Updated:
February 22, 2007
llis Hardenberg Miller married DeWitt Vermilye Hutchings on September 13, 1909 at the Mission Inn. Mr. Hutchings, a graduate of Princeton University, met Allis while visiting the hotel the previous year.
Allis and Dewitt had two daughters, Isabella and Helen, and one son, Frank. The Mission Inn was the three children’s home, just as it had been Allis' as a girl. The children also spent many hours in Laguna Beach at the home their grandfather built overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In the late 1930s, the Inn held a Festival of Dolls and Toy Animals; featuring objects collected by Helen and Isabella. A guidebook, published later, provided visitor information on the collection (Hutchings, n.d.).
The couple and their three children loved to visit other countries and took many exciting trips around the world. Air travel fascinated them. The newspapers called them the Flying Hutchings family (Riverside Daily Press 12/11/36). Their son Frank even traveled on the Zeppelin Hindenburg in 1936 on a flight from Germany to the United States (Gale, 1938). During World War II, Frank served in the Army Air Corp.
Allis and DeWitt ran the Mission Inn for almost twenty years. The Hutchings children, faced with declining revenues after their parents' deaths, sold the Mission Inn in 1956.
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