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Centre Daily Times January 17 2005
Looking Back
Where the mill meets the brook
By Rich Kerstetter; rkerstet@centredaily.com
"Last week, Centre LifeLink EMS --known as Alpha Ambulance Service since its formation as part of the Alpha Fire Company in May 1941 -- dedicated its new headquarters off Puddintown Road near the East College Avenue intersection.
For generations, that region of College Township has been called Millbrook.
"Millbrook is a thriving little community of homes and small businesses bordering East College Avenue between State College and Lemont," noted "A History of College Township Before and After 1875" compiled by the College Township Bicentennial History Committee. "It extends from Puddintown Road to Elmwood Street."
Millbrook and much of the surrounding land, according to longtime Centre Daily Times regional editor Paul M. Dubbs, was originally part of the Dr. Theodore Christ farm, which was later sold to Penn State.
Dubbs, in "Where to Go and Place-Names of Centre County," identified Christ as "the first Burgess of State College."
Historian John Blair Linn recorded Christ's birth in Lewisburg on April 21, 1830, his study of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and his service as an assistant surgeon and, later, as a surgeon with the 4th and 45th regiments of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in the Union Army during the Civil War.
After his discharge in 1864, Christ practiced medicine in Chester until moving to Lemont, where, on Dec. 6, 1871, he married "Miss Sarah I., daughter of Moses Thompson Esq."
Thompson "built a flouring mill on Thompson Run, the beautiful stream running through his property," as described in "A History of College Township Before and After 1875." "He had six thousand acres of farm land all in one parcel to manage, along with his other interests."
Those "other interests" included the Milesburg Iron Works and, after September 1865, sole ownership of Centre Furnace.
Thompson "was a public-spirited man," the College Township history records, "contributing to and investing in the various enterprises of his time -- the stock of the Bald Eagle Valley Canal, the Bald Eagle Valley Railroad, the Boalsburg and Bellefonte turnpike, the Lewisburg, Centre and Spruce Creek Railroad and the Agricultural College and Junction turnpike."
He was also "one of the men supporting the establishment of the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania and was treasurer of that institution for many years." He died in 1891.
Seven decades later, Millbrook underwent "major changes," Dubbs wrote, "when expansion of the (Benner) Pike to a four-lane width necessitated relocation of a number of homes and other buildings."
At that time, according to Dubbs, Millbrook consisted of "about 30 homes, a garage and welding shop, large market, hardware store, a beer distributing center, several service stations, a soft ice cream business and a floor covering store."
In 1998, the Centre Region Parks and Recreation department helped ensure that traditional name of this section of the county would live on when it established the Millbrook Marsh Nature Center just off Puddintown Road."
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