Nelson Appleton Miles
actor, miscellaneous
- Born:
- 1839-08-08, Westminster, Massachusetts, USA
- Died:
- 1925-05-15, Washington, District of Columbia, USA
- Professions:
- actor, miscellaneous
Biography
On 8 August 1839, the tiny farming town of Westminster, Massachusetts, welcomed Nelson Appleton Miles into the world—an arrival that would echo far beyond New England soil. Decades later, after the battlefield had yielded to the klieg lights, Miles stepped before cameras and crowds, lending his weathered presence to three pioneering motion pictures: the 1914 docudrama The Indian Wars, the brisk 1898 newsreel Major-General Nelson A. Miles, and Staff, in the Peace Jubilee Parade, and the 1917 Western serial The Adventures of Buffalo Bill. Off-screen, he shared his life with Mary Hoyt Sherman, the woman who stood beside him through both cannon smoke and studio calls. His final salute came on 15 May 1925 in Washington, D.C., closing a life that had marched from Civil War fields to the birth of American cinema.
