Chapter III- A Community Grew

 

Millville - The First 200 Years 

 Chapter III

A Community Grew

    The years immediately before and after 1900 were eventful for Millville and the surrounding area. Developments included the establishment of the water company, laying of sewer lines, organization of a telephone company, institution of rural delivery of mail, the opening of the bank, and creation of Millville borough.

    The Millville Water Company was organized as a private company on March 8, 1898, with William Masters, Josiah Heacock, John Eves, C. M. Eves, and Charles W. Miller as directors. Ellis Eves was the treasurer. The pumping station was located near Little Fishing Creek, at the lower end of what became the community picnic ground. The original pumping station has now been relocated to its present location to allow for the expansion of Girton Manu­facturing Company. Water was first obtained from wells, and later from a huge spring alongside the creek about a quarter mile upstream. Today a large spreader system of pipes has been installed under the fields and woodland. These feed a settling basin prior to pumping to the original reservoir. The Company was sold to the borough in 1961.

    The reservoir is located on the highest spot in town, near the eastern borough line and above the cluster of homes east of the cemetery, which was known as Shin Street. The origin of the name is not recorded. A block or two of houses on the north side of town, just before the open fields which separated them from Bentown, was known as Swampoodle, but again no one knows why.

    Construction of the sewer system soon followed and cesspools and sumps were abandoned. The residents of the community built the sewer. The spring on the Meetinghouse grounds was cemented shut, for the water was found to be contaminated, as were most of the wells about town. These steps put an end to the frequent epidemics of typhoid fever. Installation of fireplugs around the borough also reduced the fire hazard, which had been the scourge of the village for years.

    The local telephone company was organized in 1895 and the construction of lines was started. This was known as the United Telephone Company and had a connection with the soon-formed Greenwood Telephone Company, which was unique. Each of the Greenwood lines were in reality a separate company, built and maintained by the subscribers to a party line. A number of these companies arranged for joint switchboard facilities at the Greenwood store. Elmer Parker, the proprietor of the store and the postmaster, was for many years the operator. Service was suspended at 9 p.m., not uncommon at many exchanges.

    Maintenance was always a problem and lines were at times out of use for days after a snow or windstorm. On one occasion a line was connected with a wire fence to bridge a gap of a considerable distance. The result was that for years the Greenwood company was known as the "barbed wire" line. The appellation was resented by many whose money and work had gone into the construction.

    Later, the Peoples Ideal Telephone Company was formed through the work of a promoter, Pettibone. Its lines extended more to the west of town to the Jerseytown and Strawberry Ridge areas rather than into the territory served by the Greenwood Company. Later the Bell Telephone system came to town and afforded the first real long-distance service. Mergers gradually took place until Bell controlled all the companies. Until that time arrived, it was necessary for a business place to have two or three telephones, each offering only limited service. One account says the first Bloomsburg‑ Millville line was built in 1888.

    The first effort to create a borough was made in May 1890, when a group of citizens filed a petition, which was approved by a grand jury. Dissidents, however, filed exceptions, and an appeal was taken to the State Supreme Court which on April 14, 1892, approved incorporation. The first election was held May 3 of that year and Joseph W. Eves was elected burgess (or equivalent to mayor).

    Great hopes were held in the period of trolley line expansion in about 1900. A line from Bloomsburg to Millville was projected with an amusement park to be constructed on the site of the Beagle Mill near Mordansville. Considerable stock was sold in Millville with the proviso that it need not be paid for until the tracks were laid into town.

    The first tracks were laid from Eyersgrove into Millville and grading was done as far as Mordansville. Money was collected for the stock sold to residents of the community, but then work stopped and the line never was finished. This was a sad blow to many investors. Part of the graded right-of-way was used when the road to Bloomsburg was paved.

    The establishment of rural delivery of mail was a boon to the whole area and three routes were assigned to Millville. The first carriers used box-like buggies, much on the order of the familiar Mennonite buggies still in use where people of that sect reside. The first carriers were Ed Eves, Joseph Kitchen, James T. Lawton, and Perry L. Eves.

    This service created quite a controversy, for postmasters in small communities were put out of business and their friends tried to have the little offices retained. Among those abolished, almost at once, were Sereno and Greenwood. In later years, rural delivery replaced the postmasters at Jerseytown and Eyers Grove, also. Iola's office closed in 1912. Eyers Grove now has a non-personal office with box service.

    Railway mail service was instituted before the end of the century and Orval Johnson was long the clerk on the local line. This service was first tested in 1864 and a little-known historical fact is that two mice were responsible. Until that time, it was customary to drop mail off trains at certain designated cities, where it was sorted and then forwarded to the individual post offices. These sorting points often served whole states and the system suffered extensive delays.

    One of these points was Green Bay, Wisconsin, much better known in recent years for its professional football team. The mice made their home in a pouch, which had lain in the post office for some days. When the pouch finally reached its destination on the upper shores of Lake Superior, the postmaster found a whole colony of mice that had made soft beds of chewed-up letters. The postmaster sent ruined letters and mice to the Chicago post office and George B. Armstrong, assistant postmaster there, is credited with conceiving the idea of sorting the mail on the trains while in transit.

    When rural delivery was instituted in this area, carriers left the post office around noon, after mail arriving on a train at approximately 11 o'clock had been sorted. When roads were deep in mud or clogged with snow, they often did not get home until early evening. The job was rigorous and most carriers here and elsewhere were required to have two or three horses. It was not unusual for carriers to perform errands for two or three patrons each day, for many rural residents did not get to town for several weeks at a time.

    This period was also marked by the advent of the automobile. Three, one-lung Cadillacs were the first cars, owned by Ellis Eves, John Eves, and John Emory Eves. Their performance was somewhat erratic and their speed was never great, but they did expedite travel to nearby points.

    Random items were taken from the Weekly Tablet, show creamery butter sold at 26 cents a pound, turkeys at 10 cents, and chickens at 7 cents in 1887. The borough had 52 bicycles in 1897. Millville had a population of 375 in 1880, 463 in 1888, 602 in 1898, 593 in 1900, 611 in 1910, 658 in 1920, 666 in 1930, 761 in 1940, 878 in 1950, 952 in 1960, and 896 in 1970.

    The decade after 1900 was ideal for growing boys. They were at liberty to roam the entire town and countryside. Few properties were fenced and the owners tolerated trespass as long as there was no vandalism. Seldom was any reported.

    The first movies came to town, shown in Union Hall, with 5 cent admission for one‑reelers. Medicine shows were another form of entertainment, and almost weekly picnics, family reunions, and festivals in the grove marked the summer months. A new road to it was built across the swamp and headrace of the grist millpond. One group of men used the pavilion in the grove on Sunday afternoons for poker games, which were transferred to one home or another among the participants in bad weather. Small fry often spied on the players.

    A youngster bent on building something could always snitch an egg from his own family's chicken pen or a neighbor's and trade it at one of the stores for nails or any other small item needed. When quizzed by the family as to the source of material, the reply was "Stole eggs and bought it." Both parents and merchants countenanced such minor thievery.

    Youngsters noted for being careful were allowed to play in almost any of the industrial establishments including the tannery, around the railroad, and at the planing mills, and creamery. Waste bits of lumber at the planing mill were often necessary in their small construction projects, and a little assistance in ice cream making yielded many a spoonful of free ice cream at the creamery.

    Summer garb for boys usually consisted of a pair of overalls plus sometimes a shirt, which made it easy to shed if going swimming. Bathing trunks were few, so the swimming hole at the iron bridge beside the gristmill was usually shunned in favor of what was known as the "old dam" which fed the gristmill pond. This had an eddy of backwater free from waste that came down the tailrace from the woolen mill. The dam at the tannery, which fed the wagon works, was shunned because tannery waste was sometimes dumped there and produced skin sores. These occasions could never be determined in advance, yet there were few times when that dam did not supply good pike fishing. Even today "skinny dipping" is practiced below the forebay at "the old dam".

    Skating on the grist millpond usually lasted several months except when snow ruined the ice. Ice-cutting operations went on there on a considerable scale to fill ice houses at the butcher shops and at many farms, for mechanical refrigeration had not yet arrived. Chunks could be obtained for making ice cream at home. The youngsters were allowed to help with butchering, rendering lard, packing sausage links, and other chores, the reward for which was often a good-sized piece of scrapple, often called pan hash, or a handful of cracklings‑ the residue from fat from which the lard had been pressed.

    When a good crust covered the snow, coasting might take a boy some miles from home and when it was after dark before he returned from an excursion, he frequently was warmed by something other than fire. On occasion, the result was that he ate standing for a meal or two.

    Farmers were especially tolerant of juvenile assistance in shocking grain, driving a horse hitched to a hayfork in stowing hay in the barn or operating the "windstacker" in distributing straw over the mow at threshing time. Rarely was one permitted to feed the thresher, for that was dangerous business. But he could help sack the grain or feed coal into the engine. Barn fires, resulting from sparks from the threshing engine, were fairly common despite the use of spark arresters in the stacks.

    Millville, in this period, had one of the first Boy Scout troops in the nation, but whether it ever obtained official recognition is not on record. Montgomery Boyd and Herbert Henrie were among the scoutmasters during the troop's short life. Early members included Eugene and Harold Cadman, Joseph Christian, Wallace Eves Marion Reece, Paul Trescott, and Raymond Kester.

    The chestnut blight had not yet struck down all the trees of that species and many a fall Saturday was devoted to gathering nuts. It was a successful day if a lad came home with a five-pound sugar sack filled with chestnuts.

    In the barbershop, haircuts were a dime and shaves a nickel. Boys kept a keen eye on the livery stable at the back of the hotel to check when horses were being clipped, for they could then get their heads clipped free and save a dime, an amount not easy to come by in those days.

    Before the water system was installed in town, the Saturday night bath was no myth. A wash tub placed alongside the kitchen stove served for the scrubbing, the water usually being heated in a tank at the back end of the stove.

    Where families kept livestock, most boys had daily chores to perform, feeding chickens or hogs, currying horses or milking cows. Cows owned in town were usually pastured on the grass along the edge of alleys.

    One result of this freedom was a liberal education of a kind rarely found in books or in planned recreation. Boys achieved an early self-reliance and a sense of responsibility. At the blacksmith shop, they were allowed to turn the bellows to keep the forge hot and when the blacksmiths were not busy, to use an anvil and hammer to fashion themselves a set of quoits. On rare occasions, when the smithy knew he had a gentle horse, a lad might even be allowed to pare a hoof or tack on a shoe.

    The town in this period had several colorful characters. One was Henry Swisher, man-of-all-work at odd jobs around town, and another was Peter Spring, who lived in a sparsely furnished house on the edge of town and eked out a precarious living mending shoes. A small brook ran past his house and rats flourished both inside and out. Peter usually worked with a .22 caliber rifle across his knees and whenever a rat showed a nose through the numerous 'holes around the edge of the room took a shot at it. He rarely missed.  Still, another was Joe D. Potter, who lived in Pine township and carried an umbrella every time he walked to town. His appearance was considered to be as good a weather forecast as could be had.

    It was customary for some sharp traders to await a rainy day to bring loads of hay or straw to town for sale, for the rain would add considerably to the weight. Purchasers were fully aware of the fraud and usually discounted the weight in proportion.

    Many a youngster learned the Morse code on a dead telegram key in the railroad station office and it was a happy day when the station agent thought him talented enough to send a word or two on an open wire. Perhaps many of these boys would be considered underprivileged today, but the word had not been thought of then.

    Organized activities for girls were little considered. They helped with household chores, took music and painting lessons, learned to sew and a few played tennis. Two courts were in town. Frank Heller built a clay court behind his home and John Eves, a well-shaded grass court near his home. Use of both was permitted generously.

Additions and corrections made for this Second Edition. DBG

Second Edition- Copyright Dean B. Girton Dec. 30, 2022