Carl E. Milliken (courtesy Maine State Museum)
(1877-1961) was born on July 13, 1877 in Pittsfield, attended public schools there before graduating from Cony High School, then Bates College in the class of 1897. He went on to receive his masters degree from Harvard in 1899 before moving to Island Falls to enter the lumber business.
Carl Elias Milliken held positions as Clerk and General Manager of the Mattawamkeag Lumber Company, Treasurer and General Manager of the Stockholm Lumber Company, General Manager of the Howard Axe Company and President of the Katahdin Farmer’s Telephone Company until he was elected to the Maine House of Representatives in 1905.
Carl E. Milliken, Senate President photo (Maine State Archives)
Serving in the House until 1909, Milliken was elected to the State Senate in that year and reelected in 1911, 1913, and 1915. From 1913 until 1915 he served as President of that body.
Running for Governor as a Progressive candidate in 1916, Milliken easily defeated his Democratic opponent, incumbent Oakley Curtis, and was reelected in 1918, this time by a smaller margin over Bertrand McIntire.
The Governor who was to lead Maine through the years of World War I and the 1918 influenza, was also the first Governor to be nominated by direct primary and the first to live in the Blaine House.
On October 15, 1918, Dr. Bristol, State Health Commissioner, asked that $25,000 be appropriated from the emergency war fund, the state influenza epidemic fund practically having been exhausted, and that Governor Milliken appoint a committee, representing the state health department, the U.S. Public Health Service, the Red Cross, and the Maine Committee on Public Safety to have control of the situation and fight the epidemic. Milliken appointed that committee.
Milliken left office on January 5, 1921 to return to his job as Secretary of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association, the movie industry’s first self-censorship body.
He died on May 1, 1961 in a nursing home in Massachusetts. His former home in Island Falls is now a local medical center.
Additional resources
Bangor Daily News, May 2, 1961.
Sobel, Robert, and John Raimo, eds. Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, 1789-1978, Vol. 2.
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*Cited in Friends of the Blaine House at http://blainehouse.org/governors(accessed April 25, 2011) (accessed April 25, 2011)