Milford Township and Proud of It

Teamwork: This 1900 scene shows the style of teamwork involved in agriculture of the time. Each unit in the operation supporting the others, both in labor and in taking care of each other as in this rest time.

When Milford Consolidated High School closed in the spring of 1961 there were very few families who had six children living at home. However, in 1900, within Milford Township, there were 35 families that had six or more children living at home at the time of the census. Undoubtedly there would have been a number of large families in the Twp whose older children would have already left home and, although in actuality, the family had six or more children, the census taker would have listed only the younger ones still at home. Those larger families would not be included in our surprising total of 35 families. This would result in an average of virtually one large family per section of the 36 sections of Milford Twp.

The accompanying photo, although not taken in Milford Twp, shows what a good portion of the Township would have looked like on a warm, late July afternoon almost any year before 1950.

The James Sowers and George Gunder families were the winners with 12 children living at home at the time of the census. At least another 6 families had at least 9 children at home. The Austin Molde family, had 8 children, (including Ted, father of several Milford Twp students-Grace, Kermit, Shirley.....) seven alive at the time of the 1900 census.

Story County held its annual corn shucking contest on the Ben Anderson farm near Story City on October 20, 1938. Milford Twp was represented by Jeffrey Jacobson `33 and Max Arrasmith'32. No information can be found on how they did but they probably did quite well.

This Massey Harris combine, from the early sixties, would have made short work of the crops of previous decades. Dale Hughes ran a combine like this on the wheat harvests of 1962, 1965, 1966, and 1967 and typically this was a four to five month adventure going from north central Texas to NW Montana.   Ol' Milford Farmer say: Wow!

Right after WWII, 1948, some State entity wanted a rural township to work in to do a tuberculosis study. They selected Milford Township, Story County, Iowa, because it had been classified by the Census Dept. as one of the most rural townships in the country. We had no post office, no town, no village, very few (perhaps one) businesses, no bus, train, or plane service and no hard surfaced roads. They elected to not consider we were a couple miles from the full service county seat town and four or five miles from a state university. See pg 242.

Milford Twp had a Doctor in the 1880's that worked in the west side of Milford Twp. We had a "town" of one store that stood where the National Disease Lab. is in Sec 30. There was a store and creamery (reportedly started in 1895) about the time of the First World War located a mile west of current Milford Twp School; another creamery was reported to be in and on the hill in SW Sec 4. This was the well known “Indian Hill Creamery” and it closed its doors