According to John W. Lequear, the author of Traditions of Hunterdon, Milford’s first European settler was Michael Zierfuss. Zierfuss owned or leased a mill on a creek which burned in 1769. The area became known as Burnt Mills as a result of that incident. Zierfuss’ mill was constructed in the creek on piles and was powered by a wheel. Zierfuss may have been here first, but Milford was not yet anything which resembled a town.
Michael Zierfuss may have been what was known as a quitrenter, an individual who leased property or usage rights from a land owner in the 18th century. According to Dr. Henry Race’s essay entitled Milford in 1760 a survey of the area was conducted on December 13, 1760 by John Rockhill for Stevens, Parker, and Company. That partnership had purchased the land which would become Milford from the West Jersey Society which was a group of land owners which had governed the colony of West Jersey prior to 1703 and owned much of the land in western New Jersey throughout the 18th century. At the time of the survey Milford had a ferry with a ferry house where the current bridge now is. There was a house along the Wissahawking Creek, listed as Breck’s house. Thirty yards north of the current creek bridge was a wooden gristmill which had been built in the creek bed. According to Race, that mill was owned by Colonel John Reid of New York, not Michael Zierfuss, but Reid never lived in Hunterdon County. When the mill burned in 1770, Reid sent Captain James Gray to determine the cost of reconstruction. On March 14, 1774 Reid hired Daniel McDonald to rebuild the mill and move the mill dam. Reid paid £160 for the new mill and dam. During the construction, McDonald rented Reid’s farm. Soon after the mill was complete, Reid sold it and the farm to John Starke Robertson of New York. Robertson sold the land to Colonel Thomas Lowrey.
Milford, or Burnt Mills, was not much more than a few buildings and one main street until Colonel Thomas Lowrey purchased 333 acres at Burnt Mills on July 18, 1795 for £2716. In 1798, Lowrey hired Thomas Elliot to build a frame grist mill by the Delaware River. He paid for the mill by selling one thousand acres in Frenchtown, which he had also developed, to Paul Prevost, a French army officer whom that town is named after. The grist mill in Milford was completed in 1799 and is still standing. A saw mill was also constructed near the river by Elliot soon after the grist mill and was completed in 1800. A house was built in 1796 called the Gibson House. Lowrey had intended to keep it as his residence, but his wife Esther disapproved. It later became a hotel. Lowrey’s second house was built in 1800. His home, along with the Gibson House, was one of the first homes in the county to have carpeted floors at the time. It is still standing and Lowrey died there on November 10, 1806 at the age of 72. Esther Lowrey joined him on October 13, 1814 at the age of 76. During the construction of the mills, Lowrey renamed the town Lowreytown after himself. It kept that name until 1803 or 1804. Then it was renamed Millsford.
Milford’s first teacher was Thomas Paterson, the brother of Governor and U.S. Supreme Court justice William Paterson and the cousin of Thomas Lowrey, mentioned above. When Paterson arrived in Millsford in 1804 the town had grown to include two saw mills, a grist mill, Lowrey’s house, a store, and the Gibson House. The size and composition of Milford may have changed after Paterson’s time, but education remained important in Milford with several schools existing over the next hundred years at various locations in town.
In the 1760s logging became the major industry on the Delaware River and it remained prominent until the 20th century. The logs were cut in the winter and then tied together and sent down the river as rafts during the spring floods. The logs were mainly used for shipbuilding. Ships such as the USS Constitution were built using New Jersey and Pennsylvania wood. By 1828 approximately one thousand rafts were sent down the river. The quantity of rafts coming down the river boosted the economies of the river towns because the raft crews needed a place to eat and sleep. Milford and neighboring Frenchtown became two of the main stops on the river for the raft crews. Local hotels such as the Gibson House, the Milford House, and the Frenchtown Inn, were among the most popular lodging facilities for the log crews. The Pumpkin Freshet of 1903 marked the end of the log rafting because the rafts destroyed several bridges including the Milford covered bridge.
