The Milan News-Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
More revealed about prominent local families
Martha Churchill
PUBLISHED: January 31, 2008
I've looked at numerous records concerning the Rice family and other important people in Milan Township, including the Squires family, Dennison, Smith, Auten and so on. But until now, I had never seen a photo showing what anyone looked like in the Rice family.
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Things changed when I was e-mailed by Sandra Newsome of Wayland, Ky., whose family comes from Milan Township. She put me in touch with Ron Miller, a family research fanatic in South Lyon who grew up in Cone.
Suddenly, this photo of Florence Rice was on my desk. This was the work of Ron Miller, my South Lyon connection to Cone and Britton.
It's easy to date this picture. The mother, Florence, was born in 1858. The little girl, Nellie, was born in 1894. She is young enough to perch on the arm of a chair in the photographer's studio, so I'd guess she is 5 or 6 years old. That takes us to about 1900 when this photo session took place.
The Rice story begins in Milan Township with Caleb Rice, who came to the area in 1933 and bought 250 acres of farmland for a total of $300.
The little girl in this picture eventually inherited 80 acres of the Rice farm when her mother died.
Although Nellie's father didn't join his family for this particular photo, his family also left a big impression on the Cone area. The father, Georg Heinrich Mueller, was born Jan. 20, 1858. He certainly learned German as he grew up on the Mueller homestead, in Macon Township, near Cone.
Georg's mother, Dorothea Mueller, was born in 1828 in Junkersdorf, Bavaria. She came to Pennsylvania as a young person and soon joined the growing German population in this part of Michigan. She was part of a large family in the Cone area with the last name Mueller. Ron Miller, who loaned me his photo, is descended from one of Dorothea's brothers.
As luck would have it, Dorothea fell in love with someone named Mueller, also from Germany, but not related to her. This made it easy because she didn't have to change her name when she married.
Oddly enough, her son, Georg Heinrich, was the one who changed his name. He started calling himself George H. Miller. This didn't stop any of the family from using German expressions, eating German food or attending a German Lutheran church, which they had established near Cone.
Florence was a well-educated woman, having attended the Normal College in Ypsilanti, now known as Eastern Michigan University. She became a teacher, the only choice a woman had at that time in terms of higher education. She was the youngest of six children, only three of them reaching adulthood.
In 1913, when Florence was 54 years old, her 80-acre farm was passed on to her daughter. Nellie married Grover Cleveland Sweet, a gentleman from Rea, a community just south of Cone. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Martha Churchill can be reached at 439-4055 or MilanHistory@yahoo.com.
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