It makes one wonder if perhaps China could
get straightened out more quickly if she got rid of her uninvited "guests" (meaning us
foreigners!) and was allowed to clean house by herself."
˜ Camilla Mills, an American home economist,
reflecting upon the condition of China in 1925

Camilla Mills (later Biggerstaff) was one of a select group of American Home Economists who moved to China between the 1920s and 1940s. In the estimation of historian Nancy Mason, the women maintained elements of Orientalist exoticism in their ideologies, but they diverged from the norm by prioritizing science over both Chinese and American societies. They criticized both societies and sometimes even elevated Chinese culture over Western culture based on its level of congruence with scientific principles. Some of the home economists even returned home to advocate the adoption of some Chinese traditions in the western world based on scientific reasoning.

Camilla Mills, a student of Ava Milam's at Oregon State College, first traveled to China with Milam in 1922 under the auspices of the Women's Foreign Mission Board of the Methodist Church and Yenching University. She spent her first year in China learning Chinese and then took over the
development of the home economics program at Yenching University. Mills was in China from 1922 until 1931 and then returned again after her marriage to Knight Biggerstaff as Camilla Biggerstaff from 1934 to 1936. The State Department finally employed Camilla Biggerstaff when the couple returned to China in 1944, as the war in the Pacific was being won. The couple was forced to leave China
in 1949 when the communists took power.Both Bickerstaffs were branded as communist sympathizers by the House Un-American Activities Committee, but were ultimately found innocent of any wrong-doing.

Parents: Ernest Grant Mills and Bertha Ida Mills (born Needham).
Camilla married Eugene Knight Biggerstaff on July 22 1931, at age 32.

see:
The Ideology of American Home Economists in China between the 1920s and the 1940s: Interactions between Orientalism and Ideals of Domestic Science, by
Nancy Mason and China's Christian Colleges: Cross-Cultural Connections, 1900-1950 by Daniel Bays, Ellen Widmer

Camilla Mills Biggerstaff
A memorial service for Camilla Mills Biggerstaff of 101 N. Sunset Dr., who died July 23, 1982, will be held at 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 9, at the Women's Community Building in Ithaca. Memorial donations may be made to Family and Children's Service of Ithaca, or to any Tompkins County service organization.
Published in the Ithaca Journal, Ithaca NY on September 7 1982

Mills was a student of Milam's at Oregon State College and she travelled to China with Milam in 1922. She spent her first year in China learning Chinese and then took over the development of the home economics program at Yenching University. Mills was in China from 1922 until 1931 and then returned again after her marriage to Knight Biggerstaff as Camilla Biggerstaff from 1934 to 1936 and from 1944 to 1949.19 Of the letters she left behind, most are from her earlier years…. What was surprising, however, was that, at times, all four home economists believed Chinese culture to be more in line with their own scientific ideals than American culture. Dr. Helen Schneider argues that home economists began to adhere to a kind of "home economics superiority" which explains their distance from widespread ideas of cultural superiority.Therefore, while not altogether exempt from the influences of orientalism, the home economists were exceptional in their acceptance and appreciation of many aspects of Chinese domestic culture for their scientific advantages…. For the most part, the home economists did not appear to favor American culture over Eastern culture arbitrarily. Occasionally, however, they did make some statements that seemed to show they still believed the West to be generally superior, although not absolutely so. Milam and Mills, both writing mostly during the 1920s, expressed this type of favoritism more frequently than Wood and Kramer who wrote a decade or two later. For example, Helen Schneider noted a sarcastic note from Milam in one of her letters: "That nice habit [of smoking] our Western civilization has given China too. Don't think I'm cynical, please. I still prefer Western civilization.…. Similarly, Mills wrote to her friend about a political advisor and repeated his assertions that it was a bad thing for the Chinese to drift away from American and French without objecting. Her comments certainly do not prove that she agreed, but it does seem likely that she would have mentioned any disagreements she may have had. In addition, Mills also compared Chinese trains to American trains, much preferring American trains. Milam and Mills seem to have shared a similar outlook, the West was generally preferable, but, as we will see later, not always….. American orientalism contained within it many different facets of thought and types of attitudes. Throughout all of them, however, ran the idea that modernity was a Western concept that the East had to learn from the West. Even though the home economists subscribed to some elements of orientalism and had their fair share of criticisms of China, they veered from the predominant strain of orientalism by promoting aspects of Chinese tradition as progressive, even praising Chinese culture over American culture.
Extracted from " "From the Lab to the Lotus Pond: Interactions Between Orientalism and Ideals of Domestic Science" by Nancy Mason. Published in The Virginia Tech Undergraduate Historical Review 5 (1). 2017

United States Census, 1910, database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MLB8-9NV : accessed 7 April 2018), Camilla L Mills in household of Ernest G Mills, North Forest Grove, Washington, Oregon, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 274, sheet 8A, family 178, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), roll 1291; FHL microfilm 1,375,304.

Unconfirmed place of birth: Arnold, Custer County, Nebraska.