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A Walking Tour of Milford, Delaware
The Kent County side of Milford was settled in 1680 by Henry Bowan on what was known as the Saw Mill Range. A century later the Reverend Sydenham Thorne built a dam across the Mispillion River to generate power for his gristmill and sawmill. Around the same time, Joseph Oliver laid out the first city streets and plots nearby on a part of his plantation. Soon a number of homes and businesses appeared along Front Street and Milford, taking its name from the Thorne mill that was built at a narrow ford of the river, was born. The city was incorporated in 1807.
In the 1770s, a ship building industry was already flourishing on the Mispillion River. Shipbuilding continued to be the major industry of Milford through World War I, bringing considerable prosperity to the town. The high point came in 1917 when the four-masted, 174 foot long Albert F. Paul was launched from the William G. Abbott shipyard. When the last of the area’s giant white oaks was cut in the 1920s, the shipyards quickly went out of business, although the Mispillion ships sailed on for many years. (The Paul was sunk by a German torpedo in 1942 while sailing from the Bahamas.) The Vinyard shipyard was called into service in both WW I and II to build submarine chasers.
As Delaware’s largest town south of Dover, Milford’s downtown has long served as the commercial center of a large agricultural community. The serpentine Mispillion flows for 15 miles across a land distance of only seven miles before emptying into Delaware Bay, severing the Town in half. The North Milford side developed first and contains the oldest section of town; South Milford did not develop extnesively until after 1870. Both sections have been designated historic areas.
Our walking tour will visit the Federal and Greek Revival buildings of North Milford and the Victorian-influenced mansions of South Milford beginning at the Milford Museum that ties it all together...
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