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 begin a look at the old Fred & Ellen Miller Farm, just north of the Thoreson Farm on Thoreson Road.
Now gone except for the (now privately-owned) houses and a few remnant apple trees, lilacs, and brushy fields, the farm just west of the north end of Thoreson Road was the scene of much activity until recent decades. In addition to normal farm operations, Ellen Miller ran the Manitou View Inn there, while her husband Fred “made most of the launches around Glen Lake,” as well as fish tugs for the big lake, according to neighbor Jack Barratt. “He was an artist,” added Jack’s wife Lucille. Mr. Miller, who grew up on the nearby Frederick & Margretha Werner Farm, also built small fishing boats known as “pound boats” (though Jack remembered them usually being called “pond boats” around here); but “people generally knocked them together themselves.” Mr. Miller is reported to have been a perfectionist who took pride in making boats that were well balanced and which floated properly.
Ellen Miller was a strong, complex personality in the Port Oneida community. A daughter of “Lanie the Fishergirl” (Ch. 1), she grew up on the Ole and Magdalena Olsen Farm at the east end of Kelderhouse Road. When the time came, Ellen married neighbor Fred Miller. The couple purchased the property north of the Thoreson Farm, and Fred proceeded to build a barn, a farm, and, in 1930, the graceful Manitou View Inn.
Guests at the inn stayed in rooms upstairs, and ate in the dining room on the main floor. A born hostess, Ellen prepared all the meals and oversaw all operations. There were no menus. Ellen fixed one big, delicious dinner, and everyone ate it.
Her grandson Bob Adair remembers, “She was a phenomenal cook. She did everything by scratch. It was always a pinch of this or a dash of that. And oh, could she bake! It would always be ‘Wednesday, bake the bread’; and ‘Saturday morning, make cinnamon rolls’—fresh cinnamon rolls every Saturday morning. My grandmother would often times send my brother and I over to see Archie (at the Brunson Farm next door) and get fresh cream or butter because Archie milked his cows, and Grandmother would want some fresh cream to put over some blackberries or something.
“She liked to grow vegetables, but one thing she always grew every year was glads—gladiolas. She would plant those by the hundreds. Flowers were something that always brought great joy to her. I remember her having this great big crackedglass vase; and that thing was probably, I don’t know, a good two-and-a-half feet tall, and probably about 16 inches around; and always she’d have fresh-cut flowers in it—the glads, and the lemon lilies. And as much as she loved that kind of stuff, I remember her hating milkweeds with a passion! She’d always pay my brother and I to go take the old sickle and go chop down the milkweeds — milkweeds and mulleins. She hated mulleins!”
Having lost an uncle to a Lake Michigan squall, and living atop a high bluff facing its northwest winds, Mrs. Miller was deathly afraid of the storms that came across the lake—”to the point of paranoia. I mean, she would go to the basement and sit in a chair beside a cot down there and pray. Something definitely put the fear of God in her in regard to a storm.”
To be continued
