ADDRESSES: 1039 Taughannock Boulevard, 605 N. Tioga Street, 309 S. Plain Street

Popular novelist Grace Miller White (1868-1957) was well known in the early 1900s for her best-selling Storm Country novels set in Ithaca and Tompkins County. Several of them, including Tess of the Storm Country (1909) and The Secret of the Storm Country (1917), were made into silent films produced by and starring two of the leading actors of the time, Mary Pickford and Norma Talmadge. (In fact, Tess proved such an appealing character for film audiences that Mary Pickford starred in two versions of Tess of the Storm Country, which was later redone two more times as a talkie.)

Born Mary Esther Miller in 1868, the Ithaca native grew up in a large family and remained close to them. Mary later adopted the name Grace, reportedly for a sister who passed away. Her father, John Miller (1843-1910), was born in Scotland and came to Ithaca as a child with his family. At various points in her childhood Miller’s father was a dry goods merchant, clerk, and bookkeeper. The family lived in Fall Creek at what is today 605 N. Tioga Street and on the Southside at 309 S. Plain Street. The young Mary Esther spent summers at a cottage on the west shore of Cayuga Lake (now 1039 Taughannock Boulevard), which the Miller family owned until the early 1920s. In 1915, as an established author, White vacationed at a Willow Point cottage to finish her novel, The Rose O’Paradise (1915).

Into the first part of the 20th century, it was not uncommon for individuals and even whole families to “squat,” or informally settle, at unoccupied summer lake cottages and the Inlet area known as “the Rhine.” Grace Miller White drew on these experiences of Ithaca and lake life to imagine the story of “squatter” Tessibel Skinner. “No matter how far away from home one is his heart turns to home,” White wrote to The Ithaca Journal to announce the news of the first film version of Tess of the Storm Country in 1914. “Then too, you see ’Tess’ was born in Ithaca, and lived all her ragged little life there. She loves the town as well as I do.”

Tess and other Storm Country characters captivated readers and filmgoers with a literary vision of the Finger Lakes region.