Throughout 2023 the Sunday Olympian’s Looking Back theme was origins of area place names. Milroy Street, in northwest Olympia, is named for General Robert Milroy, a prominent Civil War general and later Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Washington Territory, in which capacity he successfully advocated on behalf of Yakama Chief Kamiakin’s ancestral rights. General Milroy is pictured here with his four sons and his wife, Mary Armitage Milroy.
1870 photograph, courtesy State Capital Museum Collection, Washington State Historical Society, catalog C1943.118.3
Text © Deborah Ross and The Olympian 2023