Milan 50 Years Ago 4/1970

Looking Back at Milan’s History ~

…through the lens of the Milan Community Association Newsletter started in November 1968…Local author Bonnie Wood of Keeping NY History Alive supplements the original MCA Newsletters with “Reader’s Notes” or historical excerpts.

Milan Community Association Newsletter Vol. 2 No. 6 April 1970

Fishwoods Creek which flows into the Roeliff Jansen Kill in Milan was once the site of a sawmill.

Milan History

The History of Dutchess County as edited by Frank Hasbrouck in 1909 and available on Google Books provides a view back in time at Milan. “Some statistics published in Spafford’s Gazetteer of 1824 six years after the division from Northeast says in part: It is a good Township of land though considerably uneven but with rich arable swells hills and ridges and some flats. The soil is principally a warm productive loam. The inhabitants are principally farmers and there are no villages as yet to demand the application of a microscope or tire a topographer s patience. Its streams are some small head branches of Wappingers creek and a short distance of Ancram creek with a branch that puts into it but the town is well supplied with mills. There are plenty of roads. The centre always meant when I speak of distances in this way is about 8 miles E of the Hudson at Red Hook. Population 1797: 858 farmers, 77 mechanics, 3 traders, 49 free blacks, 18 slaves, taxable property $870,794, ll schools, 15,392 acres of improved land, 1884 cattle, 679 horses, 8618 sheep, 17,866 yards of cloth made in the household way, 7 grist mills, 4 saw mills, I fulling mill, 1 carding machine, 1 trip hammer and one distillery.”