Miller, Emma Guffey, 1874-1970

Emma (Guffey) Miller, Democratic Party leader, was born Mary Emma Guffey at Guffey Station, Pa., on July 6, 1874, the daughter of Barbaretta (Hough) and John Guffey. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College with an A.B. in history and political science in 1899. While traveling in Japan (1902) she met and married Carroll Miller (1875-1949). Miller's letters to her family (see #6-8) recount their courtship and marriage and the birth of their first child, William Gardner Miller, III. Twin sons, John Guffey and Carroll Jr., were born in 1908, son Joseph F. in 1912.

Active politically since her college days, Miller campaigned for Democratic candidates in 1920; in 1924 she was elected a delegate to the national convention, where, in a seconding speech for Alfred E. Smith (see #136), she appealed for religious tolerance and denounced the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, she received one-half vote for the presidential nomination, the first woman ever to do so. She helped organize the Pennsylvania Federation of Democratic Women, and spoke out for prohibition reform; her advocacy of disarmament forced her resignation from the Daughters of the American Revolution. In 1932 she was elected Democratic National Committeewoman from Pennsylvania, a post she held until her death. During the 1930s and 40s she also served as official hostess for her brother, Joseph F. Guffey, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania (1935-1947). Miller remained in the background of political life, never running for nor accepting public office herself, though she felt strongly about women's right to do both. She was an active member of the National Woman's Party (Chairman, 1960-1965, and Life President, 1965-1970), and an outspoken advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Miller died of a heart attack on February 23, 1970, and is buried with her husband in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Va.

More biographical information is available in this collection (see Series I). See also Notable American Women: The Modern Period (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), which includes a list of additional sources. Miller also gave papers to the Pennsylvania Room of the Carnegie Library (Pittsburgh) and the Slippery Rock State College Archives.

From the guide to the Papers, 1833, 1884-1972, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)