Miller Family Photographs
Four generations of the Miller family from Roxbury and Hull, Massachusetts. Includes photographs mounted on twenty-eight sheets of posterboard and 158 slides stored in two slide trays that are comprised of formal and informal family portraits; family businesses; church and business gatherings; a wedding announcement; and postcards from the early 1900s depicting public recreation sites. More recent photographs reveal how the public recreation sites have changed over the years. Robert Parker Miller, a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the Miller family, displayed these images in an exhibit entitled “Trying to Live the American Dream” (1986, Wheeler Gallery).
The collection consists of family photographs and slides of four generations of the Miller family of Roxbury and Hull, Massachusetts, beginning with Melbourne Parker Miller who emigrated from Nova Scotia. Photographs are mounted on twenty-eight sheets of posterboard; 158 slides are stored in two slide trays.
The slides depict a century in the Miller family history, dating from roughly 1880 to 1980. The photographs are comprised of both formal and informal family portraits; family businesses including Miller’s Boat Landing in Allerton, Mass., Miller’s Bus, Miller Brother’s Furniture and Piano Moving in Roxbury, Mass., and Miller and Lakin Express Transfer; church and business gatherings; and a wedding announcement (1914). There are also slides of postcards from the early 1900s depicting public recreation sites including: Atlantic House, Nantasket Beach, Nantasket Beach and Auto Park, Paragon Park, Bath House and Amusements at Paragon Park, Hull from Paddock’s Island, Allerton (Mass.) Bayside Station, and Park Island. More recent photographs of these sites illustrate the changes that occurred in these locations over the years, for example photographs showing construction of condominiums.
These images were displayed in an exhibit entitled “Trying to Live the American Dream” (1986, Wheeler Gallery) prepared by Robert Parker Miller, then a student at the University of Massachusetts and a member of the Miller family.
The collection is open for research.
Cite as: Miller Family Photograph Collection (MS 119). Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Placed on deposit by Robert Parker Miller in 1986.
Processed by Linda Seidman.