Star Profile
Helen Nicholson Milliken, professional historian
By John Temple Ligon Temple@TheColumbiaStar.com

Helen Milliken

Helen Milliken is currently working on the history of the law firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough. She has passed the half- dozen mark in commissions for published books. With her academic background in history, particularly American history, Milliken has spent the past 12 years in complete practical application of her education.

Born at Providence Hospital, Milliken is even pumped to propose she write the history of the hospital and its owners/operators, the Sisters of Charity.

Her father, John Nicholson, was an attorney who died about the time she finished elementary school at Heathwood Hall. Her mother moved the family into the new Carriage Hill Apartments on Clemson Avenue, across the street from St. Martin's- in- the- - Fields and next to Crayton Elementary School where Milliken entered the second grade.

After Crayton Middle School, Milliken attended A. C. Flora High School, graduating in 1968. She moved that summer to Danville, Va., to enroll in Stratford College. She returned to Columbia and to USC for her sophomore year. A history major, Milliken finished college in four years and married Jim Milliken, forester.

Her husband shifted from managing forests to selling them, while they had two children, James and Elizabeth. James develops residential real estate with Columbia's Clif Kinder, and his wife Mary Dameron Milliken is an attorney in the real estate practice at Callison Tighe & Robinson. Daughter Elizabeth Werntz teaches school in Mt. Pleasant.

Her husband Jim is back in the forestry and wildlife management business. Jim's father came to S.C. from Chicago to become the state's first private practicing forester.

Milliken's practice as a professional historian began in genealogy, tracing family histories to confirm appointments in the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) or the Colonial Dames or the Sons of Cincinnati. Demands on her

took off with Midlands

Woman magazine, aka MW, over 10 years ago. She worked with Mary Jane Reynolds creating a series of historical profiles.

After MW, Milliken was approached to research and write about S.C.'s first

ladies. The result was Behind

the Scenes - Sketches of

Selected South Carolina First

Ladies, published in 2000 by the Palmetto Conservation Foundation.

The book was a natural for Milliken. On her father's side she is a descendant of Governor John Sheppard of Edgefield, who was in office for one year, 1886. On her mother's side, she is descended from Governor Ben (Pitchfork) Tillman, whose nephew and Milliken's great grandfather, Lt.

Gov. Jim Tillman, killed The

State's editor and co- founder Narcisco G. Gonzales, memorialized by the obelisk at the corner of Senate and Sumter.

Milliken's client, Nelson Mullins, won early fame as the firm's founder P. H. Nelson won acquittal for Lt. Gov. Tillman in 1903.

Another published product from Milliken is about the Myrtle Beach company, Burroughs &

Chapin, titled From the

Beginning - A History of the

Burroughs & Chapin Company

. To work on the Chapin side of the firm, Milliken had a Chicago connection, Harry Hartshorne, whose mother was a Chapin, but more interestingly who was John F. Kennedy's college roommate at Harvard.

After Milliken finishes the history of Nelson Mullins, coming up for publication in 2008 or 2009 are histories of the S.C. State Fair, Carolina First Bank, the William Bird Company in Charleston, and Shenandoah Valley moonshine making. The moonshine history will be published by Random House, and it will be the official in- house history for America's only Moonshine Museum, based in New Market, Va.

Milliken and her husband enjoy frequent returns to Cashiers, N.C., Wade Hampton's northernmost interests, home of High Hampton. Back in town, she can be seen just about every morning at the Columbia Athletic Club, but her real diversion is her work. She is fascinated and thrilled with the history of South Carolina.