Milton

Milton, on Farm Road 1501 sixteen miles southeast of Paris in southeastern Lamar County, was settled around the time of the Civil War and was originally known as Minton. A post office was established there under the name Milton in 1874; by 1890 the town had a Methodist church, a general store, two combination gristmills and gins, a saw mill, and a dry goods store. A Milton school was in operation by 1896; in 1906 it had an enrollment of sixty-five. The post office closed in 1907, but the town's population continued to grow during the second and third decade of the twentieth century; in the early 1930s 300 residents and four businesses were reported. Since that time Milton has steadily declined. The school and all of the businesses were closed after World War II, and by the early 1970s only a church, a cemetery, and a few scattered houses remained in the area. In 1990 Milton was a dispersed rural community with an estimated population of fifty. The population grew to 80 in 2000.