This 1910 photo, taken as a postcard, shows the two original wood-frame buildings that stood behind the Milton House for more than 85 years before being razed in 1926. In the foreground is a well that served the inn with a windmill through the 1800s.
Ezra Goodrich, shown above in 1912, is sitting in front of the first house in which his family resided until the completion of the Milton House and Goodrich Block in the late 1840s. Two wood-frame buildings were constructed by Joseph Goodrich in 1839 and an existing cabin was moved from what became the Lima Center area to add additional space for the two wood-frame buildings. The unrestored cabin, which still stands, can be seen on the left side of the frame. The door directly behind Ezra is on display at the Milton House Museum.
Ezra Goodrich, shown above in 1912, is sitting in front of the first house in which his family resided until the completion of the Milton House and Goodrich Block in the late 1840s. Two wood-frame buildings were constructed by Joseph Goodrich in 1839 and an existing cabin was moved from what became the Lima Center area to add additional space for the two wood-frame buildings. The unrestored cabin, which still stands, can be seen on the left side of the frame. The door directly behind Ezra is on display at the Milton House Museum.
This 1910 photo, taken as a postcard, shows the two original wood-frame buildings that stood behind the Milton House for more than 85 years before being razed in 1926. In the foreground is a well that served the inn with a windmill through the 1800s.
After Joseph Goodrich returned to the Du Lac Prairie with his family in March 1839, he was in need of room and shelter for his party of 13 while he planned and built his substantive lime gravel complex that would become his home, place of business and eventual National Historic Landmark.
A year earlier, Goodrich, James Pierce and Henry Beebe Crandall arrived on the prairie from upstate New York and staked a claim south of the Quaskeenon (Koshkonong) marshland at the intersection of Native American trails and militia roads still worn from the pursuit of Sac leader Black Hawk and his people six years prior. Before Goodrich returned to Alfred, New York to retrieve his family, he, Pierce and Crandall constructed a 16-by-20 wood frame structure to hold their claim and serve as shelter and a store.
When Goodrich returned following a challenging 35-day journey in the heart of winter, his party had grown from his wife — Nancy and children Ezra and Jane — to 13 individuals and more room was needed. A second, similar-size wood-frame building was built next to the existing 16-by-20 structure. Photos show the corners of the two buildings almost touching.
To add even more space, Goodrich had scouted a cabin built in 1837 about eight miles to the east and devised a plan to move it alongside his two new buildings. The cabin was likely built by members of the Walker family, some of the earliest white settlers in the region. Photos indicate the cabin was placed end-to-end with the original building and lengthways along the south side of the second building.
A photo also shows a covered entryway between the original building and the hexagon portion of the Milton House.
One could enter the east-facing door of the cabin, walk through the original building and into the hexagon. The stone hearth of the log cabin wasn’t built into the west wall until after 1926 when the two wood-frame structures were razed. The hearth was never meant to function and was added for decorative purposes by a very early incarnation of the Milton Historical Society—most likely during the late 1930s.
While the Milton House was being constructed — the hexagon through 1844 and the Goodrich Block through 1849 — the Goodrich family and others lived in the three-building complex. The Goodrich family consisted of Joseph, Nancy, Ezra, 13 in 1839, and Jane, 11. As many as nine other individuals lived in the early Goodrich home at various times.
As if pressing the role of home for more than a dozen people wasn’t enough for the limited space accorded the three small buildings, Goodrich also opened the home for travelers and the red frame buildings were often referred to as Milton’s first inn. Joseph and his family felt obligated to help travelers as best they could, willingly moving furniture outside the home on evenings when floor space was needed for travelers. The first red building also had a shallow attic that served as a store from which travelers and early townsfolk alike could stock provisions.
The complex also served as the first gathering point for the community’s Seventh Day Baptist Church in 1839.
Once the Milton House was completed, the frame buildings and cabin were no longer needed as a home by the Goodrich family. Family members occupied the new second-floor dwellings of the Goodrich Block. The complex of small buildings, however, continued to function as the kitchen for the inn. There is no written record of a kitchen located inside the Milton House as long as the hexagon was used as an inn through the mid-1890s. It is believed that much of the food preparation for the inn took place in the first framed building constructed by Goodrich.
The two frame buildings were used for storage through the early 1900s. Some accounts suggest the second frame building being used for grain storage for a while. News accounts in the Milwaukee Journal and Milton Journal indicate the Goodrich heirs attempted to sell the two frame buildings to the Wisconsin State Historical Society in the 1920s. Photos indicate the two buildings had fallen into disrepair by this time and when the transaction did not occur, the buildings were razed in 1926, leaving the cabin as the sole survivor of the original three-building complex.
