Biographies
ROYAL MILLER
ROYAL MILLER.--An
acknowledged leader in the California motor world is Royal Miller, the popular
president of the wide-awake and progressive Miller Automobile Company, at 1615
M Street, Sacramento. He was born at San Francisco on December 4, 1884, the son
of Charles E. Miller, at one time notable as among the most important business
men of the bay city, used to the doing of worth-while
things. He helped to establish the firm of Miller, Sloss
& Scott, afterward the Pacific Hardware and Steel Company. He married Miss
Margaret Knowlton, popular in her day as a gifted and most charming woman. Both
father and mother were born in San Francisco, the children of genuine
forty-niners; and Grandfather Miller, who died in 1914, was the oldest living
member of the Odd Fellows in San Francisco. Both parents are still living in
Berkeley.
Royal Miller attended the grammar and the high
schools of Berkeley. He next entered the machine shop supply trade in the
service of the Pacific Tool & Supply Company, remaining with that concern
from 1906 to 1911, and in the latter year he joined the Standard Motor Car
Company, as a helper, remaining in the shop one and three-fourths years. He
next removed to Sacramento, and helped form the Miller-Coffing
Auto Company, to conduct a Ford agency; and in 1915 he sold out to his partner,
C. M. Coffing, and established an agency for the
Dodge Brothers motor car, under the name of the Miller Auto Company. In 1916,
Mr. Coffing gave up his Ford agency, and that was
joined with the agency of the Dodge Brothers, and now Miller has all of the
Sacramento Valley for the Dodge Brothers car, and he has been very successful.
He is public-spirited and has been a director of the Chamber of Commerce for
three terms.
At Berkeley, in the year 1909, Mr. Miller was
married to Miss Irene Hamblin, of Berkeley, and they are now the proud parents
of three children: Margaret Ruth, Charles H. and Royal, Jr. Mr. Miller belongs
to the Masonic order, the Commandery and the Shriners. He is also an Elk, and he belongs to the Sutter
and the Del Paso Clubs. He is patriotic, as is amply proven by his enlisting in
the United States army service on August 20, 1917, for a part in the great
World War. He received the commission of first lieutenant in the air service,
and served eighteen months.
Transcribed by Vicky Walker,
8/14/07.
Source: Reed, G. Walter, History of Sacramento County, California With Biographical
Sketches, Page 969. Historic Record
Company, Los Angeles, CA. 1923.
© 2007 Vicky Walker.