[2] Many of the residents of Milan Township are Swiss Amish who mostly speak a Low Alemannic Alsatian dialect.

At one time it consisted of a small diner for truckers, a gas station (later a bicycle shop), a tile mill, and a few homes.

Gar Creek enterprises at that time included a shingle manufacturer, two carpenters, a Justice of the Peace, a saw mill, a general store with a railway agent and a Postmaster (Jesse Rothgeb), a blacksmith, a hoop manufacturer, and United Brethren and Lutheran churches.

[10] Located in Milan Township, the school lies just east of Five Points on the Woodburn Road.

The plant manufactures BF Goodrich and generic-branded tires for passenger cars and light trucks.

Shortly after opening in 1961, the mile-long plant was featured in the national media as the "longest" manufacturing facility in the country at the time.

The colonists had recruited neutral French inhabitants of the Detroit region to be spies and sympathizers for the American cause.

At the time of Indian Removal in 1846, those Miami who held separate allotments of land were allowed to stay as citizens in Indiana.

Around 1872 the reserve was partially sold to non-native settlers, and by 1879, plat books were showing the “first family” Milan Township surnames of Lampe, Vondereau, Shafer, Bruick, Landin, and Yerks on that land.

The origin of the “Milan” name in Huron and Erie Counties, Ohio remains obscure.

Three distinct divisions subsequently evolved in the community: the most-conservative Old Order Amish, the more progressive Amish-Mennonites, and the most liberal, the "Defenseless" (Egli) Mennonites.

Following statehood in 1816, the Indiana General Assembly then passed a complex series of acts (in 1824, 1849, and 1852) to organize and develop the public school system at the state, county, and township levels.

Later, with changes in demographics and the onset of school consolidations, the General Assembly gave the State Superintendent the means to close districts where attendance was under 12 pupils.

[32] While "Brush College" appears to have been a popular designation at the time (i.e., the term was also used in Cedar Creek Township and in Huntington County), some muse that this one-room district schoolhouse in the "brushy woods" may have been a site to train teachers.

[23] In November 1899 an epidemic of smallpox was “prevailing in Milan Township,” according to a Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette article from the time.

A cluster of cases six miles southeast of Maysville “in a heavily populated area” was described, apparently stretching to the Ohio Line.

Milan Center School was ordered by the health department to be closed until the threat of contagion had passed.

On July 1, 1876, the County Commissioners announced they were letting bids for the first township bridge to be built, at “Platter’s Ford”.

[45] In 1896 (and at several times following), a driftwood dam almost destroyed the completed structure, which was described as having two 100-ft long iron spans suspended on a huge center pier.

[46] It took residents multiple attempts over a four-period, petitioning County Commissioners, in order for the Schlink Bridge to be built.

[47][48] The bridge on the Bruick Road is now a vital link connecting US Hwy 24 to northern township areas across the river.

[49] May Sand and Gravel once operated a stone quarry located along Old US 24, across from the BF Goodrich tire plant.

[50] In later prehistory and into the frontier days, Milan Township laid nearly entirely within the far western area of a glacial valley described today as the Great Black Swamp.

From the Allen County INGenWeb Project[52] The first township religious meeting was held at Catherine Shell's Ridge Road log schoolhouse, in 1845.

The district schools were the first meeting places of various religious denominations, as no township church buildings were erected prior to 1880.