Roberts. ] 582 
The principal manager of the business of the Lehigh Canal and Navi- 
gation Company at that time, was Josiah White, a member of the Society 
of Friends ; a man whose abilities and great public services in develop- 
ing the resources of Pennsylvania, were worthy of a more fitting memo- 
vial than they have yet received. 
From the time when Edward Miller joined the corps at Bethlehem, on 
the Lehigh, in 1828, until the canal was completed in the following year, 
he was much liked by his comrades, and an intimacy grew up between 
him and the writer of this notice, which lasted without interruption until 
his death, a period of more than forty years. In the autumn of 1829, they 
entered together the service of the State of Pennsylvania, on the western 
division of the State Canal, of which Sylvester Welch had been appointed 
the Principal Engineer. 
That work was finished in December, 1830, and early m 1831 Edward 
Miller went abroad and passed some months in England, where he care- 
fully examined the Liverpool and Manchester, the Cromford and High 
Peak, and other railways in Great Britain. He was provided with excel- 
lent introductory letters, and he acquired a large amount of valuable 
professional knowledge. Soon after his return home, Sylvester Welch, 
who had become the Principal Engineer of the Portage Railroad over the 
Allegheny Mountain, appointed Edward Miller to be his Principal Assist- 
ant in charge of the Machinery of the Inclined Planes. Mr. Miller de- 
signed the stationary engines and other machinery for ten inclined planes, 
and superintended their construction in Pittsburg. The plans were novel 
and ingenious, and the rapid manner in which the planes on the moun- 
tain were worked, as compared with those elsewhere, showed their great 
superiority. In the spring of 1834 the railroad over the mountain was 
opened for public use, the rise from the canal-basin at Hollidaysburg to 
the summit being 1,400 feet in a little over ten miles. The work at- 
tracted much notice, and many persons of distinction visited it. It served 
its purpose until it was superseded by the improved line of the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad. 
Throughout his career, Edward Miller illustrated the advantages of 
literary and scientific training to a man of business. He surrounded 
himself with good books and made good use of them. He turned his 
attention to Geology, and studied it with reference to its influence upon 
topography, and upon the contour lines of the country ia which he was 
engaged in railroad explorations and locations, and especially with refer- 
ence to the region of the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania, of which 
he traced a crest line for more than forty miles. Soon after he grew up 
to manhood he wrote an essay on this subject for publication. 
The first work of which he had the independent charge as Chief En- 
gineer, was the Catawissa Railroad. At that time locomotive engines 
had been but a few years in use for miscellaneous traffic ; they were much 
lighter and less powerful than those now used, and high speeds and long 
trains were very little known. The ponderous engines, weighing thirty 
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