by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Inspired by an early 20th century photograph of Lordsburg College, now the University of La Verne, a prior post here went into some of the history of a scandal that nearly brought the school to ruin and which involved a several-year affair between the institution’s president, Edmund A. Miller, and his secretary and former student, Celia G. Overholtzer and which terminated in spring 1899 in her tearful confession and his removal from his position.
That topic was presented this evening to the La Verne Historical Society and was also recorded by the university’s television station, while this post adds information not included in the first post regarding the scandal, its principal figures and their lives before and after the incident. Miller (1861-1946), who was from near Jonesborough, Tennessee, in the eastern part of the Volunteer State, received his education at local schools and Milligan College, near his home and which still operates today.
Miller was brought to the Virginia Normal School for teacher education in 1886 by a mentor, John B. Wrightsman, who taught at that institution, soon renamed Bridgewater College, with a liberal arts focus, and which also remains in operation. The school, situated in the northwestern portion of the Old Dominion State, was founded by the Church of the Brethren, a sect of German Baptists commonly called “Dunkards” because of the practice of baptism by immersion.
Miller taught German, Greek and Latin, specializing in the poet Virgil and Julius Caesar, as well as algebra, calculus and geometry. He also was widely known for his charm, high degree of “personal magnetism,” oratorical skills and powers of persuasion, including recruitment of students to the school, and became the institution’s president in his second year there. Scandal, however, soon arose involving Wrightsman’s wife, Fannie. Rumor was that, when Wrightsman was away from home, Miller and Fannie conducted an affair.
Trustees including Daniel C. Moomaw and others conducted an investigation and there were statements made as to letters passed between the two, a shot fired at Miller by an unknown assailant and a strange incident in which the president was followed to the Wrightsman house at 2 a.m and Miller was alleged to have been whistling to Fannie in some kind of clandestine code for admittance. A fuller examination led to the conclusion that Miller acted “imprudently,” though no serious charges could be founded based on the evidence located.
The trustees at the Normal School, however, determined that it was best for all involved for Miller to resign his position. He left to pursue medical studies and then earned a master’s degree, while also marrying Luella Wine in September 1889. Remarkably, the institution, since renamed Bridgewater College and which had a couple hundred or so students, hired Miller back as its president and Luella, who earned a music degree, taught art courses there. Despite lingering ill-will among pro and anti-Miller factions, he served for two years before being hired in 1892 to preside at Lordsburg, which was also a Church of the Brethren institution.
It was generally a quiet tenure, as far as local press coverage was concerned, for more than a half-dozen years, with Lordsburg’s student population being somewhat smaller than that of Bridgewater. An 1895 advertisement for “Lordsburg Business College” touted the “complete business course through actual business practice” with courses in penmanship, shorthand and typewriting with the goal being “not to make money, but to place a superior Business College Education within the reach of every deserving lady or gentleman.”
Miller continued to exercise his considerable public relations skills in attending the national “Dunkard” convention in 1895 and seeking, a couple of years later, to enlist the support of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce for the hosting of the convocation in the Angel City in 1898, though this did not happen.
One of the founders of Lordsburg College was Samuel A. Overholtzer, a native of Pennsylvania who migrated to central California in the 1870s and settled at Banta, not far from Tracy, where he farmed. At the end of 1884, he visited Los Angeles and soon acquired a large property in what soon became Covina, where he was an orange grower in a region that was quickly becoming widely recognized as a citrus empire. The seventh Overholtzer child was Celia Grace (1872-1976), who entered the College. At the 1894 commencement exercises, she delivered a speech called “Past, Present and Future” and a Kansas educational newspaper commented that it “brought not a few clear, vivid and soul-comforting thoughts to the audience.”
Little did anyone know that the past, present and future would hardly be clear or comforting to the soul, though it certainly was vivid. In fall 1898, the rumor mill became very busy concerning what went on behind the president’s frosted glass office door with his secretary and it was reported that he “begged the trustees to allow him to remain in the college at least until the end of the school year,” while “the girl’s kinsmen heard of it and gently took her to task.” Overholtzer “wept bitterly, but would not confess—then.” It was apparently after her mother died that year that “she told the whole story.”
The December 2019 post went into some detail about her extraordinary statement regarding the six-year affair with Miller, along with the Church of the Brethren congregation’s overwhelming vote to expel him, despite his plea to be allowed to serve out the remainder of the school year. This was also the case with the disgraced president’s return not quite a month later and his insistence on a rehearing of the matter, which, after his claim that the Overholtzers engineered his demise to install a brother of Celia’s in his position, only led to his being pelted with rotten eggs and threats of a literal tar and feathering.
What that post did not get into was what happened to the two principals after the scandal receded (it led to the closure of the college, though William C. Hanawalt and others brought Lordsburg back into a successful endeavor with the institution later renamed the University of La Verne). While Miller was recorded in the 1900 census as residing in Los Angeles, not far north of the University of Southern California, with his occupation listed as a “professor,” it also recorded that he did not work for a year previous.
Clearly, he needed a new occupation as finding a job in academia was almost certainly not an option. He earned a certificate in shorthand at the Los Angeles Business College in 1901, but then was admitted to the bar the following year and entered into a law practice with Calvin C. Bowen and which lasted until the latter’s death in 1909. From that point, it looks like Miller worked as a sole practitioner, but there was little mention of his legal, or other, activities thereafter, although he remained an attorney until his death in Los Angeles in 1946.
As for Celia Overholtzer, some of her descendants were at the presentation, and between research for the talk and this post and their additional remarks, it was clear that she went through some significant challenges in her very long life. Part of this stemmed from the insular nature of the Church of the Brethren and its desire to put a definitive close on the Lordsburg scandal as quickly as possible.
When the 1900 census was taken, she resided with a brother in the Covina area and then was induced to marry Melvin Custer, a local rancher and widower with several children. It seemed that a move to northern California, along with two of Overholtzer’s brothers, was at least somewhat influenced by the lingering scandal, though one of the siblings, tired of some of the doctrines of the Church, became a noted figure in a strain of evangelicalism in later years, as well.
In any case, the Custers remained in Glenn County, northwest of Sacramento, for several years until a financial reversal involving the death of the couple’s pigs led Melvin Custer to commit suicide. Celia took in boarders to generate some income and ended up marrying Edward W. Burnham, a native of England and longtime resident of Glenn County. She endured a difficult marriage involving his indolence and, as she stated in a 1928 divorce petition, the fact that Burnham was “persistently stubborn” and “accused her of being unfaithful.” The process proved very difficult, but after she secured a judgment in November 1929, Celia and her daughter with Burnham headed south and settled in Hemet.
Apparently, some Church members assisted Celia in finding jobs, involving housekeeping and serving as a nanny, as she spent resided in such areas as Glendale, Hollywood and Los Angeles, though she never achieved much in the way of financial independence. What sustained her, her descendants told the assemblage tonight, was her enduring and unyielding faith, which included many years of teaching Sunday school.
In her later years, she lived with a daughter in Oakdale, east of Modesto, in the Central Valley foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and she died in Modesto a little more than a month before her 104th birthday. In more than three-quarters of a century, she struggled, but in 1971, she was honored by the University of La Verne and it was noted that she was the only surviving member of its class of 1895. Her obituary stated that Celia “taught commercial courses at La Verne College in Southern California when she was young,” but, of course, nothing was mentioned of the scandal of her young adult years.
A granddaughter at tonight’s talk, Mary Madaris, said that this was because Celia kept that terrible aspect of her life sealed and it was not until the 1990s that Mary and others in the family were aware of what transpired close to a century before. In addition to the sharing of some of Celia’s subsequent life story, what was also amazing at the presentation were the number of memorabilia and personal material related to Celia and her years at Lordsburg College, including photographs, certificates and diplomas, commencement programs and much more. This added immeasurably to the experience tonight for attendees.
It was also interesting to hear from University of La Verne faculty who have taught there for decades that the story of the scandal, even at this late date, has hardly been discussed on campus, this a long lingering residue of the Church’s insistence that the incident be closed, permanently if possible. As with many other institutional scandals, however, such a determination could not hold forever. It seemed that, for many in the audience, not to mention Celia’s descendants, it is important to remember this history for a good number of reasons.
One of these is what Celia told the Church congregation in what must have been an agonizing experience in March 1899, namely that Miller, an authority figure with a great deal of “personal magnetism” and persuasive powers, had “complete control” over her during the six-year affair. What was discussed at the presentation was that essential attribute of the power that older, powerful men can have over women, in all variety of industries and walks of life.
For example, it was pointed out that, a little over a year before the Lordsburg scandal post, another on the blog covered some of the history of the sexual assault trials in the late 1920s and early 1930s of theater magnate Alexander Pantages, after his attempted rape of young dancer Eunice Pringle. While the Church of the Brethren, as was its wont, handled the Miller/Overholtzer scandal internally, shying away from the legal system, Pantages faced prosecution and was convicted, though a retrial, with a state supreme court ruling that his attorneys could use Pringle’s character and sex life in proceedings, led to his acquittal.
Whatever the differences, there were some very clear corollaries between these two stories. As with a presentation at the Homestead on the Pantages/Pringle matter, when her daughter appeared at a late hour and made an enormous impression on attendees as she, too, brought personal memorabilia and spoke powerfully about her mother’s later years, including her silence about what was done to her decades before, the presence of Celia Overholtzer’s descendants and Mary’s summation of her long life after the Lordsburg scandal, made tonight far more special than it would have been otherwise.