Charles Milby Mansion At 3015 Old Galveston Rd.

[dbigtex56]

I was doing a bit of research on Avondale and found this platte where a street was originally named Milby but later became what is today Taft street. The platte document is huge and I took a picture with my camera- wish it were better--but i wonder why Milby got this honor-- I may post the other pictures in a different forum and ask that question.

On the 1913 Houston map, this street was identified as Taft. What's the date on the plat you photographed?

Incidentially, just noticed that the portion of present-day Taft between Pacific Street and Hawthorne was named Ariel - perhaps in keeping with the Shakespearean theme of the surrounding streets.

[trymahjong]

On the 1913 Houston map, this street was identified as Taft. What's the date on the plat you photographed?

Incidentially, just noticed that the portion of present-day Taft between Pacific Street and Hawthorne was named Ariel - perhaps in keeping with the Shakespearean theme of the surrounding streets.

Also the present day Hyde Park street was named Huntington

[NenaE]

http://www.facebook....&id=71454851372

Milby house info.

I never really got to check out the house on Old Galveston Road, close up. It sat at the end of a long drive, quite far back from the main road. Just remember it sat out there by itself, on flat land, with a few palm trees next to it.

Edited April 9, 2011 by NenaE

[NenaE]

http://harrisburgtx.webs.com/

nice research Mr. Wolfe.

---pic of MIlby House I've not seen before.

---graveyards particularly interesting

---maps

[HPmatt]

Pretty sure about what I am about to tell you.

I come from an old Harrisburg Family.

Milby Mansion was actually located on the left side of Broadway past Harris Elementary School going toward town. I can't remember whether it burned down or was just torn down many many years ago. We are talking somewhere before peace being declared WWII.

The Grandparents of Charles Dow Milby lived there.

Charles Dow Milby lived in a gorgeous plantation style house with servants quarters accross from my grandmothers house. My Mom tells me it was torn down after Charles Dow's parents died or something of that. My Mom is still alive and is 84 years old. She came to my Grandmothers house after peace was declared and knew the Milby's. If you are curious where this house was, I can tell you my Grandmothers address and the house I speak of was located directly accross the street from her front door. We lived there all of my life up till 3 years ago when we sold it and moved with my husband. My Grandmothers house was built in 1927. located at 7924 Channelside Houston, Texas. What is now Channelside used to be Lawndale. Lawndale was changed to Channelside during Mayor Louie Welch's Administration.

Now the house that you are referring to and that most of my age group referred as "The MIlby Mansion" was in actuality "The Hammon House" owned by John Hammon. From what I understand the Hammonds and Milbys were interconnected by marriage somehow.

All these last names are either interconnected by marriages from the very fargone past or by friendships;

Todd, Milby, Deady, Hammon, Harris.

I am thinking councilman Robb Todd is related in someway to The Harrisburg "Todd Family".

By the way I think I am misspelling "hammon" My Mom says it like Hammond but if I remember correctly she told me "no, not Hammond but Hammon or Hamnon. I'll ask her tomorrow. She's went to bed now.

She called and talked to Charles Dow quite sometime back. That had to be late 80's or early 90's.

Most of these families have burial sites in the Glendale Cemetary down by Harris Elementary.

(See Glendale Cemetary Association.

I hope this helps!

I wonder why you ask if we remember the "Milby Mansion"?

I do and it was beautiful.

I lived on Pine Gully from 1961 to 1981 and remember the Milby mansion on OGR was demolished around 1983 or thereabouts.  As another poster noted - red brick house, window louvers, palm trees up the drive - similar to the Palm trees that used to line Broadway in the 1960s.  I attended Deady Jr High and Milby Sr High.  My mom did too.  Our family came to Houston during WWII when Armco steel was hiring for the war effort.  I was in school in Austin when my mom sold our house on Pine Gully. The City of Houston built the wastewater treatment plant phase 1 then - it was really nice with the 100 year old oaks along OGR setting the concrete floculation tanks off very nicely. Wasn't into history back then but have since read Milby was a cotton trader in the early 1800s in the port town of Indianola, which was wiped off the map twice by hurricanes and wasn't rebuilt after the second one - located down by Victoria.  The book on Indianola also mentioned that the backer was JP Morgan - competing against Vanderbilt - who had monopoly on Galveston, New Orleans and other Gulf ports.  JPMorgan was funding towns to compete against Vanderbilt steamships.  JPMorgan created the syndicate that  built the Houston Ship Channel, as well as Morgan City LA, Morgan's cut/point in Galveston Bay, and Idaianola, among others.

[NenaE]

HPMatt ~ Very interesting information about JP Morgan and Indianola. My grandmother's relatives landed in Indianola, from Germany. She attended Milby HS, knew the Milby daughter.

Welcome to HAIF.

[Ross]

I hate to be Mr. Negative, but I think there's some untrue items about J P Morgan in the posts above.

 

I don't think JP Morgan financed the Ship Channel. It was financed by a group of banks that became Texas Commerce Bancshares, one of the local biggies that failed in the 80's.

 

Indianola was founded in 1846, and became an important port, but given that Charles Milby was born in Indianola in 1852, I doubt he had much influence there before the town was nearly destroyed in 1875, given he moved to Harrisburg in 1872.

 

Morgan's Point was named after the Morgan family that owned 1500 acres there.

 

Morgan City, Louisiana was named after Charles Morgan, a transportation magnate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Morgan_%28businessman%29

[FilioScotia]

Morgan's Point is named for James Morgan, who owned a large plantation there before and after the Texas Revolution. Morgan also owned a beautiful mulatto slave named Emily West, also known as Emily Morgan, the famous "Yellow Rose of Texas".

 

Texas legends say Emily was "entertaining" General Santa Anna in his tent while Sam Houston's army of Texicans were attacking his camp at San Jacinto. It's a great story, but it's probably a myth. True or not, she has a hotel named for her in San Antonio.

 

Transportation magnate Charles Morgan was a busy guy. In the 1870s he financed dredging of the Atchafalaya River in Louisiana to make it navigable for sea going ships. In 1874, Morgan bought the dormant Bayou Ship Channel Company in Houston and found financing to dredge Buffalo Bayou far enough inland to connect with his railroad line near Clinton Drive. He bailed out of it in the 1880s, leaving it to local people to complete the channel farther inland after the turn of the century.

 

Here's what the Texas State Historical Historical Association website says about that:

 

"The United States government purchased his [Charles Morgan's] improvements in 1890 and thereafter accepted primary responsibility for the channel. Houston Congressman Thomas H. Ball, after becoming a member of the Rivers and Harbors Committee in 1897, won increased appropriations for the project. Congress also approved a depth of twenty-five feet and the location of the terminus at Long Reach, now the Turning Basin. Yet, by 1909 the channel had been dredged to only 18½ feet.

 

Impatient at the slow progress, Mayor Horace Baldwin Rice led a delegation to Washington to present the "Houston Plan," which offered to pay one-half of the cost of dredging the channel to twenty-five feet. After receiving assurances that the facilities would be publicly owned, Congress accepted the offer. Prior to Houston's offer, no substantial contributions had ever been made by local interests, but since then no project has been adopted by the national government without local contributions. The Texas legislature passed a bill enabling Harris County to establish a navigation district. The citizens then approved a bond issue of $1,250,000. Jesse H. Jones arranged for the sale of the bonds and the dredging began. It was completed on September 7, 1914."

 

And, BTW, Texas Commerce Bancshares didn't fold in the 1980s. It merged with Chemical Bank, and four or five mergers later it became Chase Bank, then JPMorgan Chase, which it is today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 12, 2013 by FilioScotia

[editmartinezd]

Does anyone remember a big house that used to sit on Old Galveston Rd by the name of Milby Mansion? It was about a mile from Broadway. It was torn down some time back and an industrial plant was built on that site. The trees that lined the front of the street are still there. Would appreciate any info.

Greetings!

 

I and my family remember the Milby mansion very well.  It was a big red mansion with many roofs and a surrounding porch.  I was a little girl when we came in 1969.  The big trees are still there and we consider to be historic.  They are beautiful and wide and curly-looking at the stumps.  One afternoon when we were kids and my daddy was at work, my mother treated us by driving by the Milby mansion.  We pulled over with the old blue station wagon and saw horses running around from a distance.  We walked up to the fence and as if they noticed us, the horses drew close to us and ran close to us in circles. It was about 1970.  They offered pony rides and my triplet sister rode on one.  We stood close to the shade of the beautiful trees. I hope they remain there.  We saw one day growing up, that there were long steel pipes along the trees and inside the fence.  This is I believe when the Milbys sold their home.  The big red mansion was still standing among all of the steel pipes. Great memories of the mansion:)

[Karen millikan]

Back in the 70 I use to date a guy that rented  Milby Mansion. There was always party's  there every weekend. I LOVE WALKING  THOUGHT THE HOUSE LOOKING AT THE CABNETS THEY  WAS ABOUT  12 FEET TALL. THE ROOM WHERE THEY DANCE IN THE 1800. I just love that place. I just want to know why didn't  they  preserve it like the did all those houses in Galveston TX. PART OF MY LIFE I WE NEVER FORGET.  I LIVE IN TN NOW I think of the all the time I spent there. Wish they wouldn't  pull now.

 

[NenaE]

The C.E.Schaff residence is listed on this Park Place brochure. (source, on-line - *HPL digital collections, Images).

 The map shows the house in the same place as the George Hamman and Mary Josephine Milby (daughter of Charles H. Milby) estate.

I studied the Park Place Facebook article with news clippings of the "two" houses. I also found old photos of the Schaff estate with fig orchards.(source-*HPL digital collections, Images, Schlueter collection)

It looks like the same place. Note the entrance gate columns in third pic and the line of oak trees in the last b/w photo.

The news articles state that Mrs. Hamman bought land adjacent to her property to create Milby Park, in memory of her father and to develop a Simms bayou neighborhood. But, the depression, chemical plants and sewage treatment plant shut down that idea. At some point, the estate was sold and slowly deteriorated. Historic aerial maps show the house standing in 1973 and gone in 1976.

[NenaE]

On 6/30/2008 at 1:31 AM, rome said:

Pretty sure about what I am about to tell you.

I come from an old Harrisburg Family.

Milby Mansion was actually located on the left side of Broadway past Harris Elementary School going toward town. I can't remember whether it burned down or was just torn down many many years ago. We are talking somewhere before peace being declared WWII.

The Grandparents of Charles Dow Milby lived there.

Charles Dow Milby lived in a gorgeous plantation style house with servants quarters accross from my grandmothers house. My Mom tells me it was torn down after Charles Dow's parents died or something of that. My Mom is still alive and is 84 years old. She came to my Grandmothers house after peace was declared and knew the Milby's. If you are curious where this house was, I can tell you my Grandmothers address and the house I speak of was located directly accross the street from her front door. We lived there all of my life up till 3 years ago when we sold it and moved with my husband. My Grandmothers house was built in 1927. located at 7924 Channelside Houston, Texas. What is now Channelside used to be Lawndale. Lawndale was changed to Channelside during Mayor Louie Welch's Administration.

Now the house that you are referring to and that most of my age group referred as "The MIlby Mansion" was in actuality "The Hammon House" owned by John Hammon. From what I understand the Hammonds and Milbys were interconnected by marriage somehow.

All these last names are either interconnected by marriages from the very fargone past or by friendships;

Todd, Milby, Deady, Hammon, Harris.

I am thinking councilman Robb Todd is related in someway to The Harrisburg "Todd Family".

By the way I think I am misspelling "hammon" My Mom says it like Hammond but if I remember correctly she told me "no, not Hammond but Hammon or Hamnon. I'll ask her tomorrow. She's went to bed now.

She called and talked to Charles Dow quite sometime back. That had to be late 80's or early 90's.

Most of these families have burial sites in the Glendale Cemetary down by Harris Elementary.

(See Glendale Cemetary Association.

I hope this helps!

I wonder why you ask if we remember the "Milby Mansion"?

I do and it was beautiful.

John Grant Tod Milby was the owner of the house on Medina (x Channelside). He was the son of Charles H. Milby. JGT Milby's sister was Mary Josephine Milby Hamman. She and her husband George lived in the old house on Broadway with her mother. After she died in 1941, Mary Jo. and George Hamman moved to the OGR estate.

The 1920 Houston directory (source: HPL) shows the Medina st. resident as:  John GT Milby, Cattleman, residence - West side of Medina. (N. of Myrtle) st. (later known as Lawndale, then Channelside), Harrisburg, Tx. He married Orlean Allen Milby in 1909 in Harrisburg, Tx.

John GT and Orlean Allen Milby had two children, Abbie Louise Milby Feagin (b.1910) and Charles Dow Milby (b.1912).

So the big house at 920 Medina must have been Charles Dow Milby's childhood home. His obituary was an interesting read. He graduated from U.T., served in the Coast Guard during WW2, and worked in the real estate and oil and gas industries. He loved to sail. That was no surprise, as there were Navy men on both sides of his family history. It also explains why he moved to Seabrook. One home address was on Todville Rd.

There may be a link to the Sam Allen cattle estate through the father of Orlean Allen Milby. Her father's name was Charles Dell Allen (Navy man). He may have been the younger brother of Sam E. Allen. The S.E. estate sat near the intersection of Sims and Buffalo bayous.

John GT Milby died in 1954 and Orlean Allen Milby died in 1958.

Below are Historic Aerial pics of the Medina st. house. It was standing in 1958 and gone in 1962.

Thank you Rome for sharing your mother's story. It had no clue that house ever existed.

 

Edited September 9, 2022 by NenaE