Superior’s RSVP and Community Outreach group will honor Mineral County veterans again this year on Armed Forces Day on May 20. To honor present and past veterans, family and friends have dug through archives, and interviewed relatives to find out more about the men and women who have served our country.

For the next few weeks leading up to Armed Forces Day, veterans from previous wars will be featured in an article to highlight their service. This is an excerpt from the family history of Elias Albert Miles preserved by the family with help from the Mineral County Historical Society. Miles served in the Civil War before settling with his family in Superior around 1891.

Elias Albert Miles, progenitor of the Miles family of early Missoula/Mineral County, was born Dec. 9, 1838, in either Illinois or Iowa, the son of Adrain Francis Miles and Eliza Gaye Frost.

Elias was a soldier in the Civil War — a private in Company “E, 6th Regiment of Iowa Volunteer Infantry”. He served from July 1861 to July 1864 and was probably at the Battles of Shiloh (April 1862), Cornith (Oct. 1862) and Vicksburg (Oct. 1862) as well as other engagements.

On May 3, 1870, he married his second wife, Nancy Ellen Hutchinson (1852-1939) (first wife unknown) at St. Charles County, Missouri.

They were the parents of eight children, among them: Adrian (1860-?) married Sarah Elizabeth Cockrell; Eva (1871-1959) married Albert White; Randolph (1875-1964) married Emma Gilman; Albert Murray (1979-1927) married Mary E. Sprague; Emma Grace (1880-1937) married Phillip H. Bellmore; and Arthur Grover (1888-1967) married Anne S. Victory.

In 1880 the family was living in Henry County, MO. His occupation at that time was a brick maker. They were still there in 1890 as Elias is enumerated in the Civil War Veterans & Widows census.

Elias and Nancy and family moved to the Superior/Tarkio area about 1891 and are listed in the 1900, 1910, 1920 census for the county.

His death occurred 25 December 1926 in Superior. He is buried at the Superior Cemetery one of five Civil War veterans interred there and at the Quartz Cemetery.

Residents who have veterans they would like honored during Armed Forces Day, or recorded in county records, can contact Mary Jo Berry at 822-4800.