Milroy, John A.

The Houston Heights was created in 1891 by O. M. Carter, soon thereafter founder of the Omaha and South Texas Land Company. Within two years, residences and businesses were being constructed in the area. Carter had a business acquaintance with a real estate agent in the Pacific Northwest, and in 1893 he convinced John A. Milroy to move to Houston and help operate the real estate in the new city of Houston Heights.

John Milroy moved with his family to 1102 Heights Boulevard, sometime between 1896 and 1898, into a home originally built for H. F. MacGregor. He and his wife, Nellie, had three children: Margaret Adair Milroy, William Hamilton Milroy, and Helen Douglas Milroy. Margaret Milroy Crites, after her marriage, moved to Hawaii; W. Hamilton Milroy moved to New England, where the family had some roots; Helen Milroy was the only one to remain in Houston her entire life. John Milroy was the second Mayor of Houston Heights, reelected seven times. He served as superintendent of the Houston Heights Real Estate Office before opening his own real estate company in 1917. He was also active in social affairs; he served with C. A. McKinney on the board of the Harvard School and took part in local religious activities. John A. Milroy died on August 9, 1918, and his daughter Helen took over the business. Never marrying, she occasionally took in lodgers, but spent much of her time with her good friend Kate Bacon McKinney.

Near the end of her life, Helen Milroy resided in St. Anthony's Catholic nursing home, always hoping to be able to live out her days at her beloved home on Heights Boulevard. She died in 1979.

Charles A. McKinney was born in 1855 and moved to Princeton, Illinois, where he found work with the Illinois Masonic Insurance Company. Kate Bacon was born in Princeton, Ill., to early settlers of the region. After her 1871 graduation from Princeton High School, she taught for a few years and then was married to C. A. McKinney in 1878. After finding work with O. M. Carter's American Loan and Trust Company of Omaha (later Omaha and South Texas Land Company), the McKinneys came to Houston with her widowed mother, Mrs. Cynthia A. Bacon. They moved to their home at 1630 Heights Blvd. in 1893. Miss Ella McKinney, Mr. McKinney's sister, also lived with the family for some time before her death in 1934.

Kate’s uncle made a will whose slightly uncertain wording led to a legal case, Bacon et al v. Nichols et al, with some later import as precedent. There is a good deal of correspondence about the progress of the case in Box 28, Folder 4.

Mrs. McKinney was president of the Houston Heights Literary Club (later folded into the Heights Woman's Club) and appears to have given many lectures for the Ladies’ Reading Club, and her speeches on historical and literary subjects are often written on the back of South Texas National Bank papers. She was involved with other local organizations and regularly spoke to children’s Sunday School classes. (Some of these papers may have belonged to her sister-in-law, Miss Ella McKinney, who was involved in the same organizations.) Although they had no children of their own, the McKinneys devoted much of their time to children, both teaching Sunday School (Mr. McKinney was the superintendent of the Union Sunday School) and being active in local grade schools. After her husband’s death in 1921, Mrs. McKinney appears to have taken over his position at the Bank, to some extent; as his executrix, she became the holder of notes on many houses, and her status as active manager of the loans is indicated by the large volume of her correspondence about properties, requests for new loans, and bills for property upkeep. Even before Mr. McKinney’s death in 1943, both Miss Ella and Mrs. Kate McKinney, as also Miss Helen and Mrs. Nellie Milroy, were involved with real estate loans from the time the Houston Heights was founded.

From the guide to the John A. Milroy Collection and the McKinney Papers MSS. 0169., 1877-1978, 1890-1942, (Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library)