Portville historian can't stop working even after retirement By Rick Jozwiak. The Times Herald (April 28, 2000).

PORTVILLE — Though Jane Miller has retired from her paying job as town historian, she is not quitting her volunteer work with the local historical society.

Mrs. Miller, who will turn 85 in June, decided it was time for someone to succeed her as the keeper of town and village history. After working 22 years as historian, she is still not ready to quit what she loves and will continue to volunteer with the Portville Historical and Preservation Society.

She discovered her love for history in high school and particularly enjoys reading historical novels.

“I don’t know what it is, I just like it,” she said. “I took every history course they offered in high school.”

When town officials were looking for someone to fill the historian’s post in 1977, her long history in the town apparently made her an obvious candidate, she said.

“There aren’t very many people who spend their whole life in one town anymore,” she said.

A retired insurance agent, her career with Carl Holcomb’s Insurance Agency in downtown Portville spanned 25 years. She was active with community organizations and was a matron of the Eastern Star and president of the League of Women Voters. Later, she volunteered to work with elementary students at Portville Central School and was honored with a life membership to the Portville Parent-Teacher Association.

Besides her volunteer work with the historical society, she works several hours a week at the Portville Free Library.

In honor of her work as historian and her volunteer efforts, the Friends of the Portville Free Library and Portville Historical and Preservation Society recently held a social gathering at the library in her honor. More than 70 guests signed the event’s attendance book.

Having lived nearly all her life in Portville, she fondly remembers her childhood swimming hole at Dodge Creek; the town’s formerly dusty and quiet dirt roads; searching for enemy aircraft atop a hill during World War II; and overcoming the soaking damage of floods.

Like many of her generation, she witnessed many of the events and trends that are now called history. She lived all her life in Portville except for a few years she lived in Georgia while her husband finished his military service after World War II.

Her home is adjacent to a railroad line that passes through town, and over the years she learned to sleep through the rumble of passing trains. With technological advances, locomotives changed from burning coal to diesel fuel and changed from whistles to blow horns. She recalled a few restless nights trying to adapt to the changes.

When she was younger, the timber industry was much different than it is today, and the timber barons of the time had changed the surrounding landscape.

“You could look off on that hill and there was nothing but stumps, and it was all bare,” she said. “They didn’t do it scientifically — they cut every tree in sight.”

With the recent death of her husband, Arnold, and with her three grown daughters having moved away, Mrs. Miller understands she may not be able to live alone for many more years. She was born in her Brooklyn Street home and figures during her childhood she had climbed nearly every tree along the street. With her home starting to show its age, she knows she won’t be able to continue to keep it up.

However, she said, “I don’t want to give up yet.”
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