Born on July 13, 1877 in Pittsfield, Maine, Carl E. Milliken attended public schools in Pittsfield before graduating from Cony High School and Bates College in the class of 1897.
He went on to receive his masters degree from Harvard in 1899 before moving to Island Falls, Maine to enter the lumber business.
Milliken held positions as Clerk and General Manager of the Mattawamkeag Lumber Company, Treasurer and General Manager of the Stockholm Lumber Company, General Manager of the Howard Axe Company and President of the Katahdin Farmer’s Telephone Company until he was elected to the Maine House of Representatives in 1905.
Serving in the House until 1909, Milliken was elected to the State Senate in that year and reelected in 1911, 1913, and 1915. From 1913 until 1915 he served as President of that body.
Running for Governor as a Progressive candidate in 1916, Milliken easily defeated his Democratic opponent, Oakley Curtis, and was reelected in 1918, this time by a smaller margin over Bertrand McIntire.
The Governor who was to lead Maine through the war years was also the first Governor to be nominated by direct primary and the first to live in the Blaine House.
Milliken left office on January 5, 1921 to return to his job as Secretary of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association, the movie industry’s first self-censorship body.
He died on May 1, 1961 in a nursing home in Massachusetts.