(*Portrait
and bio taken with permission from Michael Sull’s Spencerian Script and Ornamental
Penmanship, Volume I.)
EC Mills
(1872-1962)
As Louis
Madarasz was the acknowledged master of Ornamental Penmanship, E. C. Mills was
the undisputed master of Business Writing. As Madarasz was first inspired by
Gaskell's Compendium of Penmanship, so, too, was Mills. At the age of fifteen,
he entered the Denver Business College, where he was to address circulars, help
with the business correspondence, and partake in a business course. After a
couple of years, he traveled back to his home state of Illinois and taught
school classes for five years. The Williams & Rogers Company in Rochester,
New York hired him in 1896 to prepare script for their publications. Mills did
this for several years, until the company was sold to the American Book
Company. After this, Mills decided to go into business for himself, and
conducted numerous correspondence courses, performed commercial penmanship
services and became the director of the penmanship programs of the parochial
schools in Rochester, New York. He had many successful students, and several of
these students later taught numerous students of their own. Some of the master
penman who were considered to be either first or second generation students of
Mills were Joseph J. Bailey, Alva Wonnell, and Paul O'Hara, among many others.
Mills constantly advertised his courses in The Business Educator and American
Penman magazines, and in fifty years of service as a penman, he set the
standards by which business writing was judged.