(Image courtesy Graphics Fairy)
Through the amazing resources at Google Books, I was able to determine exactly what my Great Great Great Grandfather, Henry Milner, was doing on June 24, 1875! According to page 238 of Volume 30 of the Annual Report of the Ohio State Board of Agriculture, on June 24, 1875, Henry Milner was trying to save an ailing potato crop. The report from the Committee of Farms, Erie County Agricultural Society, puts it ever so eloquently:
By looking at a slang dictionary online, I learned that "Irish lemons" used to be a slang term for potatoes. Yet another search at Google Books led me to learn that Paris green and plaster was a remedy used on potatoes to kill the potato beetle, a pest that was harmful to potatoes.
The Annual Report of the Ohio State Board of Agriculture summarized the activities of the summer farm tour undertaken by the Committee on Farms, on which O.C. Tillinghast, Jr., Samuel Nims, and George B. Richmond served. They visited several farms in Erie County, and though Henry Milner was busy tending to his crops that day, the committee concluded about the Milner farm that:
...the right man is in the right place, presiding over the best managed and most prosperous county fair in the State of Ohio.
Henry Milner was the president of the Erie County Agricultural Society in 1875, which conducted the Erie County Fair.
As was explained in a previous blog post, Henry and Huldah Milner were the adoptive parents of Sarah Milner Steen. To my knowledge, I have no Milner DNA in my blood, but the strong family ties passed on to Sarah from Henry and Huldah Milner, and then passed on to my Great Grandmother Ada Steen Parker, who passed them on to my mother Joyce Parker Orshoski, are still alive and well in this present generation! I have no idea what Henry and Huldah Milner looked like, but I am so thankful that family heritage was so very important to them. What a delight it was for me to read about the potato crop on the Milner farm of 1875!
8 comments:
Finding information like this is so exciting, Dorene, and it's especially gratifying to read of an ancestor who was held in such high esteem. He farm looks very well-kept. It's a prize to find a drawing of it along with the article.
Thanks so much for stopping by, Nancy! The drawing of the Milner farm actually was in a reprint of the 1874 Erie County, Ohio Atlas, but it was so close to the date of the "farm tour" in 1875, that I included it in the same blog post. I so wish I knew what Henry and Huldah Milner looked like!
How cool to find this information on Google Books!
Is the farm where Nasa was? Very interesting article!!
Grandpa Milner's farm was on South Columbus Avenue, south of the fairgrounds, but north of NASA, on the west side of Columbus Ave. Mom and I drove by the property in the early 1990's, but the house and barns are all gone now. Grandpa and Grandma Steen inherited the property, and after they died in the 1930's, the property wasn't in the family any longer....
I had a great grandfather that was a "Lodger" at the "Milner Hotel" in the 1940 census and I wasn't sure if it was named after these folks. I can not find any information about it. Then he was living at 145 Jackson St in Sandusky.
Dear Kathy,
My Milners were farmers in Perkins Township, out in the country,
and they died long before 1940. I do not know anything about the
Milner Hotel. If I ever run across any info., I will be in touch!
PS - Kathy - I just found this on Google News Archives:
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=20060202&id=unFPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=aAQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5593,168171&hl=en
Turns out the Milner hotels were a chain, and I do not see a connection
to Erie County Milners.
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