History of J&D Miller Knives

 (Sign of J&D Miller Knife Store on Canal St. Manhattan NY)

As a part of our devotion and research onto Shochet Knife fabrication and Service, we have extraneously studied all details regarding the famous "J&D Miller" knife company.

We have collected many hundreds of documents and photos of the J&D Miller family history and knife making material. As a courtesy to our dear customers it is our intention to satiate the want of information on this company's history. Therefore we will be updating this page as more information is processed and uploaded. 

We would like to thank all of the esteemed Grandchildren of the Miller Family for their invaluable info, time, material, and devotion to our company. Especially to Bob Miller, who was a big help in organizing the family to share their memories and material. We truly appreciate all your help and wish we can continue doing the good work of your grandfather. 

We will continuously be updating this page, we ask our dear customers to be patient and check in for updates.

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(Joseph and David Miller)

Joseph Miller, my father, was born in September 1886; he was not certain of the date, only that it was harvest time and his mother, with the help of a peasant midwife, gave birth in the field where she had been at work and carried him home wrapped in her apron.

He was the second of 2 brothers and 5 sisters. born to a family of very poor tenant farmers in the village of Chotinetch in western Russia near the Lithuanian and Polish borders; the closest large city was Minsk. 

When he was 13 years old, having completed his Bar Mitzvah (confirmation), he was sent as an apprentice to his mother's brother who owned a small factory where various knives, including those for Jewish religious use, were made. 

The latter were “chalofim" (singular: "chalef“) for the slaughter of animals for food, and "mohel messer" (circumcision knives) for circumcising male infants. 

(It is to be noted here that, according to Hebraic law, humane slaughter requires that the slaughter knife be sharp enough to cause instantaneous hemorrhage, immediate loss of consciousness, and therefore a minimum of pain in the slaughtered animal. The knife used in circumcision, which is usually performed on the 8th day after birth, must be surgically sharp to likewise insure a minimum of pain, generating a clean cut to minimize the risk of infection and maximize quick healing.) 

[The following Photo was taken in Russia where the two Miller brothers had trained as Knife Makers by their uncle. Joseph is in the Left foreground.]

My father's life with his uncle was rigorous and difficult. As was not unusual then, the workers rose at dawn and worked till dark, with only the Jewish sabbath, Friday sundown till Saturday sundown, free. The youngest apprentice slept in a rectangular cage-like box suspended from the ceiling by a heavy chain in the room where the forge stood, so that when the fire had dwindled, he would become uncomfortably cold, awaken, and add fuel to maintain its heat. (Several years ago my brother saw a similar arrangement in a factory in Sweden.) 

My father learned the intricacies of metals and ways of manipulating them to fulfill many different requirements. All his life he was able to repair innumerable items thanks to this knowledge, often using tools he designed for a specific purpose or by some unorthodox and ingenious method. For example, the front legs of a large wing chair of mine had been broken off in moving. He first glued them using a crystalline glue which he heated (I believe this was litharge, a lead oxide). He then braced the backs of the legs with steel plates, not visible from the front or sides, which he had hammered to conform to the shape of the legs. To keep the plates in position, he heated screws over a flame until they were red-hot, then drove them part-way through previously made holes in the metal, and finally screwed them in. The chair has remained in sturdy condition for more than 30 years. 

After a few years of working as an apprentice, my father began to work as a journeyman cutler, going from town to town, repairing and sharpening knives. When the Singer sewing machine was introduced into these small Russian towns, he included its repair as well and, as his skills became known, he was frequently also consulted for the repair of more intricate items. 

When he was 19 he fled from Russia to avoid military conscription. He stopped for a time, possibly several months, in Liverpool where another uncle, also a cutler, lived but decided that the United states was the land of opportunity and made the lengthy, sickening voyage in steerage, arriving in the fall of 1905. 

He first went to work in a cutlery shop owned by a German man and throughout his life praised the high standards of workmanship of his German fellow workers. In 1909, having lived very frugally, he had saved enough money to open his own cutlery shop, one flight down from the street level in a damp, dark basement only the door provided air and natural light of a tenement house on the lower East side of Manhattan at 25 Canal Street. Here, in addition to grinding and repair of knives, he began to make chalofim (also known as "schochet" knives because the man Who performs the kosher slaughtering professionally is known as a "schochet" and "mohel" knives (the professional circumciser is known as a "mohel"). The population of this area was largely Orthodox Jewish immigrants, many of whom worked in the "needle trades", the manufacture of garments either in factories (frequently, at that time, "sweatshops") or in their own crowded tenement apartments, and their need of adequate cutting tools, both scissors and special blades for fur, felt, leather and cloth was great. 

My uncle, David Miller, about 3 years older than my father, had also been apprenticed to his uncle in Russia as a young boy. He would tell that he had been permitted to take his beloved fiddle with him, and his one consolation, at the end of a hard day's work, was to play the fiddle for a little while before exhaustion overtook him.

David had served in the Russian army, but because he was married and had become a father, he was mustered out. With my father's assistance, he came to this country in about 1908. He first worked for others, then tried to establish his own grinding business in a basement across the street from 25 Canal Street, where he was robbed of his entire stock, and, briefly, in Brooklyn. 

In about 1915 my father opened a street level store at 36 Canal Street, also known as 1143 Division Street because the 2 streets converged at this point. My brother has described the store. The front window contained an electrified display my father had made consisting of 2 dolls dressed as "workmen", who stood at little "grinding" wheels and turned this way and that; it attracted the attention of passers-by and fascinated the neighborhood children. Within a year or 2 Uncle Dave became my father's partner and J. & D. Miller was formed. 

We will continue updating the history and techniques of the Miller company at a later date.  Meanwhile we would advise all our visitors to please subscribe to our email listing to be updated as we move along.

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Below is a copy of a catalog produced by the Miller Company.