# Milan, Spokane County, Washington Milan sat in the timbered country of northern Spokane County, near Elk, where the Daubel family carved farms out of heavy forest at the close of the nineteenth century. For the Daubels, Milan was the center of ordinary life: the town where you did your shopping, caught the train to Spokane for anything you could not buy nearby, and where, in the end, you were buried. ## A German Family on the Land Ludwig Daubel was the first of the family to reach America, leaving Bönfeld, Germany, in 1881. A blacksmith by trade, he brought his family west by way of a German settlement in Washington County, Kansas, before his sons pushed on to the Pacific Northwest. Henry, August, Louie, and Charles came to the Elk area, buying railroad land at $2.50 an acre and clearing the timber to raise three separate farms. Ludwig followed. When he died on 28 December 1924, he was laid to rest in the Milan Cemetery, the first of many Daubels to be buried there. Charles Daubel, born in Bönfeld in 1873 and brought to America as a boy of eight, became one of the family's anchors at Milan. He married Marie "Mary" Anna Rudolph, who had come west to visit her aunt Elizabeth Scholz — a family that already lived near the Daubels — and stayed to marry Charles. Together they raised eleven children on the farm. With no doctor near, their neighbor Mrs. Staley served as midwife for every one of them. ## Self-Sufficiency in the Timber Life on the Daubel farms was built on making and doing for themselves. Charles farmed and worked as a blacksmith, raising apples, grapes, other fruits, and grain, grinding their own flour and cornmeal. He hauled his threshing machine around the neighborhood to thresh for others, and the family ran a small sawmill to cut lumber for the buildings on the Daubel farms. In winter they cut blocks of ice from the Elk mill pond and packed it in sawdust in the icehouse, sharing it with neighbors for cooling food and making ice cream. Meat, vegetables, fruit, grain, milk, and poultry all came from their own land. ## Growing Up at Milan Charles and Mary's children were born across the first decades of the century and grew up in this world of farm and forest: - Herman Carl Daubel (b. 18 May 1903) - Martha Elizabeth Daubel (b. 24 November 1904) - Sophie Marie Daubel (b. 24 December 1905) - Freda Mary Daubel (b. 2 August 1907) - Elizabeth Pauline "Elsie" Daubel (b. 22 June 1910) - Marie Emma Daubel (b. 10 January 1912) - Carl August Daubel (b. 1 May 1913) - John Daubel (b. 24 November 1914) Herman, born at Milan in 1903, left a firsthand picture of childhood in the district. He remembered driving a horse into Milan to shop, and taking the train from Milan to Spokane for anything that could not be had in town. His first school days were at the Muhle School, which stood on the Coldanow place across from the Henry Hoener place — and on some days there was no recess at all, because cougars came close enough that it was not safe to let the children outside. He later walked three miles each way to the Deer Creek School. As the younger children finished their schooling at Milan, Herman drove a team to gather them along the way, earning $15.00 a month as something like the district's first school bus. Herman first worked for the Spokane Lumber Company at Milan, then for Edwards and Bradford at Elk, and in the woods until 1930. For a stretch he worked for his uncle Phillip in Thurston County, returning after Phillip's death in 1930. He came home to marry Theresa Strong in 1937, worked in the woods and farmed, and eventually took a job at the aluminum plant at Mead, staying on with Kaiser Aluminum for fifteen years. ## Resting at Milan The Milan Cemetery holds much of the family across the generations. Beside Ludwig, the founder of the American line, lie his sons and their kin: Charles Daubel, buried 5 September; Louie Johann Ludwig Daubel, buried 19 September 1961; August Daubel; Phillip Daubel; Henry (Heinrich) Daubel; Carl August Daubel; and Sophia Elisabeth Daubel, who lived in the district through the census years of 1910, 1920, 1930, 1935, and 1940. Mary Anna Rudolph Daubel is buried here as well. From Ludwig's arrival to Louie's burial in 1961, Milan was where the Daubels lived, worked, worshiped their independence of the land, and were finally laid to rest — a small timber-country town that, for this family, contained nearly everything.