Oberlin's Women: A Legacy of Leadership & Activism

Emily Huntington Miller

Emily Huntington Miller (1833-1913, OC 1857) was an educator and author. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1857 from the Literary Course. After graduating, she worked as a schoolteacher between 1857 and 1860. She married a fellow Oberlin graduate, John Edwin Miller, in 1860. The couple had three sons, Harry, Frederick, and George. Miller. The family moved across the country several times as John Miller changed teaching positions. They settled in Evanston, Illinois in 1870, when he became the co-publisher of Little Corporal, a children’s magazine. Emily Huntington Miller began working as the editor of that magazine in 1871. She also helped run the educational and missionary programs at her local Methodist church and joined the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society. Working with that group, she was one of the founders of the Evanston College for Ladies. That college later merged with Northwestern University, and she became a university trustee.

Miller was also active in the temperance movement. She joined the Chautauqua Woman’s Club and was a frequently lecturer. She later held the position of president for four years. Miller was part of a group of women that formed The Women’s Christian Temperance Union at a Chautauqua Woman’s Club meeting in 1874. She frequently lectured for the W.C.T.U. and wrote a regular column for the organization’s newspaper.

After Little Corporal was absorbed by another magazine in 1875, Emily Huntington Miller and her husband left their positions. In 1878, they moved to Minnesota. From 1883 to 1889, Miller was president of the Methodist Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society branch in Minneapolis. She returned to Northwestern University in 1891, where she became the dean of women and an assistant professor of English. She was later appointed as the principal of the Women’s Department at that university. Miller retired in 1898, but continued to write stories and articles for many magazines. She wrote twenty novels, volumes of poetry, and children’s stories in her lifetime.  

Sources:
Student File (Emily Huntington Miller), Alumni & Development Records, O.C.A.

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