Lewis MillerLewis Miller was born July 24, 1829, in a log cabin on the farm of his father, John Miller, in Aultman (off of Greensburg Road near the railroad tracks on the Green Township side of the Green-Lake Township line). When Miller was a small child, his family moved into a brick federal-style home in Greentown. It is worth noting that in 1829 Green Township was part of Stark County and the closest settlement to the Miller farm was Greentown. In addition to spending his childhood in Greentown, this is probably why he is usually said to from Greentown, not Green Township.
In 1849, Lewis Miller joined the extended Michael Dillman family and his stepsister, Lydia Aultman (married to Joel Dillman) and his stepbrother, Cornelius Autman, on a journey by prairie schooner to Plainfield, Illinois. This purpose of this pilgrimage was to establish a business concern to build improved reapers. The Michael Dillman Family was a prominent family from Green Township. Michael Dillman was described as a progressive, wealthy farmer. This pilgrimage to Plainfield began Lewis Miller's endeavors to invent improved farm machinery. Lewis Miller was incredibly successful in these endeavors. He was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame with 92 patents naming him as inventor or co-inventor. Through Miller's success as an inventor and businessman, Lewis Miller became one of Akron's Most Famous Sons. Lewis Miller's passions and talents ran deep and extended far beyond his business concerns. He was one of the great philanthropists of the Midwest during the later half of the 1800's. He devoted much of his wealth to public service and to charitable causes associated with the Methodist Episcopal Church. He invented a church architectural design based on his model for Sunday School programming called the Akron Plan. The design called for a building layout with a central assembly hall surrounded by small classrooms, a configuration Miller conceived with Methodist minister John Heyl Vincent and architect Jacob Snyder. The arrangement accommodated 1) a collective opening exercise for all the children; 2) small radiating classrooms for graded instruction in the uniform lesson of the day; and 3) a general closing exercise in the central assembly area. In 1874, interested in improving the training of Sunday school teachers for the "Uniform Lesson Plan" he had developed with Vincent, the two worked together again to found what is now the Chautauqua Institution on the shores of Chautauqua Lake, New York. Lewis Miller's mother was Mary Elizabeth York (Jorg/Borg) of Stark County. Mary Elizabeth York died just months after Lewis Miller was born. Elizabeth York had an older brother, George York, who owned the farm across the road from John Miller. George York married Elizabeth Buchtel, sister of John R. Buchtel, founder of Buchtel College (later the University of Akron). Elizabeth Buchtel nursed and cared for Lewis Miller alongside her own son of similar age, John Buchtel York. The Buchtel Family was another prominent family from Green Township. For more information about Lewis Miller, please see: Lewis Miller, A Biographical Essay by Ellwood Hendrick, 1925 - This book is available at the Akron Public Library - Downtown Akron & now also available at the Green Branch Library. National Inventors Hall of Fame - Lewis Miller Biography The Chautauqua Movement by John Heyl Vincent with Introduction by Lewis Miller, 1886 |
The Lewis Miller Mansion located in Akron, Ohio
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