Talk:Helen Markley Miller

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Vitals[edit]

Finding Ms. Miller's vitals has proved vexing. Miller's husband had a NYT obit, but that did not provide much information. Waterloo papers had information about her wedding which made me suspect the 1899 birthdate given in published sources is inaccurate. It may be closer to 1909. Besides her having a common name, many local news articles for Helen M. Miller are for Helen May Miller (September 13, 1918, November 17, 2010), Idaho State Librarian from 1962 - 1980. Her granddaughter Karla Miller ran for office in 2012. I contacted her but did not hear back as of this note. Jokestress (talk) 05:36, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for caring! Sorry it took me exactly 1.25 years to react. Although I wrote the article, I hadn't seen your comments before. I found three possible birth dates: 1896, 1899, 1909. The last two were in bibliographic databases, the first one in a death record from McCall that misses the day that Ms. Miller died and the name Markley, which is usually part of her name. 1896 also makes Ms. Miller 5 years older than her husband. Nevertheless, I would say that this is the mostly likely date. Please consider the following text in Penson-Ward, Betty (1990) Idaho women in history:

"The Long Valley, about Finnish settlers in Valley County, was one of the 22 novels and biographies by Helen Markley Miller of McCall, another of the state's more successful miners of regional treasure. A 1919 graduate of Iowa State Teachers College, she got her master's degree at 1954 at age 58 and after she retired from teaching she wrote full-time, both children's and adult books with mostly western themes tied to Idaho."

If 1909 was correct, Ms. Miller would have completed Iowa State Teachers College at the age of 10. This is very unlikely and if it would have happened, it would be mentioned everywhere. Remain 1896 and 1899. With 1899 she would have graduated Iowa State Teachers College at the age of 20. This could have been done more easily, yet in 1954 she graduated at the age of 58 (all by the same source) from Western State College of Colorado (other source). This was also the son's college; they attended about the same time. 1954 minus 58 brings one back to 1896. So unless this better researched publication is awfully off, I think we should accept the death certificate as belonging to Ms. Miller. Of course, if you have or receive other information we can always correct.

Oh yes, I did run into the Idaho librarian many times, but kept these sources out of the article. The above quote has been in the article all along. I have added some of the extra info to Mack Miller's article. I still need to improve that one. Thank you for all your input! gidonb (talk) 23:47, 15 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]