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 Frederick & Margretha Werner Farm, at the end of Miller Road: The beginnings of the Werner family in America are misty; but in 1851 Frederick and Margretha Werner left their crowded homeland of Hanover (now a part of Germany) and sailed to the New World with their several small children. Margretha was a sister to Carsten Burfiend, the first European settler in Port Oneida. Arriving in New York, the Werners purchased 202 acres of Port Oneida land, sight-unseen, for 75 cents/acre. Likely the recommendation of Margretha’s brother, the Werners’ property was just a half-mile down the coast from his.
A year later the Werners sailed to South Manitou Island to spend the winter, probably picking up work in the woodcutting business. In the spring the young family crossed the Manitou Passage, climbed the steep shoreline bluff, and surveyed their piece of primeval forest.
The land was rolling, and included a hilltop that looked over the surrounding lands and waters; but it also included some level ground that promised good crops. The Werners began the task of establishing a home in the wilderness.
They constructed a small log cabin in a sheltered spot near the bluff above the lake, and began clearing the virgin forest for a farm. The details of their lives can only be imagined; but it’s told that the family lost three children to pneumonia during the first two years in Port Oneida. Over the coming years Margretha bore more children to total 14; five did not survive childhood, and rest in the family graveyard overlooking the lake.
Of course, a wilderness pioneer has little means for precisely determining property lines, and after 15 years building a farmstead, the Werners were informed by their neighbor to the north, Thomas Kelderhouse, that their home was on the wrong side of the line. Why the two parties could not come to a less difficult agreement is now unknown; but the Werners had to disassemble their hard-built home and farm, and relocate 1/4 mile south.
There are no foundation remains or other evident signs left to mark the original home site, and its exact location has long been forgotten. Greatgrandson Charlie Miller, who grew up here, believed it was constructed on a base of logs in the little valley northeast of the cemetery.
Researcher Andrew White turned up a remarkable map in the National Archives. A product of the federal government’s 1860 United States Lake Survey of the Great Lakes, the map clearly corroborates Charlie’s theory. It’s also interesting in that it shows four buildings: certainly a log cabin, a log barn, and a couple of other outbuildings. Perhaps someday archaeologists will find the exact sites of each building, and determine just what they were.
All of the Port Oneida farms along the lake had “dugways”, or narrow roadways cut into the bluff, angling down to the beach. Early settlers who had no better water source used them to take their livestock down to drink. They were used to get to the skiffs that many men had for fishing. Sometimes horse-drawn wagons were driven down the dugways to gather driftwood for use as construction material. (In those days of great logging activity and wooden ships, driftwood of various types was abundant.) During the stormy night of the wreck of the Rising Sun, Fred Baker pulled the potatoes he had been harvesting off from his horse-drawn wagon, and drove it down his dugway and out along the beach to collect survivors.
The dugways of Port Oneida were here long before the time of anyone interviewed for this book. They were dug with hand tools and slip scrapers (scoop shovels pulled by teams of horses). There were also dugways on the farms along the bluff east of Basch Road, leading down to the Shell Lake area.
The Werners’ dugway started in a valley near the cemetery (see map, p. 60). There was a small boathouse at the bottom, 100’ below, at the edge of the woods along the beach. Frederick used that during the early years here, when the lake was the main means of transportation.
(To be continued)
