Archives West Finding Aid

Harriet Miller was born to Colwell and Vera Crome Miller on July 4, 1919 in Council, Idaho, a small agricultural community approximately 125 miles north of Boise. After graduating magna cum laude from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, in 1941 with a BA in chemistry, Ms. Miller worked briefly at Fort Lewis in Washington before relocating to Pennsylvania. Between 1944 and 1950, while pursuing her Masters degree in Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, she worked as a research chemist at the Atlantic Richfield Company (now ARCO). It was while working at ARCO that she met Elizabeth Neill Harrison, who remained her companion for the next 43 years.

In 1950, she and Elizabeth moved to Montana after Harriet accepted a position at the University of Montana. Later, following in the footsteps of her parents, both of whom were school teachers, Ms. Miller ran for the post of Montana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction. She was elected on the Republican ticket in 1956 and 1960, but ran as a Democrat in 1964, having had a falling out with her fellow Republicans regarding the state and future of education in Montana. She ran her own management consulting firm from 1969 to 1975, and in 1975 was hired as the Associate Director for the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), quickly moving up the ladder to briefly serve as the Director in 1976. She soon fell on the wrong side of the governing board, however, and was fired. Ms. Miller sued the board and, after the case was settled out of court, Harriet and Elizabeth moved to Santa Barbara, California, permanently in 1981. Ms. Miller quickly became part of the civic fabric of Santa Barbara, serving on the Santa Barbara Housing Authority Board, the Santa Barbara County Parole Board, and the Affordable Housing Association, among others. By 1987, Harriet had been elected a city council member, and in 1995 she was elected mayor, a post in which she served until 2001. She died in January 2010.

Elizabeth Harrison was born on January 2, 1926, in Wildwood, New Jersey, to Walter and Anna Harrison. She graduated valedictorian from Wildwood High School in 1943, where she acted as class historian. Between 1953 and 1957, Elizabeth worked as Assistant State Advertising Director for the Montana Highway Commission, taking pictures that were used in their Travel Montana and other ad campaigns. She also worked as an aide in the Office of Public Instruction; it was she who filed Harriet’s Democratic nominating petition in 1964. Elizabeth died in April 1990, and asked that her photographs and their negatives be donated to the Montana Historical Society.