Milford, Texas Contributed by Bill Parrish |
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Greetings again to Ellis County! Since this postcard of Main Street Milford seems to be generating so much interest, and there is interest in more, I've *tried* to go through all this stuff again and sort out Milford-specific items and scan them. As far as I can tell, my conservatee, Florabel Maben, is the daughter of Thomas S Maben and Eva Wilson Maben. From the back of one of these photos, I believe that Eva Wilson was the daughter of Robert Edgar Wilson and (with a little side research... not sure about this...) Flora Almire Pearce Wilson. I am from the Maben side of the family - only met Aunt Eva (Wilson) Maben twice, and I don't know much about the Wilsons or Milford. |
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On the "Family in Yard Photo", the handwriting on the rear establishes the relationships. In the image, there is what appears to be a large smokestack in the background right over the middle lady's head. Other than that, it's flat Texas plus landscaping, so I doubt there's anything to fix the place, other than it is some residence somewhere. |
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The one I'm calling the "fishing postcard" has a picture of two boys on the front, with some writing around the side, plus a message on the stamp side. On the picture side, I think it says "Dear Tom, like to fish? I stayed all night on the Frost(?) lake. Caught about 4 or 5 # (pounds?)" On the postcard side, postmark is May 11, 1909. "Dear Eva, What you doing these dry times. I don't know what I am going to do. All the fish ponds are drying up. I guess I will have to move. I can't quit fishing." So maybe a drought was going on? |
The one I'm calling the "Milford swimming hole postcard" is totally unknown to me. I don't know if this pond or whatever is around Milford or not - but the limestone to the right looks like it might be plausibly Texas at least. |
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R. E. Wilson Funeral Notice I thought the "R E Wilson Funeral Notice" might be of some interest. Could this be the "R E Wilson" referenced on http://www.thehancockhouseinn.com/ ?
Some of you have offered to buy some of these items. I really don't want to sell these, since there are heirs to this estate (that will eventually have to be located, and I'm not one of them) that may want sentimental and family-related items like these. I'm co-conservator of this estate for my second cousin who can't take care of her affairs any longer, but I'm also trying to collect information about the family, and I've found several items of historical interest. I will print off all the "Milford" emails and put this group of items in an envelope and label it in case the heirs want to sell any of this. Now that I know there's a Milford connection, I'll continue to watch for anything else that might show up or show a connection to Milford as well. I don't think my conservatee ever lived in Milford, but she did live in Ft. Worth, Abilene, Rotan, and Coleman - and the family moved to California in or around 1940. If anyone could take a digital snap of the headstone in the Milford Cemetery, I'll put it with these other items. Also, if anyone happens to know where the R E Wilson residence was and (if it still stands) could take a digital snap of it, I may be able to match it by comparing to photos I have, and perhaps find some more Milford photos in the process. If I can match the residence, I may be able to find other photos with the same lab markings on it (so they probably would have come from the same roll of film - there are a lot of photos I can't begin to identify). If anything matches, I could and send them along and let you folks do the detective work down there if you want to ID the locations. One question - does anyone know if there is/was a train depot in that area called "Hallett"? I have a couple of snaps of a steam train arriving and sitting at a station labeled "Hallett". There's a Hallett in Oklahoma that had a depot, but if there were an old station Thank you all for writing back, and I hope you enjoy these additional images. |
