This continues a series adapted from the book, “A Port Oneida Collection,” Volume 1 of the twopart set, “Oral History, Photographs, and Maps from the Sleeping Bear Region,” produced by Tom Van Zoeren in partnership with Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear. Here we continue with a look at the old Fred & Ellen Miller Farm, just north of the Thoreson Farm at the north end of Thoreson Road, focused here on Ellen Miller, innkeeper of the Manitou View Inn built there by her husband Fred: The Millers’ next-door neighbors, the Watkins family, were “summer people” from Chicago. They remembered Mrs. Miller “like a third grandmother. She gave us cake and flowers. She had us over for dinner; she prepared beautiful dinners. To us she was just this lovely grandmother.” Mary Watkins Crane recalls, “Mrs. Miller had a wood stove. It was amazing that she could produce all those wonderful meals without a six-burner range and two ovens. I remember lots of wood going in but I have no idea where it came from. An amazing woman, Ellen Olsen Miller seemed to be able to do everything. Her house was always spotless as was she herself. I never saw her in a dirty apron. There was no sand on her floors despite all those guests marching through. Sheets and towels appeared on the line. White throw rugs looked like they had just been put down. And always, always, Mrs. Miller seemed to be in a clean dress and smell like soap.”
At the same time, Mrs. Miller was a fierce defender of her property. Grandson Bob Adair recalls that she “had it in” for her old schoolmate next door: “‘That red-headed devil,’ Ole Thoreson, seemed to, in my Grandmother’s eyes, be responsible for every act of nature, both real and imagined, that happened out there—and I don’t know why.”
The Watkins sisters continued, “People were afraid of her.” Some got along with her, “but it was like walking on eggs. She was very nice if you gave her credit . . . But in the spring when the storms would loosen up the shingles on the roof, she’d say, ‘Oh, Ole Thoreson has been prying up my shingles.’ He was portrayed as an evil person, but we knew better because we knew him ourselves.”
