Southard Harrison Miller 1811-1895 : photo Massachusetts State Archives
For all of the negative comments about the thriftiness of Andrew Borden and his seeming lack of joviality, there was one elderly gentleman who was very sorry to see the brutal end of his old friend and fellow carpenter on August 4, 1892. He stood helplessly, much distressed, in the Borden driveway, but declining to go inside the Borden house to see his old friend. Southard Harrison Miller lived diagonally across the street from the Bordens and had known the Borden family for many years. He had three children, Reuben, Franklin and Phoebe. Phoebe would marry Dr. Seabury Bowen and live in the large, rambling house with her parents on one side of the structure.
Son Franklin Harrison Miller studied art in Boston and Paris and worked with the distinguished Fall River School of Art artist, Robert Spear Dunning, noted for still life portraits of fruit and landscapes.
Franklin Harrison Miller 1843-1911 : photo, Ask Art artist image
An oil painting by F. Miller in the Fall River School of Art style.
Mr. Miller had a long and distinguished career as a carpenter and a contractor. It is said that he and Andrew Borden at one time worked together on the building of City Hall. His obituary below indicates the esteem in which Southard Miller was held by his fellow citizens. He is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery directly across from Lawdwick Borden and his family, whose story of his children being drowned in a cistern by his second wife Eliza is well-known.
S.H. Miller Chief Engineer 1866-1870
This weekend, on our Facebook page Lizzie Borden Warps and Wefts, we will be featuring more on the Southard Miller family.