Miller, Juanita Joaquina, 1880-1970

Juanita Joaquina Miller was the daugter of Joaquin Miller and wife Abbie Leland Miller. She was born in New York City in 1880. Miss Miller lived at Joaquin Miller's locally famous home, "The Hights," in Oakland, California, and was an active participant in the Oakland peforming arts community until the 1960s.

Biography

Cincinnatus Hiner (not Heine) Miller, better known by his pen-name, Joaquin Miller, American poet and journalist (1837-1913), was born near Liberty, Indiana.

His father, a Quaker schoolmaster brought the family west in 1852, settling in Oregon, where young Miller received a cursory education. When he was seventeen he set out for California and lived among the Indians and in mining camps. This was a period of highly colored adventuring and lasted until 1858 when he returned to Oregon and completed his education at Columbia: College in Eugene. After an interval as pony-express rider, Miller became a newspaper editor, in Eugene, in 1862 and 1863. It was at this time that he began to write verse. His first volume of poems was published at his own expense in 1868. In 1870, after visiting the eastern states, Miller went to England, posing as a romantic Wild West figure and budding genius. He was lucky enough to be sponsored by Tom Hood and to have his Songs of the Sierras published by Longmans. Overnight he became the "literary lion" of London. He "had it made." A compulsive traveler, Joaquin Miller wrote as he went, profusely--in prose and in verse--describing places visited, the life and character of the people and the political aspects of the time. His wanderings carried him to Europe, up, down and across the United States, to Canada, the Klondike, Mexico, China and Japan.

When the real-estate boom of the late eighties brought new life to the west, Miller returned to California to establish a permanent base. He bought one hundred acres in the hills above Oakland and built a house and guest cottages which he called "The Hights" [sic.] and began to be accepted as one of the California circle of writers which included Ina Coolbrith, Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, Prentice Mulford, Edmond Clarence Stedman, George Sterling, Jack London, Samuel L. Clemens, and others.

In his later years "the poet of the Sierras" became something of a legend, but his fame was based perhaps more on Joaquin the personality, than on Joaquin the writer of memorable verse.