Mary Viola "Ole" McMillan was born on the McMillan farm one mile south of Philadelphia Roads in Harrison County, Ohio. She was the eighth child of twelve born to her parents, William Johnson McMillan and his wife Martha Jane (McCollum) McMillan. Ole was about seven years old when she and her family packed up and moved west in two covered wagons in 1873. Along with them, they herded some 100 head of cattle which furnished a great percentage of their food supply.

First, the family stopped for three years near Maysville in DeKalb County, Missouri. Another move in 1876 took the family to a farm five miles west of Hutchinson, Reno County, Kansas for a one-year stay. The last move, in 1877, was to a homestead three miles west of what would become the town of Stafford in Stafford County, Kansas. The family built a sod house and farmed the rich prairie land.

Ole was 17½ years old when she was united in marriage on March 4, 1883 to Serenus Alford Amend, whose parents, Henry B. Amend and Rebecca (Hale) Amend, had homesteaded nearby land in 1879. The present-day location of the farm is 4 miles west and ½ mile south of Stafford on Highway 50.

Ole lived on this homestead with her husband, his parents, and Serenus' remaining brothers and sisters. Serenus' parents sold out their possessions in 1888 and moved back to Iowa with their two youngest children, leaving the homestead to Serenus and Ole. With the exception of a short time of living in Stafford, the couple lived on the farm continually for the 44 years of their married life, living in a sod house until 1904 when a large wooden house was built. Their wood barn burned down in 1925.

Aunt Ole was a rugged pioneer woman and there is one much-repeated story about her. One night she heard a noise outside the farm house. She went out with a shotgun in one hand and a lantern held in the other hand. She found a opossum and shot the little beast with her shotgun against her hip, resulting in a large bruise on her hip that lingered for weeks.

On Tuesday morning, April 10, 1934, at about 9:30 AM Aunt Ole was working on her front porch and fell from a small step ladder. Quoting 'The Stafford Courier': "Her hip was fractured by the fall, and she could not rise. She remained on the porch unable to summon aid, until about six o'clock that evening."

"Fred Jordan, who was passing at that time, saw her wave at him from the porch. Since she often waved at passing neighbors, he thought little of the event, and waved a greeting in return."

"After he had driven past the place, Mr. Jordan realized that the waving did not seem just right and he remembered that Mrs. Amend seemed to have been lying on her porch. He felt that something must be wrong, and he returned to find her where she had been for many hours, suffering from the terrible shock of the broken hip, and the exposure."

Aunt Ole was taken to the Community Hospital in Stafford where she survived into the next day, but died in the afternoon from an embolism.

Funeral services were held Friday, April 13th, at the First Christian Church in Stafford with the Rev. Harold Combs in charge.