MILLER, JOSEPH BERNARD
Fort Mitchell darkroom. Milburn died at home in Burlington in 1984 and was cremated. He was survived by his wife, Dr. Carol Swarts Milburn, a cancer specialist. Becher, Matthew E. “Burlington’s Cornfield Edison,” NKH 13, no. 2 (Spring–Summer 2006): 13–47. Becher, Matthew E., Michael A. Rouse, Robert Schrage, and Laurie Wilcox. Images of America: Burlington. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2004. “Bring on Your Inventions!” Popular Mechanics Magazine, June 1950, 158. “Frank Milburn, 73, Helped Develop Nordon Bomb Sight,” KP, February 13, 1984, 8A. Laycock, George. “When an Inventor Needs a Friend,” Mechanix Illustrated, October 1953, 86.
Matthew E. Becher
MILES, JULIET (b. date unknown, Bracken Co., Ky.; d. 1861, Frankfort, Ky.). Juliet Miles began life enslaved on the John Fee Jr. farm near Germantown. She married Add Miles, a slave on a neighboring farm, but continued to care for the Fee children. Fee’s son John Gregg Fee purchased Juliet from his father after the elder Fee threatened to sell her “down south.” Although Fee emancipated Juliet, she preferred to continue living at Fee’s farm in order to be closer to her children. After much persuasion, coupled with Add’s ability to purchase his own freedom, the couple and their freed son Henry moved to Felicity, Ohio. However, Juliet’s other children and her grandchildren remained in bondage in Bracken and Mason counties, Ky., where their owner, the elder Fee, threatened to sell Juliet’s family to a slave trader. In 1858 Juliet made plans to return to Kentucky, collect her children, and flee with them back across the Ohio River. She retrieved her children first from the Elijah Currens plantation, west of Germantown, before entering Feeland to lead her remaining family to the appointed crossing at Rock Springs, west of Augusta in Bracken Co. Whoever was to provide them with skiffs for the crossing at Chalfont Creek did not show up, and Juliet was met by local patrollers, who seized the fugitive band and escorted them to the Bracken Co. jail. After a few days, the children were released but then were sold to a trader and shipped to New Orleans. Juliet remained in jail until her trial, where she was found guilty and sentenced to three years in the penitentiary at Frankfort. There she found favor with the penitentiary warden, who recognized Juliet’s Christian values. She died at the penitentiary two years later. Her son Henry continued his life in Ohio and joined the Union Army during the Civil War. The other children’s fates remain unknown. Bracken Co. Court Records, October 28, 1850; October 4, 1858, Brooksville, Ky. Fee, John Gregg. Autobiography of John G. Fee, Berea, Kentucky. Chicago: National Christian Association, 1891. Miller, Caroline R. “Juliet Miles and Matilda Fee: Willing Participants in John G. Fee’s Anti-Slavery Crusade,” Northern Kentucky Univ. Borderlands Conference, 2004, Highland Heights, Ky.
Caroline R. Miller
MILFORD. Milford, one of the early pioneer settlements in Bracken Co., is located near the North Fork of the Licking River. It sits on Ky. Rt. 19 just north of Ky. Rt. 539, some seven miles southwest of Brooksville. Its origins date back to 1831 when the village was founded by John Ogdon, who operated a store. The name came from a water-powered grain mill that was at a ford in the river. The post office began in 1850. Over the years the community has had a bank, several stores, and the Milford Christian Church, first organized in 1853. The town was home to longtime medical practitioner Dr. W. A. Moore. Milford has survived several fires and many floods. A flood-control dam at Falmouth that might have saved Milford from inundation was first proposed in the 1920s and was often discussed thereafter but was never built. In 2000 the U.S. Census Bureau reported fewer than 150 people living in the now unincorporated town of Milford and its immediate environs. Bracken Co. Homemakers. Recollections: Yesterday, Today for Tomorrow. Brooksville, Ky.: Poage, 1969. Dressman, Elmer. “Sounds Death Knell for Kentucky Towns and Villages,” KP, April 12, 1925, 13. Rennick, Robert M. Kentucky Place Names. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1984. U.S. Census Bureau, “American Fact Finder. Data Set. Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF1) 100-Percent Data. Custom Table.” www.census.gov (accessed April 7, 2005, for Blocks 4012, 4021, and 4025, Block Group 4, Census Tract 9503, Bracken Co., Ky.).
MILLENNIUM MONUMENT WORLD PEACE BELL. At the southeast corner of Fourth and York Sts. in Newport, the World Peace Bell hangs poised to ring as it glistens in the daytime sunlight, a monument to hope and fulfi llment of a dream that began in 1992. That year, David Hosea, a member of the local planning organization Quest, suggested building a 1,000-foot-plus millennium tower, designed to accommodate a carillon of 83 bells, and a large free-swinging bell housed in a freestanding tower. He took the idea to local businessman Wayne Carlisle, who agreed to finance the project. However, only one-third of the project, the World Peace Bell and its smaller tower, was completed. The bell weighs 66,000 pounds and is 12 feet in diameter and 12 feet high. Its clapper weighs 7,000 pounds, and the yoke in which the bell swings weighs an additional 30,000 pounds. The heavy bell rings with a deep and resonant tone. Made in Nantes, France, and decorated with symbols representing peace, it was shipped to New Orleans in 1999 and then transported to Northern Kentucky via the Mississippi and Ohio rivers by a barge attached to the Belle of Cincinnati steamboat. Along the way, it stopped at various sites, where celebrations were held to welcome it and where citizens could write notes about peace in special World Peace Bell ledgers. Inscribed on the bell is this message: “The World Peace Bell is a symbol of freedom and peace, honoring our past, celebrating our present and inspiring our future.” At midnight on December 31, 1999, the bell was rung in public for the first time to celebrate the advent of the new millennium and to focus on the hope for
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peace. The Verdin Bell Company of Cincinnati, which designed it, administers the World Peace Bell and the 54-foot glass and steel tower where it is housed. Thousands of visitors annually come to view it, various organizations use it for peace-themed ceremonies, and the bell is rung each day. Claypool, James C. “A Bronze Star Is Born: The Story of the World Peace Bell,” 1999, unpublished manuscript, author’s fi le. Flynn, Terry. “Belle and Bell Readied for 3-Week Journey,” CE, July 4, 1999, C1.
James C. Claypool
MILLER, BARTLETT T. (b. May 15, 1891, Johnsville, Ky.; d. May 1, 1986, Hartford, Conn.). Bartlett T. Miller, the son of Frank and Mattie Yelton Miller, became a vice president of marketing for AT&T in New York City. He and his brother Charles were placed in a Lexington Odd Fellows orphanage after their father’s early death and the onset of their mother’s terminal illness. While in the orphanage, Bartlett Miller was called to talk with his mother via a new method of communication, the telephone. When he later returned to Northern Kentucky, his first job was with the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in Latonia; but while visiting his family in Denver, Colo., on a trip he made using his railroad pass, Miller accepted a new position in the telecommunications field. By 1915 long-distance telephone ser vices were being slowly extended westward in America. Miller had joined the pioneering group of people trying to put these new telephone systems together. He spent the duration of World War I working on line problems for AT&T, solving problems, and perfecting techniques. After a brief assignment assisting the vice chairman of the War Production Board, Miller was transferred to New England, where he became a vice president with AT&T. He was put in charge of developing transmission and reception of microwave lines from New York to Chicago. Soon thereafter, Miller introduced the concept of market research to his corporate bosses and was given the job of redesigning and marketing a revolutionary telephone, the lightweight, attractive 701 Princess telephone, which, as Miller had envisioned, became one of his company’s most popu lar products. When Miller died, he was buried, according to his request, in Johnsville. The Princess Telephone. http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ freshwater/princess.htm. Terry, Carol. GP, Grandpa. Denver, Colo.: Privately published, 1981.
Caroline R. Miller
MILLER, JOSEPH BERNARD (b. May 26, 1902, Owen Co., Ky.; d. August 18, 2002, Lexington, Ky.). Joseph Miller, who became a violin-maker, was one of 11 children born to George Harrison Miller and Anna Bell Dickerson. He was raised on a tobacco farm in Gratz in western Owen Co., later lived in Frankfort, and moved to Lexington in 1933. After working as a barber for more than 40 years, Miller retired in 1964 and devoted the remainder of his life to making and repairing violins. He happened into his craft by being asked to repair his