Polk Miller

Polk Miller

Polk Miller (c.1840-1913) was a pharmacist and musician from Richmond and Bon Air, Virginia.

He was born in Prince Edward County, Virginia around 1840. He learned to play the banjo while growing up on a farm. He became a druggist in Richmond in 1860. During the American Civil War, he served as a Confederate artillery man. At his drugstore in Richmond, Miller began making remedies for his favorite hunting dog, Sergeant. His friends soon found these remedies worked for their dogs as well. In 1868, began selling the products in the drugstore. This was the beginning of Sergeant's Pet Care Products, Inc. The tradename was established in 1886.

File:Old South Quartet.jpg

In 1892, he began performing music professionally. Polk Miller and his "Old South Quartette" had a variety show of "Stories, Sketches and Songs" depicting African American life before the Civil War. Miller was white, and the four members of the quartet were black. They gained national prominence, and toured between 1900 and 1912. Miller's scrapbook, now in the archives of the Valentine Museum at Richmond, noted problems with racial discrimination the five faced in both the northern and southern portions of the United States as the group traveled and toured.

At one performance, Mark Twain introduced Polk Miller at Madison Square Garden. Although he did not perform in blackface, Polk sometimes billed himself as "The Old Virginia Plantation Negro" and performed Negro spirituals and pop and folk tunes such as "Carry Me Back To Old Virginny." Miller and his quartet played colleges and military schools, as well as the "most exclusive social clubs" in New York, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. Polk Miller and the Old South Quartette also performed at African American churches.

Polk Miller's and the Old South Quartette were featured on some of Thomas Edison's earlier phonograph recordings.

Polk Miller died on October 20, 1913. He was buried in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery.

Polk Street in Bon Air, Virginia was named in his honor.

External Links

• Polk Miller cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.