Another Sepia Saturday

These three darling children

are first-generation Swedish Americans.

Oscar (left), Mabel and Elmer Miller

were the children of Samuel Philander Bengtsson Miller

and Wilhelmina Blomgren Nelson Miller.

Last week, I introduced you to the children's maternal grandparents.

The little boy on the right (circa 1906 or 1907)

is my maternal grandfather.

He was the first child of the marriage,

though he had two older step-siblings from his mother's first marriage.

She married Samuel after being widowed by the time she was 30.

Elmer was born in the Frenchtown Precinct, Walla Walla County,

Washington on October 5, 1900.

For those of you who don't know the area,

"Frenchtown" is now the home of the L'Ecole No. 41 Winery.

Samuel and Wilhelmina were living on homestead land

 that Wilhelmina proved up after her first husband died.

Samuel had staked a homestead in Wallowa County, Oregon,

perhaps 100 miles away from Walla Walla, Washington.

Sometime around 1902, the couple and their children

loaded up their belongings in two horse-drawn wagons

and set off through the Blue Mountains to Samuel's homestead.

Elmer grew up in Wallowa County. Oscar came along in 1903.

 Mabel followed in 1905. Herbert joined the gang in 1907

 and the "baby" Stanley was born in 1911.

My grandfather was full of stories.

They didn't often come out but he sat down

 with my brother and told him the highlights of his life

when my brother was taking an oral history class in college

and needed to interview someone.

One of the stories he told was about seeing his first auto in 1909.

He and his father Samuel were in a wagon pulled by two bay mares,

taking a trip into Enterprise for supplies.

The car came chugging around a bend

and about scared the horses to death.

He said they went racing up a hill adjacent to the road,

trying to escape this source of terror.

Samuel was able to get the team stopped,

but he had to buggy whip them to get them to return to the road.

My grandfather said that the older generation of horses

never got used to cars.

After law school, when I was living in the Maryland suburbs

of the District of Columbia,

my mother brought my grandfather Elmer

(who we grandkids called "Daddyguy") to visit.

I took them to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

on the Mall in D.C.

One of the galleries was about early aviation

and the barnstormers.

It was one of the highlights of my life

to walk around the gallery with him

and look at the old posters that would have been

affixed to barns and watch early films of aerial acrobatics

and hear him tell about being a boy

and being beside himself with excitement

when the barnstormers came to Wallowa County

with their new-fangled planes.

He'd seen many of the aviation hotshots featured

in the exhibit.

With the exception of his first two years,

Elmer lived his whole life in Eastern Oregon.

He died in 1994 after an active, outdoorsy life.

I'll introduce you to his wife,

my grandmother,

in another post.