Pioneer Information
Born on a farm near Dayton, Ohio, in 1854, Miller attended Cook County’s Normal School in Illinois in 1893 (now Chicago State University) where she came under the influence of Colonel Francis Parker and Wilbur Jackman. After graduation, Miller authored Course in Nature Study for Detroit Schools (1896) and taught and supervised nature studies curricula for schools in Michigan and New York. She studied plant evolution with botanist John Merle Coulter at Chicago University and was among the first women to attend the Cornell University State College of Forestry, where she studied forestry, geology, entomology, chemistry, and other subjects under horticulturist Liberty Hyde Bailey.
By 1901, Miller moved to Groton, Massachusetts, to serve as the first known faculty member of the Lowthorpe School of Horticulture and Landscape Gardening for Women. With her student Elizabeth Seward Hill, Miller planned and directed the Lowthorpe Garden, built by and for young schoolboys from a Groton elementary school.
Miller relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1904, and led the Department of School Gardens for the Cleveland Board of Education for three decades. The program included summer gardens for students at elementary schools and students’ home gardens. During this time, in conjunction with the United States Department of Agriculture, Miller published Children’s Gardens for School and Home: A Manual for Cooperative Gardening (1904). Miller’s only known extant school garden is the Memorial Garden, built in 1910 to honor the 172 students and teachers who died in a 1908 fire at the Lake View School in Collinwood, Ohio. After retiring from the Cleveland Board of Education, Miller oversaw campus maintenance and improvements at the Blossom Hill School for Girls in Brecksville, Ohio.
Miller served in numerous organizations, including the School Gardening Association of America, American Geography Society, American Forestry Association, Iowa State Audubon Society, and the Indian Association of America. In addition to her writing on nature studies and school gardens, Miller authored several memoirs, including As I See It (1940), As I Did It, and Life Begins at Eighty, which provide personal accounts of her philosophy on living and unique life trajectory. She died in Cleveland at the age of 89.
