Emma Harriman

Emma Harriman's signature, 1869 (SCSU Archives)

Emma Harriman's obituary in the Los Angeles Times, March 19, 1933 (Newspapers.com)

Emma L. Harriman, the oldest of six siblings, was born in July 1848 in New Hampshire to shoemaker Moses Smith and Elizabeth Ann (Kimball) Harriman. In the 1850s, she moved with her family to Hinckley Township in Ohio. By the late 1860s, however, they had moved on to Corinna, Minnesota, where her father had received two land grants, one by President Abraham Lincoln and another by President Ulysses S. Grant. There, her father worked as a master mechanic.

Graduating with the Third State Normal School’s first class on June 30, 1871, Emma delivered a culminating essay, “Why Not?,” questioning why women were educated only to be married and not to pursue a higher purpose outside of the home.

After graduation, Emma became a teacher while living at home in Corinna. In the late 1870s or early 1880s, she moved with her family to Topeka, Kansas, after her father became a traveling Methodist preacher. By late 1885, they had relocated to Los Angeles, where her father built a ranch house. Emma’s parents passed away by 1900. She continued to live in the family home, which she operated as a boarding house.

Never marrying, Emma devoted her life to activism. As a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which called for the moderation of alcohol consumption, she authored several books and articles on various social reform topics including temperance and women's suffrage. As a leading member, she would have worked closely with fellow 1871 St. Cloud State graduate Hester Tuttle Griffith, who became president of the California WCTU. Emma was a personal friend of Frances E. Willard, president of the national WCTU and a prominent women’s suffragist. Following the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, Emma registered to vote as a member of the Prohibition Party and continued her activism well into her later years. She passed away on August 16, 1933 and was buried in Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles.