Milliken House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker on the Milliken House tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. William Dickerson Milliken came into this world on November 1st, 1848, in Paducah, Kentucky, and if you'd told him then that one day he'd be hauling lumber clear across Texas to build himself a home, well, he might not have believed you. But that's exactly what happened.

He married Margaret Crockett Young, and together they raised a family that could fill a room all by themselves: W. D. Junior, Samuel Ramsey who became a medical doctor, Thomas Gillespie, Martin Horace, Maggie Bell who married into the Edens family, Charles Young, Elizabeth Angelina, and John Barnes.

Eight children. Eight. The man was not doing things halfway.

Now, Milliken went into the mercantile business in Lewisville in 1877, and once he'd planted his roots in that town, he decided it was time to build something that would last. So in 1878, he built this house. And here's where the story gets interesting; because nothing about this house was done the easy way.

The framing is native oak, cut right from the land itself. But the siding? That came from Jefferson, the Port City way out in East Texas, freighted all the way across the state to Denton County.

Think about what that means. Every plank of that exterior wall made a journey before it ever became a wall. You're looking at a house that was assembled from two different corners of Texas, knit together by one man's determination to build something worthy of the family he was raisin'.

Eight kids, a mercantile business, and lumber hauled from a port city. William Dickerson Milliken, it seems, never once settled for less than the whole distance.

What the marker says

Built by William Dickerson Milliken, born in Paducah, Ky., Nov. 1, 1848; married Margaret Crockett Young. Children: W. D., Jr.; Samuel Ramsey, M.D.; Thomas Gillespie; Martin Horace; Maggie Bell (Mrs. Edens); Charles Young; Elizabeth Angelina; John Barnes. After going into mercantile business in Lewisville in 1877, Milliken built this house, 1878. Framing is native oak. Siding was freighted from Port City of Jefferson, in East Texas. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1969