George Heron Milne

Who is George Heron Milne?

George Heron Milne worked at the Library of Congress for 39 years and was chief of the Congressional Reading Room from 1937 to 1948. He served as librarian for many years at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C.

Milne was born in Washington, D.C., to well-known interior decorator Alexander Milne and Isabella Metcalfe. He married Ella Baldwin Lower of Cleveland, Ohio, in 1917. His bride's brother was a co-author, with Milne and J. Bentley Mulford, of a bibliography entitled The Dramatic Books and Plays Published During 1912-1916 and 1921.

Milne worked as a messenger for The Evening Star newspaper from 1902 to 1905 and then was employed by the Philip T. Hall haberdashery firm from 1906 to 1909. He was hired as a messenger by the Library of Congress in November 1909, serving in the general reading room. In 1917, he was transferred to the congressional reading room and became chief there in 1937.

As a boy, Milne would trek through the woodlands near Washington, D.C., in search of species of plants not generally known. In later life, it was said that Milne knew the names of all domestic flowers and plants and most wildflowers and could spot them at a glance. Rep. Daniel A. Reed of New York said that Milne, as a child, visited the White House on many occasions with his father and “developed a mutual friendship” with the children of President Theodore Roosevelt.