Elsie Miller, nee Smith, Wha-tle (1910 – 1944)
Elsie Miller was born at Mile 31 (Lu dayel) on the old Dawson Overland Trail to parents Fanny Tutsa Theda from Winter Crossing and Jim Smith from Haines, Alaska. Else was the oldest of nine children. Fanny knew medicines and was able to save her daughter Mary when she came back sick from the Chooutla residential school. Elsie went to Chooutla when she was six in 1916 and stayed until she was eighteen. She came home in the summer but never during the winter. Her brothers and sisters soon followed her to school: Stanley, Fred, Billy, Mary, Annie, Louise, and Marjorie. The children learned how to chop wood, cut and haul ice, take care of the farm animals, do the laundry, and tend the garden. Elsie finished high school in 1928 and returned to 31 Mile.1)
Elsie and Jim Miller (1882 - 1959) were married in 1931 with her sister Anne and another unrelated Jim Miller. Elsie’s Jim was a shipwright from Denmark who was working for Happy Lepage in a wood camp. Jim and Elsie lived at Goddard Point near the north end of Lake Laberge. Dennis Broeren and Jim Sam and their families also lived in the small community. The telegraph station at Lower Laberge sold some hardware and groceries and the Mounted Police had a station nearby on the west side of the lake. Jim and Elsie had four children: Mary, Renie, June, and Jim Jr. Jim Sr. worked as a deckhand for White Pass and Elsie homeschooled the kids and taught them to speak Southern Tutchone.2)
The family moved into Whitehorse in 1940, and the children attended public school. Jim worked at the White Pass dock, and they lived across the river from the shipyards. They spent the winter of 1942/43 in the big slough just south of Lake Laberge where they were caretakers for the sternwheelers Casca and Klondike. White Pass feared that a Japanese attack during the Second World War would destroy the fleet if all the boats were kept in one place. In 1943, the family moved to a walled tent at the south end of Whiskey Flats.3)
Elsie died of tuberculosis after a stay in the TB wing of the old hospital on Second Avenue. She is buried in the First Nations cemetery at the bottom of Two Mile Hill. In 1946, Jim bought a two-room house at Third and Hawkins and the family later moved to Seventh and Strickland to a much warmer house. Jim could not be buried with his wife and rests in the Pioneer cemetery on Sixth Avenue.4)