Emily Huntington Miller (1833-1913) was a multifaceted woman, known as a writer, educator, temperance worker, and editor of and writer for “The Little Corporal” magazine. “The Little Corporal” was originally created to raised funds for the North Western Sanitary Fairs in 1865 that supported the Union cause in the Civil War, but became a permanent fixture after the war’s end. She was widely involved in both local and national affairs, being the superintendent of the Methodist Sunday School, the secretary of the committee that organized the national WCTU in 1874, a Dean of Women at Northwestern University (1891-1898), a prominent Chautauquan, a DAR member, and an honorary member of the Woman’s Club of Evanston and Phi Beta Kappa.
Significance
Famous poet and writer. “Her life embodied the emergence during the mid-nineteenth century of an independent, well-educated, and public woman whose work and vision of the world where driven by strong evangelical beliefs about an individual’s moral obligation to society. That obligation, for Miller, meant extending the Christian home beyond the family and into the public sphere. All the paths she pursued sprang from this calling to expand that realm” (from WBC).