Mrs. Ellen Howard Miller is a woman of broad interests and accomplishments, her greatest pleasures centering around those things that are instructive and up building to herself and the people and conditions around her. To her the realm of civics is one of unlimited interest, in which she loves to spend her time when business, home and Church interests will allow, and in this field many enterprises and activities of economic value owe their birth and fostering to her inspiration and initiative. One of the earliest of these enterprises was the forming of an organization of the women of Vinita, her old home town, for the purpose of having the cemetery surveyed, fenced and improved. While still in Vinita she had charge of the Demorest contest work among the young people and was also sent as representative from Indian Territory to the World’s convention of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union held at Chicago during the World’s Columbian Exposition. When the World’s Dry Farming Congress met in Tulsa in 1914, she was appointed delegate both by Bartlesville and Washington County and at this congress her farm on the Caney River was awarded one of the prizes. At this time she was also elected Oklahoma’s first Vice President for the Woman’s Dry Farming Congress for the following year. In club work, too, she has taken an active part, especially in matters relating to civic activities, which have always received her interest and support, and she was one of the first to see the possibilities and work for the promotion and development of Johnstone Park, in Bartlesville, one of the most beautiful recreation centers in Oklahoma. One of the interests in civics of long standing that brings to her the greatest pleasure and one in which she started active work in Bartlesville in the spring of 1916 is the conservation and study of bird life. She has awakened a wide-spread interest in the work, and as chairman of the civic committee Bartlesville inaugurated a movement which has been the means of bringing hundreds of song birds here. The movement was started in the spring of 1916, and was backed by the Tuesday Club, composed of the leading women of the city and also by the school Superintendent, teachers and children. Bird sanctuaries have been established all over the city, and as a result hundreds of song birds are to be found in this section during the summer months, while many remain in the park during the winter. That the work has been far-reaching is evinced by the fact that in 1921 she was appointed state chairman of birds and natural life by the Oklahoma State Federation of Women’s Clubs.
Mrs. Miller is a member of the Audubon Society and recently spent a year and a half at Oklahoma University, studying ornithology.
During the World’s war she was made chairman at Bartlesville of the women’s branch of the Women’s Social Service work, and in recognition of her splendid service in that connection, she received a personal letter from Secretary McAdoo, informing her of her appointment as a member of the advisory board of the Boy Scouts. As chairman of conservation for the Third District of the Federated Clubs of Oklahoma she sent out letters asking that trees be planted along the highways in honor of our soldier boys, and in December, 1920, had the pleasure of assisting in the planting of trees on the Victory Row, for Washington County, beginning at Bartlesville, the County seat.
Early in the spring of 1922 she was urged by the Democratic Party of Washington County to run for the legislature, but as she felt she was more needed in other ways, she did not accept.
Her life has been a most active and useful one, unselfishly devoted to the interests of others, her good deeds being the outpouring of a generous spirit and the expression of a nature that reaches out to all humanity.