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The Hamilton JournalNews is committed to coverage of the local community — from schools and our local history to business and news. Each Sunday, reporter Richard O Jones tells the story of the people, history, places and events that make Greater Hamilton unique. Have an idea for Richard? Email him at Richard.Jones@coxinc.com.
Because of the Great Flood of 1913, Ryan’s Tavern has a Monday night fried chicken special.
The story starts around 1878, when a young man named Jacob Milders (1869-1935) began his business career as a newsboy, delivering German-language newspapers around Hamilton, according to newspaper articles and other information provided by his great-grandson Tully Milders, now the general manager at Ryan’s.
Jake Milders later went on to study engineering, but he stayed in the newspaper business and worked in the circulation department of the Daily Democrat, a precursor to the Hamilton JournalNews.
For 13 years, he also sold postcards and souvenirs at a number of novelty stores, most notably one called the Wedge, on Third Street.
He was also a pioneer in the sports entertainment business and built four baseball parks in Hamilton, including one in Lindenwald where the Hamilton Browns played and Krebs Park on High Street, where the Hamilton Krebs played. Both were semi-professional teams where some major leaguers got their start.
Krebs Park was noted for being one of the first ballparks to have night games. The first time they turned on the lights, however, half of the city blacked out.
Jake Milders was also a partner in the Hamilton Coliseum, an 1,800-seat arena built in 1906 at North B Street between Park and Wayne avenues that featured one of the nation’s premiere roller polo teams.
Milders’ obituary said, “There were times it was impossible to accommodate the crowds that came to see the exciting games played there.”
It also sparked a roller skating craze in Hamilton, served as a basketball arena, hosted dog and poultry shows, and the famed attorney William Jennings Bryan spoke there in 1912 on behalf of presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson, according to Jim Blount’s book on Rossville.
When the Great Flood swept through Hamilton, however, it took the Coliseum with it, lifting the large frame building off its foundation to float downstream, where it crashed into the Columbia Bridge, the last remaining bridge in Hamilton, and contributed to its demise.
“He was devastated” from the loss, Tully Milders said, “so he looked at another venue of business.”
So in 1914, Jake Milders bought the Village Cafe and Summer Garden across the street from the Symmes Tavern, at the corner of Nilles Road and Mount Pleasant Pike, also known as Symmes Corner, which was also the last stop on the interurban electric-powered trolley that ran to Cincinnati.
The first night he opened, however, two guys got in a fight and one broke a pool cue over the other’s head. Jake Milders took the pool table out into the yard, chopped it up into bits, and set about building the reputation for a dignified dining establishment, centered on the fabulous cooking of his wife, Mary Adelaide Doellman Milders, known to all as “Mom.”
On the strength of Mom’s cooking, especially her fried chicken, Milders Inn became a famous destination. People from Louisville and Indianapolis would come there for an evening’s meal and entertainment, which for a time featured Dud Mecum on piano and Jake’s son Ray singing.
“During the Prohibition era, 1919-1933, some of the region’s most notorious bootleggers and rum runners patronized the spot,” Blount writes in “Butler County Place Names.” “May 27, 1929, before a famous Little Chicago shootout, Turkey Joe Jacobs and Bob Zwick interrupted their meal at Milders Inn for a bloody rendezvous a few hundred yards west at River Road. Jacobs was killed, but Zwick, after being shot, returned to Milders Inn before fleeing the area.”
It was also a favorite spot for Cincinnati Reds players and managers, who knew Jake from his days in the sports business. Frank McCormick and Harry Kraft were such good friends that they both were married in Ray Milders’ nearby home.
“Mom Milders believed that you should never have to hold food, so she never started cooking until there was an order in,” Tully Milders said. “Every order of mashed potatoes was cooked to order as well, and some people waited three hours or more for the dinner.”
The price was relatively high for the day, $1.50 for half of a three-pound chicken, so that they would only draw high-class customers, Tully Milders said.
Jacob Milders died in 1935 and Mary died in 1942. While the building and most of its equipment sold at auction, Mom Milders’ nine cast iron skillets stayed in the family, and eventually came into Tully Milders’ possession.
So now, every Monday afternoon at around 3 p.m., he heats them up and starts breading Amish chickens according to the recipe that was handed down along with the skillets.
Today’s patrons aren’t quite as patient to wait three hours for a meal, Tully said, so he tries to stay a little bit ahead, saving the cracklings to make milk gravy for the mashed potatoes.
“As a young person, I heard all about the old Milders Inn when the folks would gather for a party,” he said. “The conversation always went back to stories about the inn and the people who came there.”
And that’s why he started his restaurant career in the lunchroom at Harding Junior High when he was a student there. He went on to work at various fast food restaurants and at the Hickory Hut on Millville Avenue.
“Being in the restaurant business wouldn’t have even been a consideration for me without the Milders Inn,” he said.
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