Musician Spotlight: Marguerite Kickler Miller
David Chapman | April 10, 2026 | history@thso.org
Portrait of Marguerite Kickler, from a 1914 profile published in the Terre Haute Saturday Spectator.
Although Arthur Hill was elected the first THSO concertmaster in spring 1926, it was Mrs. Marguerite Miller who was concertmaster for the orchestra’s inaugural concert that next December. Mrs. Victor C. Miller, as Marguerite was more widely known at the time, was a stalwart of the city’s string-playing community as a performer, ensemble director, and studio teacher.
She was thoroughly Hautean, born in Terre Haute in January 1884, the third of seven children of saloon owner Fred Kickler and his wife Louise (née Fox/Fuchs). Young Marguerite began musical training at a very early age, studying violin with local music professor Peter Breinig. Marguerite and her family were members of the Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church alongside Carl Eppert and his family, and she performed in the violin section of Eppert’s THSO, appearing on every known personnel list for that orchestra from 1904 to 1907. In the 1910s, Marguerite studied at the short-lived Terre Haute Conservatory of Music, earning performing and teaching credentials in both piano and violin.
Marguerite (Kickler) Miller in 1919, on-stage with Harry Crawford’s Washington Avenue Presbyterian Church Symphony Orchestra; from Donna Gisolo Christenberry’s Terre Haute Farrington’s Grove.
In these same years, Marguerite also served as concertmaster in the Washington Avenue Presbyterian Church Symphony Orchestra, directed by Harry Crawford. This orchestra formed in 1910 as part of the church’s Sunday School program and lasted for around two decades. Several writers have described the Washington Avenue Symphony Orchestra as a forerunner to the modern Terre Haute Symphony, filling the time gap between Eppert’s THSO in the 1900s and Bryant’s in 1926. A beautiful 1919 photo of Crawford’s orchestra appears in Donna Gisolo Christenberry’s photo history book Terre Haute: Farrington’s Grove. If you look closely on page 54, you can see Marguerite sitting in the concertmaster’s chair to the left of the podium. And she wasn’t the only future THSO musician in the Washington Avenue orchestra: that list would include violinist Beulah Francis (Wentworth) Gifford, horn player Herbert Hicklin, cellist Daisy (Hoggatt) Robinson, Ernest and Glenn (Tarrh) Williams (violin and trumpet, respectively), and violinists Herman Diekoff and Elisabeth (Miller) Gray. Not only did Marguerite serve in all three of these orchestras (that is, Eppert’s, Crawford’s, and Bryant’s), but cello player Charles Woerner did as well!
Portrait of Professor Victor C. Miller in 1919, from Indiana State’s The Advance year book.
Marguerite became Mrs. Victor Clyde Miller on November 28, 1917. Her new husband Victor was an Ohio native who had attended Indiana State in the early Teens, had gone away to Chicago for his master’s degree, and had returned to be an Assistant Professor of English at his alma mater. When the new THSO was formed, Marguerite and her husband both joined the orchestra, she as violinist and Victor as flutist. Violinist Arthur Hill had been one of the primary figures in the formation of the orchestra and was elected as its first concertmaster at the first rehearsal in March 1926. Hill was called away from Terre Haute for a job during the group’s hiatus that summer, and Marguerite succeeded him in the position. Thus she was the concertmaster seated next to conductor Will Bryant when the THSO took the stage at the Indiana Theatre for its inaugural concert on December 4.
Victor and Marguerite Miller with the THSO, from the Rotogravure section of the Terre Haute Tribune, February 19, 1929.
Marguerite and Victor both continued to play in the THSO for the next eight years, through the quiet years of the Depression and into the renewal season of 1934. Willfred Fidlar (standing next to Marguerite in the 1929 photo above) succeeded her as concertmaster and she became Assistant Concertmaster. That season would be her last in the THSO, after having performed for the orchestra and its forerunners for nearly thirty years.
She and Victor both retired from the orchestra that summer. A few years later Victor became chair of the English department at Indiana State and Marguerite became an active member of the college’s Faculty Wives’ Club and an avid competitive golfer. Both continued to perform music in the community and in their church (Terre Haute First Baptist) for the rest of their lives.
Marguerite and Victor Miller lived on the northwest corner of 8th Street and Lincoln near Sarah Scott Junior High for nearly fifty years. (Their house is still there!) Victor retired from Indiana State in 1946 and passed away in 1962. Marguerite passed in 1971. They are buried together in Roselawn Memorial Park north of town.
Marguerite Kickler Miller was the first of a long line of performing THSO concertmasters, a proud tradition carried on today by our very own Michael Chu.
THSO’s current concertmaster, Michael Chu, carrying on a tradition begun by Mrs. Marguerite Miller almost a century ago.
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Sources on Marguerite and Victor Miller:
[Untitled article], Terre Haute Saturday Spectator, March 14, 1914, page 8.
“Victor C. Miller Succumbs; Was ISC Professor,” Terre Haute Tribune, July 18, 1962, page 2.
“Dr. Victor C. Miller Dies at Terre Haute,” Indianapolis Star, July 19, 1962, page 15.
“Mrs. Marguerite E. Miller,” Terre Haute Tribune, August 19, 1971, page 2.
Sources on the Washington Avenue Presbyterian Church Symphony Orchestra:
Frances E. Hughes, “Washington Avenue Presbyterian has Proud History,” Terre Haute Saturday Spectator, December 9, 1978, page 23.
Donna Gisolo Christenberry, Terre Haute: Farrington’s Grove (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2011).