Left: The Isabella windows in the Music Room at the Mission Inn. Right: Isabella Hardenberg Miller.

Isabella Miller

Isabella (Bell) D. Hardenberg, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, arrived in Riverside in 1876 to teach school. A self-reliant 27-year-old, she traveled alone from Lone Rock, Wisconsin. Bell met Frank Augustus Miller, who was also from Wisconsin, at the Congregational Church.

After an intense courtship, Frank and Isabella were married on June 8, 1880. Their only child, Allis Hardenberg Miller, was born in the old adobe at the Glenwood on April 19, 1882, the following year.

Isabella, Frank, and Allis traveled extensively, including Europe where they shopped for artifacts and furnishings for the Inn and encountered the architecture that ultimately influenced Frank’s masterwork—the transformation of the Glenwood into the Mission Inn. Isabella’s health began to decline, and she died of kidney failure on July 21, 1908 at the age of 53.