Lost found The long road home for a long-lost toolbox
Scott Johnson of Fayetteville, Ga., found this toolbox in his mother’s belongings when she was moving. Instead of selling it, he decided to track down its owners.
Scott Johnson of Fayetteville, Ga., was able to track down the owners of an old toolbox with a copper plate reading “G.R. Miller, Dunn Sta. PA.”
The nameplate mounted on the front of the toolbox, reading G.R. Miller, remains intact even though the box had been stolen many years ago. Now it is back in the hands of John Miller of Claysville.
John Miller of Claysville removes the tray from his father’s toolbox that was made by his grandfather but had been stolen years ago and ended up in Georgia.
In 1974, carpenter George Raymond Miller walked out to his garage in Dunn Station, near Prosperity, to find his toolbox and $200 worth of tools missing. It wasn’t just any toolbox, but a wooden one believed to have had been handmade by Miller’s father.
He never found the person who took the items, but 40 years later, the toolbox was returned to his son, a carpenter like his father, by a man from Georgia.
Miller was a self-employed carpenter who attended Waynesburg College until he had to take over the family farm after his father died. He kept his toolbox in a ’49 Ford until he got a Jeep, and it was from that Jeep that it was stolen.
“He wasn’t a very happy carpenter (after it was stolen),” his son, John Miller, laughingly recalled. “He kept his hand saws and a lot of other tools in that box.”
Miller’s toolbox made it a long way from its home, going as far as Fayetteville, Ga.
Scott Johnson of Fayetteville first laid eyes on Miller’s blue toolbox three months ago when he was helping his parents move out of the home they had lived in for the past 17 years.
“She (my mom) and I have the same taste in decor, so when I saw it I really liked it,” Johnson said. “It was the first time I’d ever seen it, so I called and asked her about it.”
Johnson said his mother, Joy, was always going to flea markets and garage sales, and she told him she thinks she got the toolbox from a barn sale.
“I just liked it because it was blue,” she told her son.
When Johnson saw the little copper plate on the side of the worn, blue toolbox, he grew intrigued. It read, “G.R. Miller Dunn Sta. PA,” and when he did an online search of the name, it returned the subjects Waynesburg and Greene County.
Johnson said he wanted to track down the family that used to own the toolbox because if it was his relative that made it, he would want to have it as his coffee table.
After calling the Waynesburg Chamber of Commerce to try to find information on the toolbox’s previous owners, Johnson said he waited three weeks before he heard any news.
“I got a phone call from David Cressey at the Cornerstone Genealogical Society,” Johnson said. The Waynesburg Chamber of Commerce had contacted the organization for help. Cressey said he saw the request as a challenge and handed it to one of his volunteer researchers, Thelma Yeager.
Yeager said it was an unusual request but that it was surprisingly simple to find the information.
“The first thing I did, I went onto the census records for the 1940s and tried to find people with that last name who lived at Dunn Station,” she said. “I was able to find someone that had that last name, started googling those initials, and the article about the toolbox that was stolen came up. It was a simple search.
“I told Dave it was almost like someone was leading me to the right places because it was so easy to find the person. I thought to myself, ‘I wonder if this can be the same toolbox.'”
Yeager gave the information to Cressey, and he, in turn, sent it along to Johnson in Georgia.
“To me, it meant something special,” Yeager said. “You know, the person that got (the toolbox) was also a carpenter. To me, that really touched my heart, especially around Christmastime. I was happy that it went full circle.”
George Miller had two sons, and because he had passed away, Johnson contacted one of them.
When Johnson contacted Miller’s son George about the toolbox, he said he thought his brother John would like it because he was a carpenter like his father.
“So I called John, and he quickly put his wife on the phone,” Johnson said. “I said, ‘I have something that belongs to you. It’s an old toolbox. Do you know what I mean by an old, turquoise toolbox?'”
The Millers, of Claysville, were in their car when they got the news, right around Thanksgiving.
“I just couldn’t believe it,” said John Miller. “If that box could only talk.”
The Millers told Johnson that the toolbox had been stolen, and they asked him how much he wanted for it.
But Johnson said he didn’t want anything. He just loved “the Americana of it.”
“The story became much cooler at that point,” Johnson said. “And the fact that it was taken from them and was now being sent back to them.”
Miller’s toolbox made its way home on Dec. 12, just in time for Christmas. It’s now sitting in John Miller’s den with a doily on it surrounded by family pictures.
“I feel like it was just meant to be back with our family,” said Judy Miller, John’s wife. “My husband and I are Christian people, and I believe God rewards you sometimes for things. My husband and I were just really excited about this. He has all of his dad’s toolboxes.”