Eleven clubs participated in the first season, 1889–90, four of whom (including the first champions, Lincoln City) would go on to achieve Football League status.

[2] With the larger professional clubs becoming stronger, they looked to place their reserve side in the Midland League, Derby County being the first in 1894–95.

Within less than a decade, more than half of the membership of the Midland League was made up of reserve teams.

Three clubs (Chesterfield, Halifax Town and Lincoln City) joined the Football League when that organisation expanded to form a Third Division North, and the reserve sides of Football League clubs gradually left.

Again, on the outbreak of World War II, the Midland League closed down, and resumed again in peacetime in 1945.