1901

No Milton News letters are available for any of the weeks of January 1901; however, most of the instances for the other 11 months of 1901 are available and quite legible.

February 1901     March 1901     April 1901     May 1901     June 1901     July 1901     August 1901     September 1901     October 1901     November 1901     December 1901

David A. Conner is the author of all of the available letters for this year; his initials appear at the end of every letter (D. A. C.).

One of the more poignant events of 1901 affected David Conner and his family directly: the death of Mary E. Conner, his wife, in December after a lingering illness of several weeks’ duration. Death was due to gastric problems, but no further details are available. Conner reported her death with far less overt emotion than he displayed in his eulogies of others; one could argue it was journalistic objectivity to a fault. A real display of emotion, in print, would come from him two years later while on a morning walk through town with his grandson.

In the February 1 letter, Conner mentions for the first time (that we know of) the plans of the Milton M. P. Church to install “cathedral glass” windows in the church; in the March 22 letter, he states that the windows have arrived. This is evidence that the windows arrived several years before they were installed in the church building, but nowhere does Conner mention anything about their origin and the means by which they were delivered to Milton. In fact, nothing more will be said about the windows until 1906, the year they were installed along with the other major renovations to the church building.

The Milton Board of Trade was established in March of 1901 and the announcement of its initiation was published in the Milton News letter of March 22. One of its initial successes was to promote the establishment of a new cannery to replace the one owned by Isaac Robinson, which was destroyed by fire. In December 13 an initial stock offering raised $750,000 of capital to construct a new cannery near the Milton railroad station

A major commercial building project was undertaken in 1901: the Sussex Safe, Title, and Safe Deposit Company Building. It was completed and ready for occupancy on January 1, 1902.