The George Chamberlain house

Geo Chamberlain house
The George Chamberlain house once served as the town’s library. Today it’s the township museum.

This was originally known as the George Chamberlain house. In the 1870s, Amos Chamberlain, a resident of Milton Village, built a house for his son, George and his bride Ruth Elizabeth Speaker. The family enjoyed life in Milton Village until the 1890s. For many years afterwards, the house was home to various families who rented from the Chamberlain family.

In 1960, the Chamberlain house was purchased by the Friends of the Library, which turned the building into the township’s library. For the next 19 years it functioned as the Violet Riker Library.  (For more history of the library, see here.)

The house, while charming, is really rather small, and the library’s needs outgrew the building’s capacity. A new and much larger library was built in 1980, and the township acquired the Chamberlain house for use as the Jefferson Township Museum and home of the historical society.