Turnbull, inventor of the long- , 

 distance telephone, of his patents. Mitkiewicz 

 was beaten in the courts, but he always claimed 

 the ownership of the telephone. In 1887 he in- 

 duced Wharton Barker, of Philadelphia, who was 

 interested in introducing the telephone into 

 China, to advance a large sum of money, repre- 

 senting that he, Mitkiewicz, had great influence 

 with the Chinese Government, and that the Chi- 

 nese Government was about to grant important 

 concessions to him. He secured a letter from the 

 Chinese minister in Washington, and in July, 

 1887, he arrived in China. He secured the tele- 

 phone concession, and was about to secure a 



