Lawyers and Lawmakers of Kentucky, by H. Levin, editor, 1897. Published
by Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago.  Reprinted by Southern Historical
Press.  p. 151.  Knox County.

SAMUEL F. MILLER, associate justice of the supreme court of the United
States, was born in Richmond, Kentucky, April 5, 1816, of German descent.
His father emigrated from Pennsylvania to Kentucky in 1812; his mother
was a Kentuckian by birth and representative of an old family of North
Carolina.  Mr. Miller graduated in the medical department of Transylvania
University in 1838 with the degree of M. D.  After practicing as a
physician for several years in Barbourville, Knox county, Kentucky, he
abandoned it and took up the study of law.  He was admitted to the bar in
1844.
     Mr. Miller was a Whig and supported Henry Clay.  At the time of the
agitation of the slavery question in 1849, he took an active part in the
movement to elect delegates to the constitutional convention of Kentucky
of that year who would favor some plan of emancipation.  The defeat of
his views and the adoption of the new constitution more firmly fixing
slavery upon the state, induced him, in 1850, to remove with his family to
Keokuk, Iowa, where he acquired a large and varied practice, immediately
taking a foremost place in his profession.  On the organization of the
Republican party in 1854, he gave his time, labor, influence, and means
unsparingly to promote its success; after Abraham Lincoln became
president, a new judicial district was organized in the northwest, and
the bar throughout that section, and the senators and representatives
then in congress, united almost unanimously in recommending Mr. Miller
for appointment as associate justice of the supreme court.  He was
accordingly nominated, in July, 1862, and at once confirmed.  His public
career really commenced at the most critical time of the nation's
history, his influence in shaping the judgments of the court and in
determining the principles on which these judgments were based, was felt
and acknowledged.  He delivered many of the most important opinions of
the court, most of which were concurred in by his associates, and met
the approval of the country.  He was one of the five justices of the
supreme court who were chosen as members of the celebrated presidential
commission in 1877 in the Tilden-Hayes contest.  He was a man of the
utmost purity of private character, and had to a very high degree the
respect and confidence of the bar of the United States.  With official
integrity above suspicion, and with talents which singularly enhanced
his judicial eminence, he well deserved the esteem and honor in which
he was held.

Miller
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Richmond-Madison-KY Fayette-KY IA PA NC