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James Vol Hartwell looked over my nieces with interest and asked their ages.

Annie's 17, Erin's 15.

Too young, said Hartwell, owner of the Red Fox Inn in Horton Bay, Mich.

He was scouting for someone to portray Hadley Richardson in an annual re-enactment of her marriage to Ernest Hemingway on Sept. 3, 1921, just a short walk down the road from where we stood on a sunny afternoon in early August.

The Methodist church where the restless young writer, then 22 years old, exchanged vows with his first wife disappeared long ago. But many remembrances of Hemingway remain in the Little Traverse Bay area of northern Michigan. Perhaps no one strives more earnestly to preserve them than Hartwell, who has operated a Hemingway bookstore in his historic house since 1977.

My wife and I first came across the Red Fox Inn by accident last year on a leisurely drive along the two-lane country road from Charlevoix to Boyne City. At a hamlet called Horton Bay, our trip was arrested by the sudden appearance of two ancient structures, one a general store and the other Hartwell's inn and bookstore.

Both were built in the 1870s and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The general store features a lunch counter/ice cream parlor, a selection of liquors and curiosities, a wide porch in front and a sunny patio out back for enjoying an ice cream cone. The inn, also known as the Horton Bay House, well, that's another world, full of Hemingway memorabilia and souvenirs plus an assortment of local crafts and antiques.

It's been in Hartwell's family since 1910; the Hemingways of Oak Park, Ill., already had been spending summers in the area for more than a decade. Dr. Clarence Hemingway, a physician, his wife, Grace, and their children would sail by steamer from Chicago to Harbor Springs, Mich., take a train around little Traverse Bay to Petoskey, then proceed by wagon to Bear Lake, now called Walloon Lake, where they built a summer home.

Horton Bay is on nearby Lake Charlevoix. As a teenager, Hemingway "spent a great deal of time at Horton Bay with a group of young people with whom he hunted, fished and 'pal'd around,' " Constance Cappel wrote in "Hemingway in Michigan." He made Horton Bay the setting of one of his first published stories, "Up in Michigan," and chose to be married there.

Hartwell's grandfather, Vollie Fox, owned the inn, which was noted for its fried chicken. "Young Ernest Hemingway dined here often," Hartwell says. The boy also "learned to fish on Horton's Creek," Hartwell adds, and used "my grandfather's bait box."

Much of Hemingway's fiction was set in and around Horton Bay, although the references are sometimes difficult to trace. But Hartwell is ready to help. I bought a copy of Scribner's 1972 paperback edition of "The Nick Adams Stories" from him and found that he'd notated the table of contents with each story's location. Examples:

l "Three Shots" -- Walloon Lake.

l "The Indians Moved Away" -- Horton Bay, Walloon Lake and Petoskey.

l "The Last Good Country" -- Horton Bay and Walloon Lake.

l "The End of Something" -- Horton Bay

l "Wedding Day" -- Horton Bay and Walloon Lake.

Hartwell has also written his own accounts of Hemingway history, which he offers for sale. His stream-of-consciousness commentary about events that happened nearly a century ago is on the house.

In his 60s, he remembers when not everyone around Horton Bay was particularly proud of the Hemingway connections.

"All of my schoolmarms didn't like him because he wrote 'Up in Michigan,' which is sexual," Hartwell said. "Maybe too many Indian girls in his life."

The fictional Nick Adams' first love -- and maybe the real-life Ernest Hemingway's -- was an Indian girl named Prudence. Her family is gone from Horton Bay, but Hartwell's adult daughter carries her name: Prudence.

Hemingway rarely returned to northern Michigan after his wedding in 1921. He and Hadley moved to Paris, and soon the writer belonged to a larger world.

Hartwell recalls Ernest and Hadley Hemingway's son, Jack, visiting in 2000 and telling him the writer had brought his fourth wife, Mary, to Horton Bay in 1957 or 1958 "to show her his roots."

The little settlement would not have changed much.

"With its neat, frame houses painted white, Horton Bay is the only locale in Hemingway's Michigan which has remained virtually untouched by tourists," Cappel wrote in her book, originally published in 1966 but revised and reprinted by the Little Traverse Historical Society in 1999.

That still seemed true on our August visit, although Hartwell warns: "The fishing's not nearly as good."

And, apparently, Hadley Richardsons are also scarce.

Contact Doug Clark at 373-7039 or dgclark@news-record.com