Edward Miller & Co.: A Name Behind 139 Patents That Was Never a Trademark

By Matthew Partsch · Owl and Twig Vintage · October 20, 2026

A tin cuspidor on the floor of the Powers Hotel in Rochester, New York, gave a lamp-and-stove dealer named Leonard Henkle an idea in 1883: the shape was already a kerosene reservoir, it just needed a wick on top. The lamp that idea became, patented the next year and sold as the Rochester, was manufactured first and biggest by Edward Miller and Company of Meriden, Connecticut — a brass works that the Connecticut Historical Society says held rights to at least 139 lighting patents between 1860 and 1942. For a company with that many patents to its name, neither "Edward Miller & Co." nor "Rochester" turns up as a federally registered trademark anywhere this guide could search.

A cuspidor on a hotel floor becomes a lamp

Henkle ran a small shop at 103 West Main Street in Rochester, New York. He noticed the tin cuspidors lying around the lobby of the city's Powers Hotel and recognized the shape as a ready-made fuel reservoir. He brought the idea to Charles Stanford Upton, president of the Maud S. Halter Company, who is credited separately with the idea of sewing several narrow wicks into one round one — the detail that let the Rochester burn brighter than a standard flat-wick kerosene lamp of the same size. Upton named the result the Rochester Lamp, after the city where the two men met.

The patent office approved the burner on January 15, 1884, about seven months after the application was filed, according to a 1993 history of the lamp published in the Crooked Lake Review. That history does not give a patent number, and no original 1884 Henkle burner patent turned up in any patent-database search run for this guide — a genuine gap, reported rather than papered over with a guessed number. Edward Miller & Co., already an established Meriden brass works making oil-lamp hardware, became the Rochester's first manufacturer; the lamp was in the company's own catalogs by 1885, in what one historical record describes as "over 2,000 variations" of trim, font style, and shade — a company-sourced figure, not independently counted for this guide. Rochester Lamp Company, Upton's own firm, ran the retail and wholesale side from a New York address at 42 Park Place, with branch offices as far out as Paris and Toronto, while the lamps themselves came out of Meriden.

Who patented the burner depends on the account

Two sources researched for this guide tell the Henkle-Upton story differently. The Crooked Lake Review history says Upton bought Henkle's patent outright and paid him a monthly allowance for the rest of his life. A 2012 article in the Rochester cemetery newsletter Epitaph, drawing on research by Nicolas Fedorka, says instead that "the two patented the lamp and many other inventions, then formed the Rochester Lamp Company" together — a joint invention and a shared firm, not a sale from one man to another. Both accounts agree Henkle lived on the lamp's proceeds for the rest of his life; they do not agree on whether he held any ownership in the company that made that possible.

One confirmed patent does tie the two men together on paper, five years after the original burner. U.S. Patent 412,181, filed May 27, 1887 and granted October 1, 1889, lists Leonard Henkle of Rochester as inventor and Charles Stanford Upton of New York as assignee — an improved perforated draft tube for "a Rochester lamp," the phrase used in the patent's own drawing description. It confirms a working, documented relationship between the two names on at least one invention. It does not resolve which account of the original 1884 patent is correct.

The company's own founding date depends on the source

Wikipedia's own article on Edward Miller & Co. contradicts itself. Its infobox gives a founding date of 1844, under Horatio Howard. Its body text says the company was incorporated in 1866 with $200,000 in capital, and that "the following year" — 1867 — "the business was sold to Edward Miller." Read together, that puts Miller's purchase twenty-three years after the article's own stated founding date, with no explanation of who ran the company in between.

Two other sources date the same transition much earlier, and don't agree with each other either. The Connecticut Historical Society's own online exhibit says Horatio N. Howard opened the Meriden shop in 1844 and Edward Miller took it over in 1845 — one year later, not twenty-three. A Connecticut Mills historical survey adds a step neither Wikipedia nor the Historical Society mentions: in 1844, Edward Miller joined his father to form "Joel Miller and Son," which took over Howard's business, and it was not until about 1846, at age twenty, that Edward bought out his father's share and ran the company alone. Three credible sources, three different pictures of who owned the business and when — Miller takes sole control in 1845, 1846, or 1867 depending on which one is read.

A name behind 139 patents was never trademarked

The Connecticut Historical Society states that Edward Miller & Co. gained rights to at least 139 lighting-related patents between December 4, 1860 and May 12, 1942. Two of them are easy to confirm directly. U.S. Patent 395,845, "Lamp-Hanger," filed June 29, 1888 and granted January 8, 1889, names Edward Miller as inventor and Edward Miller & Company as assignee — a spring-and-chain ceiling fixture that let a hanging lamp be raised or lowered without the chains snapping loose and damaging the fixture. U.S. Patent 514,158, "Argand Lamp," filed June 30, 1893 and granted February 6, 1894, names Edward Miller, Jr. as inventor, same assignee — a removable wick-adjusting sleeve built so its parts could be taken out independently, which earlier Argand-lamp designs did not allow.

Set against that patent volume, no federal trademark registration for "Edward Miller & Co." surfaced anywhere in this research — not through a direct name search, not through an owner-page search under "Miller, Edward" at the U.S. trademark registry, and not for "Rochester" as the lamp's own brand name either. A modern search for "Edward Miller" trademark turns up only unconnected present-day filings — a financial consultant, a children's pajama brand — nothing tied to the 19th-century lamp works. That is a real absence, not a search shortcoming reported as one: the same kind of finding this blog has already documented at Cambridge Glass, where the mark collectors actually look for was never registered either, even though a different, less-recognized mark from the same company was.

What the company used instead of a registered trademark was its own stamped and etched names. Model names were cast or printed directly onto the hardware: an 1890s Edward Miller lamp catalogued for a Terrace Park, Ohio estate sale is stamped "The Juno Lamp Made in U.S.A." across the top of its base, and a Rochester-style oil lamp currently listed for sale carries a "Rochester 1884" etching on the upper section of its own font — the patent year, worked directly into the metal, standing in for any trademark filing.

How to tell a real one

• Look for a stamped or etched name, not a single universal mark. This maker favored model names on the piece itself — "Rochester," "Juno" — over one company-wide trademark, so check the base, the font, and the burner collar separately rather than looking in just one spot.
• A date etched into the font is a patent-year reference, not a manufacture date. "Rochester 1884" marks the burner's patent year; a lamp carrying it could have been made any time Edward Miller & Co. held the contract, roughly 1884 to 1892.
• No registered trademark means no registration symbol to check for. Neither the company name nor "Rochester" carries a federal filing, so there is no ® or "Trade Mark" claim to compare a suspect mark against — an unmarked or plainly-stamped piece is not automatically suspect on that basis alone.
• Electric conversion is common, not a red flag by itself. Most surviving Rochester and Miller oil lamps on the market today have been wired for electricity; it affects value against an unconverted, complete-works example, but it does not by itself cast doubt on the maker.

The look-alikes

Bridgeport Brass Company became a second factory building Rochester lamps within a few years of the line's 1884 debut, as demand outgrew Meriden's own output; a lamp stamped "Rochester" after the early 1890s may carry Bridgeport Brass's name rather than Edward Miller's, even though both ran the same licensed burner. The Miller Company, formed from Edward Miller & Co.'s assets on February 24, 1924, kept the family name and the Meriden site but moved into electric lamps, mercury vapor and fluorescent lighting, and eventually rolled copper alloys with no lamp-oil hardware at all; it was sold to Diehl in 2000 and continues today as a metals distributor, a different business from the one that built the Rochester. A present-day trademark search for "Edward Miller" turns up neither company — only unrelated modern filings sharing the same common name, worth ruling out before assuming a search hit says anything about the lamp maker.

What this lamp sells for

One confirmed realized price turned up in this research: a rare Edward Miller & Co. double-griffin student lamp, with period Burmese cased and hand-painted shades, sold for $4,500 hammer price including buyer's premium at Cottone Auctions in Geneseo, New York, on September 20, 2024, from the Dr. Martin May collection. That price reflects a top-tier example with unusually fine glass, not a typical Rochester or Miller lamp.

Everything else found was an asking price, not a sale, and is labeled that way. A plain nickel-plated brass Rochester oil lamp, complete with its original shade and burner works and etched "Rochester 1884," is currently listed online at $110. The gap between that figure and the Cottone result tracks the same pattern documented across this blog's other lamp-maker guides, Handel and Bradley & Hubbard among them: shade material and decoration, far more than age or maker name alone, decide where a given lamp lands.

Where the records disagree

Four points in this research did not resolve cleanly.

First, Wikipedia's own article on Edward Miller & Co. disagrees with itself: its infobox states a 1844 founding, while its body text has the business sold to Edward Miller in 1867, twenty-three years later, with no account of who held it in between.

Second, two other sources push that same transition earlier still, and not to the same year as each other. The Connecticut Historical Society dates Miller's takeover to 1845. A Connecticut Mills historical survey describes an intermediate step — a father-and-son partnership called "Joel Miller and Son" — and puts Edward's sole ownership at "about 1846." Neither source mentions the other's version of events.

Third, whether Leonard Henkle held the original Rochester burner patent alone and sold it to Charles Upton, or whether the two men patented it jointly before forming their company together, is answered oppositely by the two historical accounts checked for this guide. A later, confirmed 1889 patent ties the two men together on paper but does not settle which account of the earlier, original patent is correct — and that original patent's own number could not be located at all.

Fourth, whether Edward Miller & Co.'s run making the Rochester lamp ended in a clean handoff to Bridgeport Brass Company around 1892, as one source states outright, or whether Bridgeport Brass was simply added as a second factory alongside Miller's continuing production, as another source describes it — the two accounts describe what may be the same few years as two different kinds of business event.

For more Lighting drawer history from this shop, see the guide to Handel's shade-ring and glass-texture patents and the guide to Bradley & Hubbard's own lapsed trademark. For the rest of the library, see the Field Guides index.