Dr. and Mrs. Edgar Milford, 1991 (Photographer Martha Cooper photographed Mrs. Evelyn Milford and Dr. Edgar Milford in the garden, dedicated to them, at the Nanuet Public Library)
Between 1957 and 1984, some 900,000 Haitians, or 15 percent of the country’s population, felt compelled to leave Haiti for either political or economic reasons. During this period, the Haitian community was one of Rockland’s fasting growing segments.
The first Haitian pioneer of Rockland County was Edgar Milford, Sr., a resident of Nanuet. Born in Haiti in 1895, Milford held degrees from the Schools of Law and Medicine in Port-au-Prince. After receiving special training in bacteriology and parasitology in the medical corps of the American Army of Occupation in Haiti, he became laboratory chief of the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince.
He immigrated to the United States in 1922, where he attended City College of New York. Milford joined the medical staff of Cornell University Medical School in 1927. In 1929, he and his supervisor, Dr. A.F. Coca, were lured to Rockland County by an offer from Lederle Laboratories a, establish an allergenic department. Milford soon became a leading expert in the field and supervised pioneering work in the development of the first human immune globulin, as well as methods of purifying and concentrating biologics. After his retirement, he worked tirelessly for over thirty years on behalf of the Nanuet Public library and was a member of its Board of Trustees for more than twenty years.
This image was part of “Haiti On The Hudson” a Rockland County Documentation Project which took place in 1993. We are pleased to share it during #BlackHistoryMonth
To learn more about this publication click here:http://www.rocklandhistory.org/product.cfm?page=79
www.RocklandHistory.org
