George V. Millar

George V. Millar from West Scranton was proprietor of a large department store specializing in various household goods and sundries and became known as a regional postcard publisher offering a vast array of postcards in both color and black and white formats. His publishing area mainly encompassed all of the anthracite fields, northeastern Pennsylvania, New York’s southern tier around the greater Binghamton area and northwestern New Jersey near the Delaware Water Gap.

Millar’s postcards are easy to identify as most feature some variation of his name and a production number. Names include George V. Millar, G.V. Millar and Geo. V. Millar. His first publishing efforts came in the undivided back era and concentrated on various mining scenes throughout the anthracite region. These cards are black and white and are numbered between 1 and 100. The exact stopping point is unknown to me at this time.

Collecting these mining views can be a bit frustrating in that the postcard often has a false imprint as to location. Just as other publishers quickly learned that vehicles shown in postcard images become quickly dated and shortened the shelf life of the product, Millar realized that identifying a scene at a specific mine or town locale would limit sales appeal beyond that immediate area. Thus with perhaps some capriciousness in his marketing strategy Millar issued most of his first hundred postcards imprinted for multiple locations in the anthracite region. Some such as No. 10 can be easily identified as it is a recognizable coal breaker but his many views of miners and mine interiors make it almost impossible to nail down the correct location.

Millar’s postcard numbering then jumps to 1000. Beginning with 1000 and running through approximately 1000 numbers to 2000, these postcards are divided backs and are in color. The majority are not anthracite coal related and at least two sequences are of locales outside the anthracite region. One covers Mt. Gretna in Lebanon County and the second loosely follows the route of the PRR westward from Harrisburg, the latter being printed for the Union News Co. Scranton, his home town is prominently featured and it should be noted that there is a third sequence of numbers showing mining scenes that were published and printed for J.W. Evans of Olyphant in 1914. These postcards bear Millar numbers 1760-1780 as well as Evan’s imprint.

Because a few undivided back postcards due exist in black and white above the 1000-2000 production run, it is conceivable that Millar left a large gap in his numbering system and then backtracked some 4000-5000 numbers in choosing the sequence for his colored divided back views.
Miller then returned to black and white printing and produced perhaps an additional 20,000 views consecutively numbered spread throughout his coverage area. Mixed throughout are additional mining scenes and named anthracite breakers.

By now Millar had developed a distinctive imprint logo showing a stone arch bridge over a stream of water inside an oval. Because Millar did some production and printing work for other publishers, his trademark does not appear on all of his postcards. Often times there will be instead a logo for the Times Printery in Scranton where much of the physical printing was done.

Because I collect variations and multiple print runs, my checklisting for Millar includes multiple locations where known. I am not including Millar postcards outside the anthracite region since my emphasis in this section of the website is just anthracite coal mining. It should also not be assumed that all location details are necessarily false. Some are indeed accurate. Again, I solicit input to fill in some of the blanks and to identify other locations for specific cards.