Ezra Miller (politician)
American politician (1812–1885)
Ezra Miller (May 12, 1812 – July 9, 1885) was an American inventor and politician from New Jersey. He is best known as the inventor of the Miller platform, a safety innovation designed to prevent telescoping in railroad collisions. As a Democratic politician, he also served two years in the Wisconsin Senate (1853, 1854), and later served the last two years of his life in the New Jersey Senate (1884, 1885). In historical documents, he was often referred to with the honorific "colonel", due to his service in the Wisconsin militia in the 1850s.
Biography
Miller was born in Bergen County, New Jersey.
In 1833, he joined the 2nd New York Militia. Miller married his wife, Amanda, in May 1841. They had three children and moved to Magnolia, Wisconsin. In 1851, he was commissioned a colonel in the 8th Wisconsin Militia.
In 1863, he was granted the first in a series of patents for railroad couplers which came to be known as the Miller platform.
“Ezra Miller (politician)” enters the record as american politician (1812–1885). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ezra, Miller and politician can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16062953. VIAF identifies the subject as 17183006. The Library of Congress control number is nr2006008008. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1812, 1885, 1853 and 1854.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ezra Miller (politician)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.