{PAR@ ` úTEXT ` òMiller, Elizabeth Smith1822╨1911reformerBorn near Geneseo, New York, on September 20, 1822, Elizabeth Smith was a daughter of Gerrit Smith, a well known reformer. She grew up in Peterboro, New York, and, except for brief periods at an academy in Clinton, New York, and at the Friends School in Philadelphia, she was educated at home. Despite the ferment of reform movements of which her home was a center, she did not develop an activist temperament. In October 1843 she married Charles D. Miller, a lawyer with whom she lived in Cazenovia, New York, until 1846 and in Peterboro until 1869. In 1850 they both signed the call for the first National Woman╒s Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts. In that year, disgusted with the utter impracticality of the trailing skirts then deemed proper ladies╒ attire, she designed a costume of short skirt, reaching just inches below the knee, over full-cut Turkish trousers that closed on the ankle. (A similar costume had been worn as early as 1849 by Fanny Kemble and Lydia Sayer (Hasbrouck).) In February 1851 Miller wore her new costume while visiting her cousin Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Seneca Falls. Stanton and her friend Amelia Bloomer were delighted with it and adopted it, and Bloomer began advocating it in her newspaper, the Lily. The costume quickly became an item of public controversy as denunciations of it from conservative quarters helped popularize it among feminists. The costume soon became known as the ╥Bloomer dress,╙ a term generally used derisively, because of Bloomer╒s role in publicizing it. During the winter of 1852╨1853 Miller wore the costume in Washington, D.C., where her father was serving in Congress. She continued to wear it long after most of its other early advocates had given it up, but by 1857 she, too, had gone back to less controversial dress. (Only Hasbrouck outlasted her.) Thereafter she took little active role in the women╒s movement, although she remained a supporter. In 1869 she and her husband moved to Geneva, New York. In 1875 she published In the Kitchen, a book on cooking and entertaining that was widely popular. Miller died in Geneva, New York, on May 22, 1911. vstyl ` ! ¬ 5¬ " 5¬ , !I ╔ 5¬ ╩ !I ⌡ !I ▐ !I !I ▐ !I h !I ▐ ~ !I ¿ !I ▐ ╢ !I !I !I !I $ !I Nlink ` HYPR ⌡ HYPR HYPR h ~HYPR ¿ ╢
