Miller School

Miller School was founded in 1878 with a bequest of $1.1 million from Samuel Miller, who, as a boy, romped with his brother on the very acreage on which the school bearing his name is now situated. Near the village of Batesville, Samuel Miller was raised in abject poverty by a mother who realized the value of education and who used as much of her resources as possible to ensure that Samuel was tutored by a teacher who lived nearby. Samuel Miller learned well and, as an adult, used his education and his keen intelligence to earn a very handsome living as a merchant and market-oriented business person. Along the way, his charity became legendary in his adopted hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia. The Last Will and Testament of Samuel Miller provided for the majority of his estate to be used for the establishment of a boarding school for orphaned children, a school to be located very near his birthplace in Albemarle County. By 1874, following Mr. Miller’s 1869 death and the resolution of several legal disputes that arose as children of Mr. Miller’s sought to challenge his bequest, architects and builders were ready to begin work in designing and constructing The Miller Manual Labor School, as it was then known. This work culminated in August, 1878, with a grand opening and dedication of the central portion of “Old Main”, an august and impressive structure around which much of Miller School life still revolves....