It is unknown how or when they met ~ perhaps it happened while Amelia was keeping house for her brothers in the township of York, which adjoins Sherman Township to the northest ~ but on March 26, 1901, Emil Miller and Amelia Schlinsog were married in Neillsville, WI. Less than four months later, my grandfather was born.
Louis August Miller was born on July 5, 1901 in the township of Sherman, Clark County. On March 1, 1903, daughter Edna Lena Miller was born. Their third child, Norman Emil Miller arrived 18 years later, within five months of their elder children's marriages.
Emil and Amelia farmed their entire married lives in the community of Veefkind, Sherman Twp, WI. After their marriage, they lived in a log home on their fisrt farm. Later, they built their second home, two miles to the west of the first. This was a large frame structure, complete with a dumbwaiter, which lowered foodstuffs to the cellar to keep them cool in the days before refrigeration.
Family lore tells of an incident when Emil, a drinking man, drove his car into the back of a lumber wagon, shattering the windshield and severely injuring Amelia's face. Drunkeness was blamed for Emil's death. On August 14, 1940 Emil was thought to have drunkenly wandered several miles up the tracks, leaving his car parked at a tavern in the town of Chili, WI, and fallen asleep on the railroad tracks where he was struck by a train. His body was discovered the following day. The family was skeptical of the accident theory for one puzzling reason ~ Emil's glasses and false teeth had been carefully placed between the tracks where they were undisturbed by the accident. If he had been so drunk that he failed to return to his car, could walk for miles, and had chosen to lay across the tracks to sleep, it seems unlikely that he would have had the sense to remove his glasses and teeth.
Amelia Miller, unable to maintain the farm after he husband's death, moved to the town of Loyal, WI, where she died on February 23, 1966 at the age of 84. They are buried in the cemetery on grounds of the former Salem Lutheran Church at the intersection of Church Rd. and 26 Rd. in Veefkind. Also buried there is Amelia's deaf-mute uncle, Gustav Handtke (b.1851-59, Silesia, Germany, d.1938) who lived and worked on their farm for many years before his death.
