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Ealflglj. Kuril? Carolina
Collection: Major James MILLER Papers
1852-1853; i860
764.1
P.C.
Physical Description: one volume, 15.5 cm, bound in black morocco leather,
manufactured as a twelve-month pocket diary and used as an aide memoir,
and one 2
1/4
p. MS document containing answers to interrogatories dated
April 5, 1860.
Acquisition: "Diary", gift of Mary L. Joyce,
ШШШЯШЯШЛЯЯв^
, High Point,
N.C., April 11, 1989; interrogatories were given during the biennium of
1918-1920?
Description: James Miller, civil engineer, was first engaged as principal
assistant engineer for the North Carolina Railroad by General (then Major)
Walter Gwynn at Richmond, Va. , on Feb. 16, 1852, at a salary of $1800 per
annum, and held the position through the second quarter of 1854. When in
July 1854 Gwynn' s protege William Beverhout Thompson was commissioned princi¬
pal engineer of the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad, he lured Miller
from the North Carolina Railroad and appointed him principal assistant
engineer for that part of the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad running
from New Bern to Morehead City. Miller appears to have remained with that
company until the outbreak of the Civil war.
Of the two documents in the collection, the "diary" is presumably
one of several kept as an aide memoir by Miller to assist him in preparing his
correspondence and reports and in performing his function as the engineer
immediately responsible for the quality of work performed by the local con¬
tractors engaged to build the road. The notes in this volume relate to the
section of the railroad running from Goldsboro to Raleigh and include abbre¬
viated entries concerning inspection of banks, slopes, sills, drains, abut¬
ments, bridges, culverts, and so forth. Miller's entries can most effectively
be used by consulting them in conjunction with the first two elephant folio
volumes of property maps in the North Carolina Railroad records in the Archives
(shelf mark: NCRR.67 and NCRR.68) .
The entries not only deal with technical engineering matters, but include
notes of Miller's lodgings, local people with whom he dined, and so forth
(details, however, are not given of these social aspects of his life).
Romulus Saunders and John M. Morehead figure frequently in the entries (both
of them being officers of the company) , sometimes inspecting progress of the
work and sometimes assisting Miller in negotiating with local landowners for
the purchase of land or of rights of way. Both Saunders and Morehead were
