An 1830 Excerpt from Pike County's "The Northern Eagle and Milford Monitor"

Copies of the earliest Pike County newspapers are scarce, so this excerpted sketch of "Milford, Pike County" appearing under the byline, Milford Eagle, as reprinted in Samuel Hazard's The Register of Pennsylvania, Vol 5, April 3, 1830, p 214, may well be the only version of the article in existence. The author of the sketch, as submitted to the paper, is not named.

Alfred Mathews, in History of Wayne, Pike and Monroe Counties, Pennsylvania, states the first paper appeared in 1827 as The Eagle of the North.  After continuing for a year or more as The Eagle of the North, the paper becomes The Northern Eagle and Milford Monitor under the editorship of Benjamin A. Bidlack, in 1828.  The December 11, 1829 issue is published by Francis A.L. Smith.  The Eagle and Monitor appears in 1831 with J. H. Westfall printer and publisher.

Historical Collections of the State of  Pennsylvania, Sherman Day, 1843

Milford, Pike County
"... Our public buildings are a court house, meeting house, and an academy, all new and handsome buildings.  Of private houses, there are about 60, containing a population of at least 300.  There are two grist mills; two saw mills; one fulling mill; one carding machine works; one oil mill; four blacksmith shops; two turning lathes by water; one printing office; a post office; seven stores, including an apothecary's shop; eight taverns; one tannery; of professional characters, we have one minister of the Gospel; one school master; three doctors; six lawyers; of  mechanics, there are two wagon makers; two cabinet makers; one coach maker; one patent pail maker; two hatters; two painters; three masons; five carpenters; four blacksmiths; one tanner and currier; two saddlers and harness makers; two millers; two mautua [mantua, i.e. women's dress makers]; one trunk maker; six shoemakers, and four tailors.

By this it will seem that a few more mechanics are wanted, such as chair makers, gunsmith, watch maker, turner, and some more carpenters and masons, &c. -- Milford Eagle




The 1830 census listing heads of household of the village of Milford, based on the known residents, Francis A. L. Smith, Samuel Dimmick, Andrew Armstrong, and Cyril [C.D.] Pinchot, can be found beginning approximately here. See also Mathews' essay on Later Settlers, and the Resource Inventory of the Milford Historic District. The village of Milford was not set aside as a borough until 1874.  The following update would appear in Volume 6 of The Register of Pennsylvania:

Hazard's Register of Pennsylvania, Vol. 6, 1830, p 96.

"The work of erecting the court-house was begun in 1814 and the stone building still standing and used as a jail was completed in 1815... At first there was no bell upon the court-house, and when the judges and lawyers and persons interested were to be summoned, the sheriff mounted the cupola and blew most piercing blasts upon a huge tin horn. This was superseded by a huge triangle, upon which the sheriff or a tipstaff dealt resounding blows that were not unmusical, and this, in turn, gave way in 1844 or 1845 to the bell which for many years announced at proper seasons that justice was about to be judicially administered. Mathews, Chapter 1, Civil History, p 836.
The 1815 - 1873 Pike County Courthouse, Milford, Pennsylvania.

The September 4, 1830 issue of The Register of Pennsylvania would carry a brief description of the village of Stroudsburg under the byline Pike County Eagle.