Ohio History Journal

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THE DAIRY INDUSTRY IN OHIO PRIOR TO THE

THE DAIRY INDUSTRY IN OHIO PRIOR TO THE

CIVIL WAR

 

by ROBERT LESLIE JONES

Professor of History, Marietta College

 

The beginnings of the dairy industry in what is now Ohio date

from the third quarter of the eighteenth century. By the period

of the French and Indian War, Indians like the Shawnee, the

Wyandots, and the Mingoes had cattle, which they came into

possession of in some cases perhaps by purchase or gift in the

Detroit settlement, but which they ordinarily obtained through

raiding the frontier clearances of Pennsylvania and Virginia.1

Certainly by the early 1770's most of the Indians of Ohio had

cattle. At that time the Reverend David Jones noticed that the

Shawnee near Paint Creek were well supplied with them, as were

the Shawnee and Delaware of the upper Muskingum Valley.2 In

1772 there was an important addition, for in that year the Mora-

vian missionaries brought into the Christian Delaware settlement

at Schoenbrunn 71 cattle.     These were of the distinctive breed

introduced into New Amsterdam by the Dutch more than a cen-

tury earlier, and were to transmit to their descendants in Tus-

carawas County their proclivity to be spotted brown and black.3

By 1781, when they were forced to move to Upper Sandusky,

the Moravian Delawares had more than 100 cattle, chiefly milch

cows.4 They and the other Indians kept milch cows because they

were very fond of milk and butter. However, they did not pro-

vide any store of winter fodder for their cattle, but left them    to

 

1 Beverley W. Bond, Jr., ed., "The Captivity of Charles Stuart, 1755-57," in

Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XIII (1926-27), 59ff., 81; Franklin B. Hough,

ed., The Journals of Major Robert Rogers (Albany, 1883), 200; Robert Rogers, A

Concise Account of North America; Containing a Description of the Several British

Colonies on That Continent (London, 1765), 169.

2 David Jones, A Journal of Two Visits Made to Some Nations of Indians on

the West Side of the River Ohio, in the Years 1772 and 1773 (New York, 1865),

57, 87.

3 J. B. Mansfield, History of Tuscarawas County, Ohio (Chicago, 1884), 400.

4 John Heckewelder, A Narrative of the Missions of the United Brethren among

the Delaware and Mohegan Indians (Philadelphia, 1820), 281.

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