United States Army
World War II
Father: Douglas William S. Milburn
Mother: Ellen Elizabeth "Nellie" Fly
TELEGRAM TRIBUNE
RALPH MILBURN
POZO NATIVE
Ralph Douglas Milburn, 86, of Pozo died Sunday, June 19, 1994, at his residence.
A memorial service will be held at 10am Wednesday at the Rinconada Church outside Santa Margarita, followed by burial at the Milburn Family Cemetery on the Milburn Homestead. The Rev. Leonard Heil will officiate.
Mr. Milburn was born September 24, 1907, in Pozo. He spent his entire life on the family ranch, where his grandparents homesteaded in 1882. He was a veteran of World War II and belonged to the American Legion. He served 17 years as a community leader for the Pozo 4-H Club and belonged to the Pozo Farm Bureau for several years. In later years, he was interested in genealogy & was a member of the Ontario, Canada Genealogy Society and the Oakville, Canada Historical and Genealogy Societies. In addition to ranching and farming, he worked for many years as a school bus driver and custodian for both the Pozo and later the Atascadero Unified School Districts.
He is survived by his wife, Peggy Milburn; three sons, Douglas Milburn of Wrightwood, Dennis Milburn of Helena, Montana and Loren Milburn of Sacramento; a daughter, Lisa Cava of Templeton; two sisters, Iris Arebalo of Templeton and Lorna Buckley of Paso Robles; nine grandchildren; and numerous nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Douglas William Sutherland Milburn and Nellie Milburn Wilkinson; and two brothers, Hugh and Keith Milburn.
BIOGRAPHY: (family sources) Originally written by Dennis Milburn, edited and condensed by Lisa Milburn Cava.
Ralph Douglas Milburn was born at his grandparent’s home in Arroyo Grande, California on September 24, 1907 to Ellen (Nellie) Elizabeth and Douglas Milburn and resided on the family’s homestead in Pozo, Ca. At the age of 16 and after the death of his father, Ralph assumed the role of breadwinner for his family. He had attended El Dorado School in Pozo for 9 years but for the previous year or so, he had been working the ranch with his father. Even though Ralph never went beyond 9 years of formal schooling, he was a very well read person and the lack of a higher education was ever an impediment to him in his chosen lifestyle.
Ralph loved to roam the hills, especially if he was carrying his rifle and hunting deer. As a young man, he could take off walking from the old log house on the Milburn Homestead and go in any direction he chose. To the east lay the Los Padres National Forest (he always referred to it as the Forest Reserve, which pre-dated the national forest system), but all other directions were private land. It was lightly settled land and no one cared if he crossed or hunted on their land. Hunting Black Mountain, on the national forest, was his favorite place to go. He knew every likely spot to find an old buck, every feeding area and every spring where they could get water. He had names for every canyon and spring. The Forest Service used some of his place names when they built their maps, but many of his place identifications have been replaced on the maps but remain in our memories. When the Forest Service decided to improve and develop some springs to provide more consistent and usable water sources, they had Ralph show them the springs he knew so well. As part of this effort they developed and renamed the spring he called Third Canyon. It became Milburn Spring on their official maps.
It is a fair hike just to wander around hunting on Black Mountain from the Milburn ranch, much less retrieving a deer when a hunter is fortunate enough to shoot one. Ralph developed a unique method for packing a deer on his back and could then carry the deer like a backpack, the legs serving as shoulder straps. The head would have to be held in one hand to keep it from flopping around, his rifle in the other hand. Now, while this is easier than dragging, it is not without pain. On one occasion, Daddy had killed 2 deer on the back side of Black Mountain from the ranch. He would carry one deer till he got tired. Then, he would “rest” while walking back to where the other one lay. He would pick up the second deer and head for home, leap-frogging past the first one. When he got tired he would drop the second deer and go back for the first. He continued this process until he finally got home.
Ralph’s life-long deer rifle was the 30-30 that his father bought in 1919. Using a cold chisel, he did some engraving on the metal parts for decoration. He put his initials, a deer, moon and sun on the action, with a diamond design on the buttplate. He also thought it would be a good idea to put a notch on the forestock for each deer he killed. All of that customizing work would be a real negative for a collector of old firearms, but they make it priceless as a family heirloom. His hunting rifle was very important to him and in fact, he felt there were two things a man should never loan out - one his rifle, the other his wife. Seems like a sound policy.
World War II had a profound effect on most families in the country. Ralph was older then than what the military liked for recruits, but by 1944 it became necessary to accept men that were bypassed earlier in the war effort, due to the length of the war and number of casualties. Ralph’s enlistment efforts were finally successful and he was trained and readied to head to Europe with his company. He was qualified as a good marksman, but his assigned specialty was as a corpsman (field medic). However, at the last minute he was held stateside due to an old injury and scar on his leg and a necessary hernia repair surgery. After basic training, he spent most of his enlistment in Louisiana.
Ralph came back to California on leave in August of 1944 and made a trip to Santa Barbara to see a young Peggy Powers, with whom he had an “understanding”. While walking along the streets of Santa Barbara, they decided to get married. On August 28, 1945, Peggy Powers and Ralph Milburn were married in Santa Barbara. They traveled back to Alexandria, Louisiana to finish out Ralph’s enlistment. After about a month, that was accomplished and they journeyed to the Milburn Ranch to set up housekeeping. They decided that they could fix up a little work shed and make a home out of it. It was late in 1945 when Ralph was discharged from the army and the newlyweds returned to California. It took him about two months to get the work shed livable with a couple of rooms. One room was for sleeping the other to serve as kitchen, dining and everything-else room. These two rooms were the beginning of their home together until Ralph died there 48 years later.
Not many years later, it became obvious the house needed a rather extensive enlargement to accommodate his growing family. It took several years to get these additions and improvements in place. The kitchen and bathroom, of course, meant there was now indoor plumbing and a gas heater was added to the living room. That doesn’t mean that Ralph was done adding onto and modifying the house, almost literally, until the day he died. The resulting Milburn family home is an eclectic collection of rooms patched together with mismatched floor levels, poor lighting and is quite hard to heat. Its electrical wiring would cause an electrician to have a fit. However, without any formal carpentry, masonry, or electrical training, it was built as a labor of love to house a family.
In 1950, Ralph was working for a neighbor, John Blake, driving a wheeled tractor, pulling some sort of farming implement. I don’t know for sure exactly what happened other than he was operating the tractor on a side hill that proved too be too steep. The tractor rolled sidewise, over the top of him. He suffered from broken ribs as his chest was pretty well crushed and there was some extensive damage to his right shoulder. He couldn’t move on his own and lay in the field for some time. Finally, as evening was coming on, Carrie Blake, John’s mother, realized that he hadn’t returned from the field and went looking for him. She found Ralph lying in the field and summoned help. They soon had him headed to the French Hospital in San Luis Obispo. There were still no phones in the community at that time so the first Peggy learned of the accident was when John came to get her and take her to hospital. Ralph spent about a month in the hospital recovering from his injuries. His right shoulder never was quite the same, the joint mobility was somewhat limited so, for the rest of his life, he couldn’t raise his hand much above his head. Otherwise, he seemed to be able to do whatever he wanted and certainly worked as hard as ever.
In 1952, Ralph started driving the bus for the Pozo School District. The position included maintenance of the grounds and school building during the day. The bus was what was called a “carryall”, much like an old style suburban. It had a couple of seats behind the front seat so could handle 6 or 8 students at a time. After a few years, the district bought a real school bus that could accommodate more passengers at a time. Eventually, the area school districts consolidated and smaller schools like Pozo were eliminated. After about twenty years of having the school bus parked in our yard every night, Ralph spent the remaining years of his school employment working as a custodian for the Atascadero Unified School District, working at Santa Margarita, Carissa Plains and Creston Elementary Schools as well as at Atascadero High School.
At about the same time as when Ralph first started driving the Pozo School bus, he also decided it would be a good idea to go into the turkey business. “Turkey Fever” was sweeping California as it seemed to be the wave of the future for landowners to make a living on relatively small acreages. Within a year or so, he ramped up to 4,000 chicks. Then, he started adding a second batch of chicks when the first batch was turned out in the open fields. This meant he had 8,000 turkeys on the place to care for each year, at the height of the turkey operation. The first batch would be ready for slaughter for the Thanksgiving market, with the second batch ready for Christmas. Turkey raising was a way of life at the Milburn ranch from the early1950’s through the 1960’s.
In 1974, at the age of sixty-seven, Ralph retired from the school district. He had accumulated twenty-two years of service and decided that was enough. He was now free to work around the ranch more, primarily, on fixing up, and adding onto, the house. Peggy retired in 1988, so joined him for some well-earned leisure years. Together, they kept thinking up new ways to add on to the house, which kept Ralph pretty well occupied. Together, Ralph and Peggy managed to accomplish some long-anticipated travels. They made a couple of trips to Great Britain to visit places where the Milburn Family had ties, including visits to the Sutherland Clan Castle, Dunrobin, in Scotland; the church in Linkinhorne where Ralph’s great-great grandfather Reverend James Coffin was pastor for many years, and a small hamlet near the England/Scotland border that goes by the name of “Milburn”. They also made a trip to Canada to visit the place where the Joseph Milburn Family settled after arriving from England. They, of course, made trips to visit their kids and families in various places around California, Idaho and Montana.
In the 1980s, Ralph developed prostate cancer. Following a rather unpleasant series of treatments, his cancer seemed to be gone, or, at least, in remission and the prognosis was good. Some years later, he had been working outside the house earlier in the morning and had come in to take a rest. It was while sitting in his chair in that his heart attack occurred. He was taken to the hospital where the doctors cracked his chest open and performed a triple bypass surgery. The surgery was successful and he seemed to recover quickly for a man of his age, early 80s at this time. Unfortunately, the cancer later returned, in a more dangerous form and soon spread into his bones. The prognosis this time was not good and it became apparent that all the doctors could hope to accomplish was a delaying of the inevitable.
Ralph had mentioned to his family that he really would like to be buried on the knoll across the road, where his grandparents were buried. Through his son Dennis’ efforts with the County, that wish could be accomplished. Ralph was very pleased to know that he would be laid to rest on the ranch, with a good view of his beloved Black Mountain.
In the early morning hours of June 19, 1994, Ralph took in one last breath and was released from his pain and suffering. After a lifetime of toil, he was gone. Ralph’s services were an old-style affair, held at the Rinconada Church and attended by many from the communities of Pozo, Parkhill and Santa Margarita. Following the church service, a procession was made to the Milburn Ranch for the graveside service and internment in the family cemetery. Pallbearers included grandchildren. After the short graveside service, ropes were used to lower the casket into the grave, in the old manner. As the gathering made their way up to the old house to reminisce, Ralph’s kids and grandkids stayed behind to fill in the grave. That is the way it was done when the old Milburn homestead was established, and his was very family proud to be able to do that for him.
World War II
Father: Douglas William S. Milburn
Mother: Ellen Elizabeth "Nellie" Fly
TELEGRAM TRIBUNE
RALPH MILBURN
POZO NATIVE
Ralph Douglas Milburn, 86, of Pozo died Sunday, June 19, 1994, at his residence.
A memorial service will be held at 10am Wednesday at the Rinconada Church outside Santa Margarita, followed by burial at the Milburn Family Cemetery on the Milburn Homestead. The Rev. Leonard Heil will officiate.
Mr. Milburn was born September 24, 1907, in Pozo. He spent his entire life on the family ranch, where his grandparents homesteaded in 1882. He was a veteran of World War II and belonged to the American Legion. He served 17 years as a community leader for the Pozo 4-H Club and belonged to the Pozo Farm Bureau for several years. In later years, he was interested in genealogy & was a member of the Ontario, Canada Genealogy Society and the Oakville, Canada Historical and Genealogy Societies. In addition to ranching and farming, he worked for many years as a school bus driver and custodian for both the Pozo and later the Atascadero Unified School Districts.
He is survived by his wife, Peggy Milburn; three sons, Douglas Milburn of Wrightwood, Dennis Milburn of Helena, Montana and Loren Milburn of Sacramento; a daughter, Lisa Cava of Templeton; two sisters, Iris Arebalo of Templeton and Lorna Buckley of Paso Robles; nine grandchildren; and numerous nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Douglas William Sutherland Milburn and Nellie Milburn Wilkinson; and two brothers, Hugh and Keith Milburn.
BIOGRAPHY: (family sources) Originally written by Dennis Milburn, edited and condensed by Lisa Milburn Cava.
Ralph Douglas Milburn was born at his grandparent’s home in Arroyo Grande, California on September 24, 1907 to Ellen (Nellie) Elizabeth and Douglas Milburn and resided on the family’s homestead in Pozo, Ca. At the age of 16 and after the death of his father, Ralph assumed the role of breadwinner for his family. He had attended El Dorado School in Pozo for 9 years but for the previous year or so, he had been working the ranch with his father. Even though Ralph never went beyond 9 years of formal schooling, he was a very well read person and the lack of a higher education was ever an impediment to him in his chosen lifestyle.
Ralph loved to roam the hills, especially if he was carrying his rifle and hunting deer. As a young man, he could take off walking from the old log house on the Milburn Homestead and go in any direction he chose. To the east lay the Los Padres National Forest (he always referred to it as the Forest Reserve, which pre-dated the national forest system), but all other directions were private land. It was lightly settled land and no one cared if he crossed or hunted on their land. Hunting Black Mountain, on the national forest, was his favorite place to go. He knew every likely spot to find an old buck, every feeding area and every spring where they could get water. He had names for every canyon and spring. The Forest Service used some of his place names when they built their maps, but many of his place identifications have been replaced on the maps but remain in our memories. When the Forest Service decided to improve and develop some springs to provide more consistent and usable water sources, they had Ralph show them the springs he knew so well. As part of this effort they developed and renamed the spring he called Third Canyon. It became Milburn Spring on their official maps.
It is a fair hike just to wander around hunting on Black Mountain from the Milburn ranch, much less retrieving a deer when a hunter is fortunate enough to shoot one. Ralph developed a unique method for packing a deer on his back and could then carry the deer like a backpack, the legs serving as shoulder straps. The head would have to be held in one hand to keep it from flopping around, his rifle in the other hand. Now, while this is easier than dragging, it is not without pain. On one occasion, Daddy had killed 2 deer on the back side of Black Mountain from the ranch. He would carry one deer till he got tired. Then, he would “rest” while walking back to where the other one lay. He would pick up the second deer and head for home, leap-frogging past the first one. When he got tired he would drop the second deer and go back for the first. He continued this process until he finally got home.
Ralph’s life-long deer rifle was the 30-30 that his father bought in 1919. Using a cold chisel, he did some engraving on the metal parts for decoration. He put his initials, a deer, moon and sun on the action, with a diamond design on the buttplate. He also thought it would be a good idea to put a notch on the forestock for each deer he killed. All of that customizing work would be a real negative for a collector of old firearms, but they make it priceless as a family heirloom. His hunting rifle was very important to him and in fact, he felt there were two things a man should never loan out - one his rifle, the other his wife. Seems like a sound policy.
World War II had a profound effect on most families in the country. Ralph was older then than what the military liked for recruits, but by 1944 it became necessary to accept men that were bypassed earlier in the war effort, due to the length of the war and number of casualties. Ralph’s enlistment efforts were finally successful and he was trained and readied to head to Europe with his company. He was qualified as a good marksman, but his assigned specialty was as a corpsman (field medic). However, at the last minute he was held stateside due to an old injury and scar on his leg and a necessary hernia repair surgery. After basic training, he spent most of his enlistment in Louisiana.
Ralph came back to California on leave in August of 1944 and made a trip to Santa Barbara to see a young Peggy Powers, with whom he had an “understanding”. While walking along the streets of Santa Barbara, they decided to get married. On August 28, 1945, Peggy Powers and Ralph Milburn were married in Santa Barbara. They traveled back to Alexandria, Louisiana to finish out Ralph’s enlistment. After about a month, that was accomplished and they journeyed to the Milburn Ranch to set up housekeeping. They decided that they could fix up a little work shed and make a home out of it. It was late in 1945 when Ralph was discharged from the army and the newlyweds returned to California. It took him about two months to get the work shed livable with a couple of rooms. One room was for sleeping the other to serve as kitchen, dining and everything-else room. These two rooms were the beginning of their home together until Ralph died there 48 years later.
Not many years later, it became obvious the house needed a rather extensive enlargement to accommodate his growing family. It took several years to get these additions and improvements in place. The kitchen and bathroom, of course, meant there was now indoor plumbing and a gas heater was added to the living room. That doesn’t mean that Ralph was done adding onto and modifying the house, almost literally, until the day he died. The resulting Milburn family home is an eclectic collection of rooms patched together with mismatched floor levels, poor lighting and is quite hard to heat. Its electrical wiring would cause an electrician to have a fit. However, without any formal carpentry, masonry, or electrical training, it was built as a labor of love to house a family.
In 1950, Ralph was working for a neighbor, John Blake, driving a wheeled tractor, pulling some sort of farming implement. I don’t know for sure exactly what happened other than he was operating the tractor on a side hill that proved too be too steep. The tractor rolled sidewise, over the top of him. He suffered from broken ribs as his chest was pretty well crushed and there was some extensive damage to his right shoulder. He couldn’t move on his own and lay in the field for some time. Finally, as evening was coming on, Carrie Blake, John’s mother, realized that he hadn’t returned from the field and went looking for him. She found Ralph lying in the field and summoned help. They soon had him headed to the French Hospital in San Luis Obispo. There were still no phones in the community at that time so the first Peggy learned of the accident was when John came to get her and take her to hospital. Ralph spent about a month in the hospital recovering from his injuries. His right shoulder never was quite the same, the joint mobility was somewhat limited so, for the rest of his life, he couldn’t raise his hand much above his head. Otherwise, he seemed to be able to do whatever he wanted and certainly worked as hard as ever.
In 1952, Ralph started driving the bus for the Pozo School District. The position included maintenance of the grounds and school building during the day. The bus was what was called a “carryall”, much like an old style suburban. It had a couple of seats behind the front seat so could handle 6 or 8 students at a time. After a few years, the district bought a real school bus that could accommodate more passengers at a time. Eventually, the area school districts consolidated and smaller schools like Pozo were eliminated. After about twenty years of having the school bus parked in our yard every night, Ralph spent the remaining years of his school employment working as a custodian for the Atascadero Unified School District, working at Santa Margarita, Carissa Plains and Creston Elementary Schools as well as at Atascadero High School.
At about the same time as when Ralph first started driving the Pozo School bus, he also decided it would be a good idea to go into the turkey business. “Turkey Fever” was sweeping California as it seemed to be the wave of the future for landowners to make a living on relatively small acreages. Within a year or so, he ramped up to 4,000 chicks. Then, he started adding a second batch of chicks when the first batch was turned out in the open fields. This meant he had 8,000 turkeys on the place to care for each year, at the height of the turkey operation. The first batch would be ready for slaughter for the Thanksgiving market, with the second batch ready for Christmas. Turkey raising was a way of life at the Milburn ranch from the early1950’s through the 1960’s.
In 1974, at the age of sixty-seven, Ralph retired from the school district. He had accumulated twenty-two years of service and decided that was enough. He was now free to work around the ranch more, primarily, on fixing up, and adding onto, the house. Peggy retired in 1988, so joined him for some well-earned leisure years. Together, they kept thinking up new ways to add on to the house, which kept Ralph pretty well occupied. Together, Ralph and Peggy managed to accomplish some long-anticipated travels. They made a couple of trips to Great Britain to visit places where the Milburn Family had ties, including visits to the Sutherland Clan Castle, Dunrobin, in Scotland; the church in Linkinhorne where Ralph’s great-great grandfather Reverend James Coffin was pastor for many years, and a small hamlet near the England/Scotland border that goes by the name of “Milburn”. They also made a trip to Canada to visit the place where the Joseph Milburn Family settled after arriving from England. They, of course, made trips to visit their kids and families in various places around California, Idaho and Montana.
In the 1980s, Ralph developed prostate cancer. Following a rather unpleasant series of treatments, his cancer seemed to be gone, or, at least, in remission and the prognosis was good. Some years later, he had been working outside the house earlier in the morning and had come in to take a rest. It was while sitting in his chair in that his heart attack occurred. He was taken to the hospital where the doctors cracked his chest open and performed a triple bypass surgery. The surgery was successful and he seemed to recover quickly for a man of his age, early 80s at this time. Unfortunately, the cancer later returned, in a more dangerous form and soon spread into his bones. The prognosis this time was not good and it became apparent that all the doctors could hope to accomplish was a delaying of the inevitable.
Ralph had mentioned to his family that he really would like to be buried on the knoll across the road, where his grandparents were buried. Through his son Dennis’ efforts with the County, that wish could be accomplished. Ralph was very pleased to know that he would be laid to rest on the ranch, with a good view of his beloved Black Mountain.
In the early morning hours of June 19, 1994, Ralph took in one last breath and was released from his pain and suffering. After a lifetime of toil, he was gone. Ralph’s services were an old-style affair, held at the Rinconada Church and attended by many from the communities of Pozo, Parkhill and Santa Margarita. Following the church service, a procession was made to the Milburn Ranch for the graveside service and internment in the family cemetery. Pallbearers included grandchildren. After the short graveside service, ropes were used to lower the casket into the grave, in the old manner. As the gathering made their way up to the old house to reminisce, Ralph’s kids and grandkids stayed behind to fill in the grave. That is the way it was done when the old Milburn homestead was established, and his was very family proud to be able to do that for him.
United States Army
World War II
Father: Douglas William S. Milburn
Mother: Ellen Elizabeth "Nellie" Fly
TELEGRAM TRIBUNE
RALPH MILBURN
POZO NATIVE
Ralph Douglas Milburn, 86, of Pozo died Sunday, June 19, 1994, at his residence.
A memorial service will be held at 10am Wednesday at the Rinconada Church outside Santa Margarita, followed by burial at the Milburn Family Cemetery on the Milburn Homestead. The Rev. Leonard Heil will officiate.
Mr. Milburn was born September 24, 1907, in Pozo. He spent his entire life on the family ranch, where his grandparents homesteaded in 1882. He was a veteran of World War II and belonged to the American Legion. He served 17 years as a community leader for the Pozo 4-H Club and belonged to the Pozo Farm Bureau for several years. In later years, he was interested in genealogy & was a member of the Ontario, Canada Genealogy Society and the Oakville, Canada Historical and Genealogy Societies. In addition to ranching and farming, he worked for many years as a school bus driver and custodian for both the Pozo and later the Atascadero Unified School Districts.
He is survived by his wife, Peggy Milburn; three sons, Douglas Milburn of Wrightwood, Dennis Milburn of Helena, Montana and Loren Milburn of Sacramento; a daughter, Lisa Cava of Templeton; two sisters, Iris Arebalo of Templeton and Lorna Buckley of Paso Robles; nine grandchildren; and numerous nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Douglas William Sutherland Milburn and Nellie Milburn Wilkinson; and two brothers, Hugh and Keith Milburn.
BIOGRAPHY: (family sources) Originally written by Dennis Milburn, edited and condensed by Lisa Milburn Cava.
Ralph Douglas Milburn was born at his grandparent’s home in Arroyo Grande, California on September 24, 1907 to Ellen (Nellie) Elizabeth and Douglas Milburn and resided on the family’s homestead in Pozo, Ca. At the age of 16 and after the death of his father, Ralph assumed the role of breadwinner for his family. He had attended El Dorado School in Pozo for 9 years but for the previous year or so, he had been working the ranch with his father. Even though Ralph never went beyond 9 years of formal schooling, he was a very well read person and the lack of a higher education was ever an impediment to him in his chosen lifestyle.
Ralph loved to roam the hills, especially if he was carrying his rifle and hunting deer. As a young man, he could take off walking from the old log house on the Milburn Homestead and go in any direction he chose. To the east lay the Los Padres National Forest (he always referred to it as the Forest Reserve, which pre-dated the national forest system), but all other directions were private land. It was lightly settled land and no one cared if he crossed or hunted on their land. Hunting Black Mountain, on the national forest, was his favorite place to go. He knew every likely spot to find an old buck, every feeding area and every spring where they could get water. He had names for every canyon and spring. The Forest Service used some of his place names when they built their maps, but many of his place identifications have been replaced on the maps but remain in our memories. When the Forest Service decided to improve and develop some springs to provide more consistent and usable water sources, they had Ralph show them the springs he knew so well. As part of this effort they developed and renamed the spring he called Third Canyon. It became Milburn Spring on their official maps.
It is a fair hike just to wander around hunting on Black Mountain from the Milburn ranch, much less retrieving a deer when a hunter is fortunate enough to shoot one. Ralph developed a unique method for packing a deer on his back and could then carry the deer like a backpack, the legs serving as shoulder straps. The head would have to be held in one hand to keep it from flopping around, his rifle in the other hand. Now, while this is easier than dragging, it is not without pain. On one occasion, Daddy had killed 2 deer on the back side of Black Mountain from the ranch. He would carry one deer till he got tired. Then, he would “rest” while walking back to where the other one lay. He would pick up the second deer and head for home, leap-frogging past the first one. When he got tired he would drop the second deer and go back for the first. He continued this process until he finally got home.
Ralph’s life-long deer rifle was the 30-30 that his father bought in 1919. Using a cold chisel, he did some engraving on the metal parts for decoration. He put his initials, a deer, moon and sun on the action, with a diamond design on the buttplate. He also thought it would be a good idea to put a notch on the forestock for each deer he killed. All of that customizing work would be a real negative for a collector of old firearms, but they make it priceless as a family heirloom. His hunting rifle was very important to him and in fact, he felt there were two things a man should never loan out - one his rifle, the other his wife. Seems like a sound policy.
World War II had a profound effect on most families in the country. Ralph was older then than what the military liked for recruits, but by 1944 it became necessary to accept men that were bypassed earlier in the war effort, due to the length of the war and number of casualties. Ralph’s enlistment efforts were finally successful and he was trained and readied to head to Europe with his company. He was qualified as a good marksman, but his assigned specialty was as a corpsman (field medic). However, at the last minute he was held stateside due to an old injury and scar on his leg and a necessary hernia repair surgery. After basic training, he spent most of his enlistment in Louisiana.
Ralph came back to California on leave in August of 1944 and made a trip to Santa Barbara to see a young Peggy Powers, with whom he had an “understanding”. While walking along the streets of Santa Barbara, they decided to get married. On August 28, 1945, Peggy Powers and Ralph Milburn were married in Santa Barbara. They traveled back to Alexandria, Louisiana to finish out Ralph’s enlistment. After about a month, that was accomplished and they journeyed to the Milburn Ranch to set up housekeeping. They decided that they could fix up a little work shed and make a home out of it. It was late in 1945 when Ralph was discharged from the army and the newlyweds returned to California. It took him about two months to get the work shed livable with a couple of rooms. One room was for sleeping the other to serve as kitchen, dining and everything-else room. These two rooms were the beginning of their home together until Ralph died there 48 years later.
Not many years later, it became obvious the house needed a rather extensive enlargement to accommodate his growing family. It took several years to get these additions and improvements in place. The kitchen and bathroom, of course, meant there was now indoor plumbing and a gas heater was added to the living room. That doesn’t mean that Ralph was done adding onto and modifying the house, almost literally, until the day he died. The resulting Milburn family home is an eclectic collection of rooms patched together with mismatched floor levels, poor lighting and is quite hard to heat. Its electrical wiring would cause an electrician to have a fit. However, without any formal carpentry, masonry, or electrical training, it was built as a labor of love to house a family.
In 1950, Ralph was working for a neighbor, John Blake, driving a wheeled tractor, pulling some sort of farming implement. I don’t know for sure exactly what happened other than he was operating the tractor on a side hill that proved too be too steep. The tractor rolled sidewise, over the top of him. He suffered from broken ribs as his chest was pretty well crushed and there was some extensive damage to his right shoulder. He couldn’t move on his own and lay in the field for some time. Finally, as evening was coming on, Carrie Blake, John’s mother, realized that he hadn’t returned from the field and went looking for him. She found Ralph lying in the field and summoned help. They soon had him headed to the French Hospital in San Luis Obispo. There were still no phones in the community at that time so the first Peggy learned of the accident was when John came to get her and take her to hospital. Ralph spent about a month in the hospital recovering from his injuries. His right shoulder never was quite the same, the joint mobility was somewhat limited so, for the rest of his life, he couldn’t raise his hand much above his head. Otherwise, he seemed to be able to do whatever he wanted and certainly worked as hard as ever.
In 1952, Ralph started driving the bus for the Pozo School District. The position included maintenance of the grounds and school building during the day. The bus was what was called a “carryall”, much like an old style suburban. It had a couple of seats behind the front seat so could handle 6 or 8 students at a time. After a few years, the district bought a real school bus that could accommodate more passengers at a time. Eventually, the area school districts consolidated and smaller schools like Pozo were eliminated. After about twenty years of having the school bus parked in our yard every night, Ralph spent the remaining years of his school employment working as a custodian for the Atascadero Unified School District, working at Santa Margarita, Carissa Plains and Creston Elementary Schools as well as at Atascadero High School.
At about the same time as when Ralph first started driving the Pozo School bus, he also decided it would be a good idea to go into the turkey business. “Turkey Fever” was sweeping California as it seemed to be the wave of the future for landowners to make a living on relatively small acreages. Within a year or so, he ramped up to 4,000 chicks. Then, he started adding a second batch of chicks when the first batch was turned out in the open fields. This meant he had 8,000 turkeys on the place to care for each year, at the height of the turkey operation. The first batch would be ready for slaughter for the Thanksgiving market, with the second batch ready for Christmas. Turkey raising was a way of life at the Milburn ranch from the early1950’s through the 1960’s.
In 1974, at the age of sixty-seven, Ralph retired from the school district. He had accumulated twenty-two years of service and decided that was enough. He was now free to work around the ranch more, primarily, on fixing up, and adding onto, the house. Peggy retired in 1988, so joined him for some well-earned leisure years. Together, they kept thinking up new ways to add on to the house, which kept Ralph pretty well occupied. Together, Ralph and Peggy managed to accomplish some long-anticipated travels. They made a couple of trips to Great Britain to visit places where the Milburn Family had ties, including visits to the Sutherland Clan Castle, Dunrobin, in Scotland; the church in Linkinhorne where Ralph’s great-great grandfather Reverend James Coffin was pastor for many years, and a small hamlet near the England/Scotland border that goes by the name of “Milburn”. They also made a trip to Canada to visit the place where the Joseph Milburn Family settled after arriving from England. They, of course, made trips to visit their kids and families in various places around California, Idaho and Montana.
In the 1980s, Ralph developed prostate cancer. Following a rather unpleasant series of treatments, his cancer seemed to be gone, or, at least, in remission and the prognosis was good. Some years later, he had been working outside the house earlier in the morning and had come in to take a rest. It was while sitting in his chair in that his heart attack occurred. He was taken to the hospital where the doctors cracked his chest open and performed a triple bypass surgery. The surgery was successful and he seemed to recover quickly for a man of his age, early 80s at this time. Unfortunately, the cancer later returned, in a more dangerous form and soon spread into his bones. The prognosis this time was not good and it became apparent that all the doctors could hope to accomplish was a delaying of the inevitable.
Ralph had mentioned to his family that he really would like to be buried on the knoll across the road, where his grandparents were buried. Through his son Dennis’ efforts with the County, that wish could be accomplished. Ralph was very pleased to know that he would be laid to rest on the ranch, with a good view of his beloved Black Mountain.
In the early morning hours of June 19, 1994, Ralph took in one last breath and was released from his pain and suffering. After a lifetime of toil, he was gone. Ralph’s services were an old-style affair, held at the Rinconada Church and attended by many from the communities of Pozo, Parkhill and Santa Margarita. Following the church service, a procession was made to the Milburn Ranch for the graveside service and internment in the family cemetery. Pallbearers included grandchildren. After the short graveside service, ropes were used to lower the casket into the grave, in the old manner. As the gathering made their way up to the old house to reminisce, Ralph’s kids and grandkids stayed behind to fill in the grave. That is the way it was done when the old Milburn homestead was established, and his was very family proud to be able to do that for him.
World War II
Father: Douglas William S. Milburn
Mother: Ellen Elizabeth "Nellie" Fly
TELEGRAM TRIBUNE
RALPH MILBURN
POZO NATIVE
Ralph Douglas Milburn, 86, of Pozo died Sunday, June 19, 1994, at his residence.
A memorial service will be held at 10am Wednesday at the Rinconada Church outside Santa Margarita, followed by burial at the Milburn Family Cemetery on the Milburn Homestead. The Rev. Leonard Heil will officiate.
Mr. Milburn was born September 24, 1907, in Pozo. He spent his entire life on the family ranch, where his grandparents homesteaded in 1882. He was a veteran of World War II and belonged to the American Legion. He served 17 years as a community leader for the Pozo 4-H Club and belonged to the Pozo Farm Bureau for several years. In later years, he was interested in genealogy & was a member of the Ontario, Canada Genealogy Society and the Oakville, Canada Historical and Genealogy Societies. In addition to ranching and farming, he worked for many years as a school bus driver and custodian for both the Pozo and later the Atascadero Unified School Districts.
He is survived by his wife, Peggy Milburn; three sons, Douglas Milburn of Wrightwood, Dennis Milburn of Helena, Montana and Loren Milburn of Sacramento; a daughter, Lisa Cava of Templeton; two sisters, Iris Arebalo of Templeton and Lorna Buckley of Paso Robles; nine grandchildren; and numerous nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Douglas William Sutherland Milburn and Nellie Milburn Wilkinson; and two brothers, Hugh and Keith Milburn.
BIOGRAPHY: (family sources) Originally written by Dennis Milburn, edited and condensed by Lisa Milburn Cava.
Ralph Douglas Milburn was born at his grandparent’s home in Arroyo Grande, California on September 24, 1907 to Ellen (Nellie) Elizabeth and Douglas Milburn and resided on the family’s homestead in Pozo, Ca. At the age of 16 and after the death of his father, Ralph assumed the role of breadwinner for his family. He had attended El Dorado School in Pozo for 9 years but for the previous year or so, he had been working the ranch with his father. Even though Ralph never went beyond 9 years of formal schooling, he was a very well read person and the lack of a higher education was ever an impediment to him in his chosen lifestyle.
Ralph loved to roam the hills, especially if he was carrying his rifle and hunting deer. As a young man, he could take off walking from the old log house on the Milburn Homestead and go in any direction he chose. To the east lay the Los Padres National Forest (he always referred to it as the Forest Reserve, which pre-dated the national forest system), but all other directions were private land. It was lightly settled land and no one cared if he crossed or hunted on their land. Hunting Black Mountain, on the national forest, was his favorite place to go. He knew every likely spot to find an old buck, every feeding area and every spring where they could get water. He had names for every canyon and spring. The Forest Service used some of his place names when they built their maps, but many of his place identifications have been replaced on the maps but remain in our memories. When the Forest Service decided to improve and develop some springs to provide more consistent and usable water sources, they had Ralph show them the springs he knew so well. As part of this effort they developed and renamed the spring he called Third Canyon. It became Milburn Spring on their official maps.
It is a fair hike just to wander around hunting on Black Mountain from the Milburn ranch, much less retrieving a deer when a hunter is fortunate enough to shoot one. Ralph developed a unique method for packing a deer on his back and could then carry the deer like a backpack, the legs serving as shoulder straps. The head would have to be held in one hand to keep it from flopping around, his rifle in the other hand. Now, while this is easier than dragging, it is not without pain. On one occasion, Daddy had killed 2 deer on the back side of Black Mountain from the ranch. He would carry one deer till he got tired. Then, he would “rest” while walking back to where the other one lay. He would pick up the second deer and head for home, leap-frogging past the first one. When he got tired he would drop the second deer and go back for the first. He continued this process until he finally got home.
Ralph’s life-long deer rifle was the 30-30 that his father bought in 1919. Using a cold chisel, he did some engraving on the metal parts for decoration. He put his initials, a deer, moon and sun on the action, with a diamond design on the buttplate. He also thought it would be a good idea to put a notch on the forestock for each deer he killed. All of that customizing work would be a real negative for a collector of old firearms, but they make it priceless as a family heirloom. His hunting rifle was very important to him and in fact, he felt there were two things a man should never loan out - one his rifle, the other his wife. Seems like a sound policy.
World War II had a profound effect on most families in the country. Ralph was older then than what the military liked for recruits, but by 1944 it became necessary to accept men that were bypassed earlier in the war effort, due to the length of the war and number of casualties. Ralph’s enlistment efforts were finally successful and he was trained and readied to head to Europe with his company. He was qualified as a good marksman, but his assigned specialty was as a corpsman (field medic). However, at the last minute he was held stateside due to an old injury and scar on his leg and a necessary hernia repair surgery. After basic training, he spent most of his enlistment in Louisiana.
Ralph came back to California on leave in August of 1944 and made a trip to Santa Barbara to see a young Peggy Powers, with whom he had an “understanding”. While walking along the streets of Santa Barbara, they decided to get married. On August 28, 1945, Peggy Powers and Ralph Milburn were married in Santa Barbara. They traveled back to Alexandria, Louisiana to finish out Ralph’s enlistment. After about a month, that was accomplished and they journeyed to the Milburn Ranch to set up housekeeping. They decided that they could fix up a little work shed and make a home out of it. It was late in 1945 when Ralph was discharged from the army and the newlyweds returned to California. It took him about two months to get the work shed livable with a couple of rooms. One room was for sleeping the other to serve as kitchen, dining and everything-else room. These two rooms were the beginning of their home together until Ralph died there 48 years later.
Not many years later, it became obvious the house needed a rather extensive enlargement to accommodate his growing family. It took several years to get these additions and improvements in place. The kitchen and bathroom, of course, meant there was now indoor plumbing and a gas heater was added to the living room. That doesn’t mean that Ralph was done adding onto and modifying the house, almost literally, until the day he died. The resulting Milburn family home is an eclectic collection of rooms patched together with mismatched floor levels, poor lighting and is quite hard to heat. Its electrical wiring would cause an electrician to have a fit. However, without any formal carpentry, masonry, or electrical training, it was built as a labor of love to house a family.
In 1950, Ralph was working for a neighbor, John Blake, driving a wheeled tractor, pulling some sort of farming implement. I don’t know for sure exactly what happened other than he was operating the tractor on a side hill that proved too be too steep. The tractor rolled sidewise, over the top of him. He suffered from broken ribs as his chest was pretty well crushed and there was some extensive damage to his right shoulder. He couldn’t move on his own and lay in the field for some time. Finally, as evening was coming on, Carrie Blake, John’s mother, realized that he hadn’t returned from the field and went looking for him. She found Ralph lying in the field and summoned help. They soon had him headed to the French Hospital in San Luis Obispo. There were still no phones in the community at that time so the first Peggy learned of the accident was when John came to get her and take her to hospital. Ralph spent about a month in the hospital recovering from his injuries. His right shoulder never was quite the same, the joint mobility was somewhat limited so, for the rest of his life, he couldn’t raise his hand much above his head. Otherwise, he seemed to be able to do whatever he wanted and certainly worked as hard as ever.
In 1952, Ralph started driving the bus for the Pozo School District. The position included maintenance of the grounds and school building during the day. The bus was what was called a “carryall”, much like an old style suburban. It had a couple of seats behind the front seat so could handle 6 or 8 students at a time. After a few years, the district bought a real school bus that could accommodate more passengers at a time. Eventually, the area school districts consolidated and smaller schools like Pozo were eliminated. After about twenty years of having the school bus parked in our yard every night, Ralph spent the remaining years of his school employment working as a custodian for the Atascadero Unified School District, working at Santa Margarita, Carissa Plains and Creston Elementary Schools as well as at Atascadero High School.
At about the same time as when Ralph first started driving the Pozo School bus, he also decided it would be a good idea to go into the turkey business. “Turkey Fever” was sweeping California as it seemed to be the wave of the future for landowners to make a living on relatively small acreages. Within a year or so, he ramped up to 4,000 chicks. Then, he started adding a second batch of chicks when the first batch was turned out in the open fields. This meant he had 8,000 turkeys on the place to care for each year, at the height of the turkey operation. The first batch would be ready for slaughter for the Thanksgiving market, with the second batch ready for Christmas. Turkey raising was a way of life at the Milburn ranch from the early1950’s through the 1960’s.
In 1974, at the age of sixty-seven, Ralph retired from the school district. He had accumulated twenty-two years of service and decided that was enough. He was now free to work around the ranch more, primarily, on fixing up, and adding onto, the house. Peggy retired in 1988, so joined him for some well-earned leisure years. Together, they kept thinking up new ways to add on to the house, which kept Ralph pretty well occupied. Together, Ralph and Peggy managed to accomplish some long-anticipated travels. They made a couple of trips to Great Britain to visit places where the Milburn Family had ties, including visits to the Sutherland Clan Castle, Dunrobin, in Scotland; the church in Linkinhorne where Ralph’s great-great grandfather Reverend James Coffin was pastor for many years, and a small hamlet near the England/Scotland border that goes by the name of “Milburn”. They also made a trip to Canada to visit the place where the Joseph Milburn Family settled after arriving from England. They, of course, made trips to visit their kids and families in various places around California, Idaho and Montana.
In the 1980s, Ralph developed prostate cancer. Following a rather unpleasant series of treatments, his cancer seemed to be gone, or, at least, in remission and the prognosis was good. Some years later, he had been working outside the house earlier in the morning and had come in to take a rest. It was while sitting in his chair in that his heart attack occurred. He was taken to the hospital where the doctors cracked his chest open and performed a triple bypass surgery. The surgery was successful and he seemed to recover quickly for a man of his age, early 80s at this time. Unfortunately, the cancer later returned, in a more dangerous form and soon spread into his bones. The prognosis this time was not good and it became apparent that all the doctors could hope to accomplish was a delaying of the inevitable.
Ralph had mentioned to his family that he really would like to be buried on the knoll across the road, where his grandparents were buried. Through his son Dennis’ efforts with the County, that wish could be accomplished. Ralph was very pleased to know that he would be laid to rest on the ranch, with a good view of his beloved Black Mountain.
In the early morning hours of June 19, 1994, Ralph took in one last breath and was released from his pain and suffering. After a lifetime of toil, he was gone. Ralph’s services were an old-style affair, held at the Rinconada Church and attended by many from the communities of Pozo, Parkhill and Santa Margarita. Following the church service, a procession was made to the Milburn Ranch for the graveside service and internment in the family cemetery. Pallbearers included grandchildren. After the short graveside service, ropes were used to lower the casket into the grave, in the old manner. As the gathering made their way up to the old house to reminisce, Ralph’s kids and grandkids stayed behind to fill in the grave. That is the way it was done when the old Milburn homestead was established, and his was very family proud to be able to do that for him.
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