This week we conclude our series observing the recent passing of Port Oneida/Glen Arbor favorite son Leonard Thoreson. The series has been based on Leonard, and on his home farm along Thoreson Road. Leonard contributed many hours of oral history interviews and a family photograph collection—all now preserved in the Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear Online Archive. The following is adapted from the chapter on the Thoreson Farm in “A Port Oneida Collection,” produced by Tom Van Zoeren in partnership with Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear.
Ole (rhymes with “holy”) Thoreson spent most of his life farming with horses. Betsy was one of the last. “She’d do anything for you.”
Around 1931 Ole and his brother Fred came up with an old Model T engine to power various things around the farm; but they still used horses to drag it around to where it was needed.
