Representative Howard Shultz Miller

Howard Shultz Miller (February 27, 1879 – January 2, 1970) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a U.S. Representative from Kansas. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented Kansas’s 1st congressional district for one term in the United States Congress from 1953 to 1955, contributing to the legislative process during a significant period in American history.

Miller was born in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, on February 27, 1879. In 1882 he moved with his family to Morrill, Brown County, Kansas, where he was raised on the Great Plains during a period of rapid agricultural and community development. He attended the public schools of Brown County and later Sabetha High School in Sabetha, Kansas, receiving the basic education that would underpin his later legal and political career.

Before entering the legal profession, Miller worked as a schoolteacher. He taught in Kansas schools from 1894 to 1899, beginning this career while still a young man. His experience as a teacher in rural communities provided him with firsthand knowledge of the educational and economic conditions facing his future constituents and helped shape his understanding of public service.

Miller pursued higher education in law and enrolled at the University of Nebraska College of Law, from which he graduated in 1900. He was admitted to the bar in 1901 and commenced the practice of law in Kansas. Alongside his legal work, he engaged in agricultural pursuits, reflecting the dual character of many professionals in largely rural Kansas at the time. From 1901 to 1952 he maintained an active law practice while also managing his interests in farming, establishing himself as a long-standing figure in the professional and civic life of his region.

After more than five decades as a lawyer and agriculturist, Miller entered national politics. He was elected as a Democrat to the Eighty-third Congress and served as a Representative from Kansas from January 3, 1953, to January 3, 1955. During his single term in the U.S. House of Representatives, he participated in the democratic process and represented the interests of his constituents in Kansas’s 1st congressional district at a time marked by post–World War II adjustments and the early Cold War. Notably, he is the only Democrat in history to have represented Kansas’s 1st congressional district, underscoring the distinctiveness of his electoral success in a predominantly Republican area.

Miller sought to continue his congressional service but was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1954 to the Eighty-fourth Congress. He again ran for Congress in 1956, seeking election to the Eighty-fifth Congress, but was not successful. After these campaigns, he did not return to national office, and his brief tenure in Congress remained a singular episode in a much longer career in law and agriculture.

Howard Shultz Miller died on January 2, 1970, in Hiawatha, Kansas. He was interred in Morrill Cemetery in Morrill, Kansas, close to the community where he had grown up and spent much of his life. His career reflected the trajectory of a rural Midwestern professional who combined teaching, law, agriculture, and public service, culminating in his historic role as a Democratic representative of Kansas’s 1st congressional district.