OCR Text |
Show JVULFORD'S EARLIEST LIVING PIONEER VISITS OLD HOME j R. M. STODDARD i RETURNS TO SITE I OF HOMESTEAD i I Mr. and Mrs. R. M. Stoddard, of 1 Los Angeles, who possibly merit the title, 'old-timers,' more than any one else connected with the history of Milford, were here greeting old friends on Monday and Tuesday. They were returning to California after a ' trip to Chicago. ! Mr. Stoddard said that this was his ! first visit to Milford in ten years, and I that he noticed many new faces. The j father of Mr. Stoddard, Arvin Stoddard, Stod-dard, staked out a homestead on the present site of Milford in 1872. Our 'second street,' Stoddard Avenue, gets its name from the Stoddard family. R. M. Stoddard was born here and lived here until ten years ago, and watched the growth of Milford from a vacant homestead site to about its present size. Many amusing reminiscenses were made by Mr. Stoddard and his friends during his visit. One in particular was a fight among Indians from Kanosh, with missies '. being Main street mud. The incentive for the fight was liquor furnished by one of the boys about town. The Indians were lodged in jail and then some whites with a distorted sense of humor conceived the idea of helping the Indians In-dians to a getaway by smoking them out The exit being, of course, padlocked, pad-locked, the Indians had no alternative but to appear at their cell windows for air, and with tears running down muddy faces, they promised to be ! good. When told that Main street was to be paved, Mr. Stoddard said that the cost of same could be defrayed by salvaging all the old horse-shoes, rubbers, and boots that lay at varying distances below the surface of the street. Three feet down, the earth is moist and porous, he said, and in the days before gravel, horses kicked off shoes in the mire that prevailed, and j men floundered helplessly in the mud. . Consequently in the later days, when ' the civic holiday known as 'Gravel Day' came around, it was celebrated with exuberance by the mud-splashed natives. Mfr. Stoddard's father and mother are buried in the Milford cemetery, and this has bee.n the last resting place of all the Stoddards who were the first family of Milford. Mr. Stod-j dard says that he wants to come back here, to visit whenever possible and j that he expects sometime to makej his last camp here on the slopes of the hill west of town. |