Milford chronicle., 1960-07-22
| Remember Milford
BY George D. Truitt
Industry and Export

Industry and Export
What happened to the peaches {?
This question is often asked by
old timers who have left Milford
and have remembered our magnfi-
cent "Crawford's Late" and Ell
bertas" as well as / do. The best
explanation seems to be that
we Americans hadn't acquired our
agricultural know-how in time to
save the Delaware peach orchards
from permanent blight. But Just
before the turn of the century. Del
aware peaches were known far and
wide. And Milford was a great ship
ping center. Buyers came from
cities as far away as Chicago to bid
against each other for the wagon
loads as they arrived in town.
Again, the railroad was the star
performer in this show. But this
time no little two-coach train. In
the height of the season, as many
as fifteen or twenty carloads were
shipped daily. The ice cars were
just then coming into widespread
use and new horizons for the fruit
and truck farmers were becoming
visible. But the blight" finally
got the peaches and the orchards
gradually disappeared.
Another question often asked !:
What happened to those wonder
full willow trees near the foot
bridge where the Community Build
ing now stands?' That's easy, but
little hard for an old-timer to
take They had to make way for
shirt factory-and to think that
some of them had trunks four feet
in diameteri
But other industries were grow
ing. Retail merchandising, saving
timber, making berry crates, bas-
kets for tomatoes, peaches, and
strawberries, and widespread ex-
port of farm products and canned
goods. There were two factories
for canning peaches, corn, peas,
and tomatoes. Hiram Barber own
ed a big sawmill up at the head
of the creek. 1t was water-powered
by the dam which held back the
pond Close by, Charles A. Blair
operated another sawmill which
| suffered a disastrous fire. Mr.
Blair then moved to Newington
Connecticut, and became treasurer
of the Corbin Cabinet Lock Com
pany of New Britain. There was
also a foundry and machine shop
at the foot of Haven Lake George
Grier operated this establishment
which made fruit evaporators to be
shipped all over the peninsula for
the drying of apples and peaches.
Practically all Industrial activ-
| ity was geared to the agricultural
production of the area. For ex-
ample, the making of baskets fol
the export of fruit and vegetables
! was a well-developed trade in it.
self Gum trees were plentiful and
this was the favored wood for fruit
baskets. Some of these trees were
a hundred feet tall and had bases
of five feet in diameter Since the
dressed wood from which the bas.
kets were made was only six
teenth of an inch thick, you co6ld
| get good many baskets out of one
of these tremendous logs. 1t was a
common sight to see James Rich
ards with his team of six or eight
mules, hitched in tandem with
chain traces, hauling these immense
logs to the sawmill. His equipment
consisted of two pairs of wheels
| The front pair had to be of heavy
construction-ir0n rims four to six
inches thick, heavy hickory spokes
and an axle at least ten inches
thick reinforced with strap iron
These wheels carried the heavy
trunk ends of the logs. The rear
wheels were larger, but they didn'd
have to be so rugged in construc-
tion since the tapering end of the
logs were by comparison merely
matchsticks. Nevertheless, the
front wheels sometimes didn't know
what the back wheels were going
to do. Maneuvering this wierd con-
traption through the streets of old
Milford required a special brand
of navigation, especially when il
came to rounding corners. James
Richards was master of this now.
lost art.
The Three "R's" and Fun
A lot of people have a lot to say
about elementary schools in pres.
ent-day America. l guess the same
argument was going on in oul
town when l was boy. Sure thing
we didn't have any classes in psy'
chology, or Cooking for boys. I GER
tainly don't remember anybody
asking a group of students to entel
into a discussion of internationa
| politics. But, let's say our schools
were pretty fair, and there were
those dedicated people. as there are
now, who are determined to make
them better. The public schools a
North and South Milford and th'
county schools at Church Hill anS
Tub Mill were all independent