The Daily Camera, Boulder, CO, August 1, 2001

Frank T. Milligan

Oct. 17, 1907 - July 20, 2001 

Frank T. Milligan of Boulder died Friday, July 20, 2001, of natural causes. He was 93. The son of Frank D. Milligan and Iris Toliver Milligan, he was born Oct. 17, 1907, in Jefferson, Iowa. He married Ruth Thompson on April 29, 1936, in Jefferson. She preceded him in death. He graduated from the University of Iowa. Mr. Milligan was president of the Iowa Library Association in 1956 and the American Association of Library Trustees from 1956 to 1958. He was appointed by the governor to the board of the Iowa State Library and was editor of the Iowa Library Trustee for Iowa. The city of Jefferson gave him the official title "Mr. Jefferson." He served as president of the Board of Trustees of the Jefferson Public Library, the Jefferson Chamber of Commerce and the Jefferson Development Bureau. He also was director of the Iowa Rose Society and was a Presbyterian elder and trustee. He was a member of the Masonic Lodge, the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and the Chi Phi Pi and Alpha Kappa Psi national honor societies. Mr. Milligan moved to Boulder from Jefferson 40 years ago and had various business interests throughout the Rocky Mountain region. Survivors include a daughter, Jane Hildreth of Boulder; a son, Tom Milligan of Las Vegas; three grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by a brother, Robert Milligan. Memorial services are pending. Contributions may be made to the Boulder Public Library Homebound Services, Frank Milligan Memorial, P.O. Drawer H, Boulder, CO 80306. Howe Mortuary of Boulder is in charger of arrangements.

History of the Milligan Family

In 1869 David Milligan came to Greene County from Lodi, Wisconsin; he had emigrated by a sailing ship as a boy of fourteen from Scotland to the U.S.A.

In 1872, David went to work for Augustus Yearger in the Lumber and Grain business. At that time, most of the lumber came by rail from mills at Dubuque, Clinton and Muscatine, Iowa on the Mississippi. The logs came to the mills in rafts from Wisconsin and Minnesota. Some of the items handled at that time were windows, doors, cedar roof shingles, wood lath, white cedar pots, nails, boards, framing lumber, brick lime, drain tile, glass and things needed to build farming buildings, houses, stores. Coal was used mainly for heating and was a big business in the wintertime.

The lumber yard and grain elevator were located at the north end of Oak Street on the C. & N.W. railway. The farmers brought their grain to town with wagons and horses. At that time there were no soybeans raised but there was corn, oats, flax, buckwheat and wheat. In connection with the elevator a flour mill run by water power was located near the number 7 hold on the golf course south of Jefferson. In order to provide water for the mill race, there were two river dams and in between the two was the mill pond.

In 1882 the first telephone in Greene County connected the flour mill with the lumber and grain office, on the C. & N.W. The yearly rental for the telephone equipment was $12.50. In connection with the elevator, seeds like timothy and clover were sold as well as grain seeds.

In the 1880s, A. Moorhouse and J.F. Harrington were associated with David Milligan as partners but in 1905 the company became D. Milligan Co. The new firm consisted of David and his three sons, Fred. W., Elmer A., and Frank David. Some Alaskan timber limits (sections) of virgin trees were acquired, but due to the difficulty in logging, were finally sold to another operator. A policy of acquiring additional elevators and lumber yards was begun.

David died in 1919 and Fred in 1925. In the winter and spring of 1926 when the last of the Jefferson Banks had failed, Frank and Elmer Milligan organized a Clearing House for Jefferson merchants, clearing checks and other commercial papers through a Chicago bank with which the Milligans did business.

In 1927, D. Milligan Co. built a new uptown lumber yard. This building is now occupied by the Otto Culver Engineering Co. The building material enterprise carried over 2000 items. Trucks replaced horses and wagons and there were many other changes, but the basics of lumber, grain and coal remained. By now, most of the lumber was coming from the west coast.

Updating in the grain business was also occurring. Grain cleaners for improving the quality were installed and moisture testers and other factors were applied in the purchase and marketing of grain. The county’s first grain dryer was installed in Jefferson. The expansion of lumber yards and elevators now came to fourteen localities. The company had two complete fire losses; the first at Grand Junction in the 1930s and the second at Adaza in 1940.

The depression years were hard for everyone with ten-cent corn and the drought year of 1934 and 1936. And then there was the cinch bug infestation that destroyed crops.

The first soybeans in Greene County were put out for hay only in the dry years from seed imported and sold by D. Milligan Co. The soybeans had Chinese names like Mukden and Manchu.

During the 30s, Bob Milligan, who worked for his father and uncle used to travel into southwestern Iowa, Nebraska, and northern Missouri, to sell corn and oats. This initially went by rail and later by truck to different towns. Often it was customary to load the trucks at night and carry the cash until banking time in the morning.

In 1942 Frank Milligan died and in 1944 the business was divided. Frank Jr. and Bob Milligan, who was overseas in WWII, took some locations under the name of Milligan Bros., and Elmer Milligan and his son and grandson took other locations under the title of E.A. Milligan and Son. E.A. Milligan and Son moved their office to Des Moines.

After WWII Milligan Bros. began to move ahead rapidly in expanding its grain elevator capaciaty to more than a million bushels capacity, with improved elevating and handling equipment. New truck scales were installed to handle semi-trailer trucks. At that time too, the Federal Government owned extensive bin sites and the Milligans handled the contracts to fill and empty them.

The lumber and building material business was expanding greatly and Milligan Bros. had acquired another location at Stuart, Iowa. Because of an intensive effort to obtain stocks of material and scarce items, they were able to draw customers from Des Moines, Council Bluffs, Minnesota and other places beyond the normal territory. They also began to do some housing development, as well as serving the regular town and country customers.

In anticipation of the relocation of Highway 30 from the center of Jefferson to the north outskirts, Milligan Bros. bought a relocation for a future lumber yard just south of the Milwaukee tracks crossing of Highway 4.

In 1958 Milligan Bros. and Ferguson Diehl, another lumber company, combined to form Tri-County Cash Lumber which now occupies this site.

In 1959, Frank Jr. moved to Boulder, Colorado and the grain business was sold to Harland Milligan of Hooper, Nebraska. There was no direct relationship between these two families.

Bob Milligan of Jefferson still has an interest in the Tri-County lumber establishment and also in a Building Material company at Stuart. The E.A. Milligan and Son company is no longer in the lumber and grain business.