Ohio History Journal

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.

46

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DAIRY INDUSTRY PRIOR TO CIVIL WAR                       47

 

range through the woods, where, fortunately, there was usually

enough grass to enable the animals, or at least the hardier ones

among them, to maintain a starving existence till spring.⁵

For a while dairying among the first white settlers of the

future Ohio was not much more significant than it had been

among the Indians. The pioneers at Marietta began with a very

limited supply of cattle. In June 1788 there were only three yoke

of oxen in the settlement,⁶ but that there was even this many was

really a considerable achievement for the days when cattle had to

be brought down the Ohio in flatboats. It was difficult to get

cattle into the boats, and, when they were let ashore, as was nec-

essary sometimes, they often became ungovernable, and led their

owners a wild chase before they could be rounded up and once

again put on board.⁷ When they arrived, and were turned out

to pasture, they were liable to be killed or stolen by the Indians.

The scarcity which resulted from these factors meant that for

many years there was a fairly continuous demand for cattle, espe-

cially milch cows. This demand, like that of the garrisons for

fresh beef, was satisfied, beginning in      1790, by importations of

droves from the vicinity of Clarksburg, Virginia, 80 miles away.⁸

In the Miami Valley cattle were obtained mostly from Kentucky.⁹

At a later date many of the cattle of the pioneer Western Reserve

were purchased in the Finger Lake country of New              York and

driven along the shores of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie to their

destination, each animal carrying pork, flour, blankets, or imple-

ments on its back.¹⁰ Subsequent settlers coming in from the east

 

5 A. B. Hulbert and W. N. Schwarze, eds., "David Zeisberger's History of the

Northern American Indians," in Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society Quar-

terly, XIX (1910), 14, 45.

6 R. S. Edes and W. M. Darlington, eds., Journal and Letters of Col. John May,

of Boston, Relative to Two Journeys to the Ohio Country in 1788 and '89 (Cincin-

nati, 1873), 69.

7 See the experiences described in "Journal of General Butler," in Neville B.

Craig, ed., The Olden Time, II (1847), 438, 454, 458, 460.

8 Samuel P. Hildreth, Contributions to the Early History of the North-West.

Including the Moravian Missions in Ohio (Cincinnati, 1864), 199-200; Samuel P.

Hildreth, Pioneer History; Being an Account of the First Examinations of the Ohio

Valley, and the Early Settlement of the Northwest Territory (Cincinnati, 1848), 300.

9 Beverley W. Bond, Jr., ed., "Memoirs of Benjamin Van Cleve," in Historical

and Philosophical Society of Ohio Quarterly Publications, XVII (1922), 52-53; Ran-

dolph C. Downes, "Trade in Frontier Ohio," in Mississippi Valley Historical Review,

XVI (1929-30), 474-475.

10 Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (2 vols., Norwalk, Ohio, 1896).

II, 627; Charles Whittlesey, Early History of Cleveland, Ohio, Including Original

Papers and Other Matter Relating to the Adjacent Country (Cleveland, 1867), 227-

229, 270, 296-297.

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48     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

or the south continually reinforced the existing stock in the west

with the cattle they drove with them to their new homes.11 How-

ever, even when the number of cattle became adequate, dairying

in most of the new      settlements languished.    The frontiersmen

found it burdensome to hunt their cows in order to milk them,

and accordingly did so only once a day or even only four or five

times a week.¹²    Moreover, especially in the autumn, it was dan-

gerous to use the milk of cows pastured in wood lots or unculti-

vated pastures, because the cows might acquire the "trembles"

from eating a poisonous plant since identified as the white snake-

root, and transmit the poison in their milk to humans, who there-

upon suffered from "milk sickness." This ailment in cows was

particularly characteristic of the Virginia Military District and

the region watered by the tributaries of the Miami and the Little

Miami.13

Despite the tendency throughout the new         west to neglect

dairying and emphasize other branches of farming, cheese making

early developed as a specialized industry in parts of the Ohio

country. This was to be attributed to the influence of New Eng-

land immigrants.    Shortly after 1796 A. W. Putnam, one of the

pioneers of Belpre, had "a thriving dairy . . . composed of the

cows raised from     his father's famous Harlem      breed, and cele-

brated for their rich milk."14 This was but the first of many in

that section of Washington County. At the beginning of the new

century, Hildreth stated, "Belpre furnished more cheese for the

down river trade than any other district west of the mountains,"

the trading boats picking up the cheese at the doors of the dairies,

and paying over a period of years sixteen cents a pound.¹⁵ The

size of the dairies in this region may be taken as typified in an ad-

 

11 Cf. Fortesque Cuming, Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country, through

the States of Ohio and Kentucky (Pittsburgh, 1810), reprinted in R. G. Thwaites, ed.,

Early Western Travels (Cleveland, 1904-07), IV, 62.

12 Henry B. Fearon, Sketches of America: a Narrative of a Journey of Five

Thousand Miles through the Eastern and Western States of America (2d ed., London,

1818), 223.

13 Mad River Courant, quoted in Farmer's Reporter and United States Agricul-

turist (Cincinnati), I (1830-31), 55; Western Farmer and Gardener (Cincinnati), II

(1840-41), 167; "Diary of Aaron Miller," in Ohio State Archaeological and Historical

Quarterly, XXXIII (1924), 72.

14 Samuel P. Hildreth, Biographical and Historical Memoirs of the Early Pioneer

Settlers of Ohio, with Narratives of Incidents and Occurrences in 1775 (Cincinnati,

1852), 378.

15 Hildreth, Pioneer History, 418.

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DAIRY INDUSTRY PRIOR TO CIVIL WAR                  49

 

vertisement offering for rent "a good dairy farm" near Marietta,

with a stock of from sixteen to twenty cows.¹⁶ The cheese-

making industry of the Western Reserve soon attained much

greater importance and reputation than that of Washington

County. Apparently the first Western Reserve cheese exported

was a lot of 800 pounds sold by George Stillson of Boardman, a

community south of Youngstown, at Pittsburgh in 1803. His

product was evidently so much superior to that previously offered

there that buyers bid up to 37 1/2 cents a pound for the last of it,

whereas he had commenced selling for less than seventeen cents.17

Other "Connecticut" farmers of the Western Reserve followed

Stillson to the new market, and soon (1807) established a repu-

tation at Pittsburgh for supplying "cheese not inferior to Eng-

lish."18 On the eve of the War of 1812 Hudson, Summit

County, had dairymen whose cheese was specially quoted in the

Cleveland market and who were exporting small quantities down

the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans.19

After 1815 the Western Reserve became more and more the

distinctive "cheesedom" of Ohio and, for that matter, of the

entire western   country.   Though   the cheese of Washington

County remained in demand for the down river trade till the

1830's, its manufacture gradually became a sideline rather than

a main industry for most of the farmers, who found fruit grow-

ing, tobacco growing, or wool growing more profitable. By 1849

much more cheese was being imported into the county than was

being exported therefrom.²⁰   In other parts of Ohio a great deal

of cheese was produced in the aggregate, but usually only because

the farmers had a surplus of milk after the calves were weaned.

Wheat-growing farmers, such as those in Richland County and

Stark County, imported most of what they consumed from the

 

 

16 American Friend (Marietta), June 30, 1815.

17 Ohio State Board of Agriculture, Annual Report for the Year 1860 (Co-

lumbus, 1861), Part II, 446. Hereafter this authority is cited as Ohio Agricultural

Report.

18 Cuming, Sketches of a Tour, 91.

19 John Melish, Travels through the United States of America in the Years

1806 & 1807, and 1809, 1810 & 1811 (Philadelphia, 1818), 449, 455.

20 John Delafield, A Brief Topographical Description of the County of Wash-

ington, in the State of Ohio (New York, 1834), 34; Frederick Hall, Letters from the

East and from the West (Washington and Baltimore, c1840), 101; Marietta Gazette,

November 8, 1834; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 216.

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50    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Western Reserve.²1  One merchant in the village of Shelby, Rich-

land County, sold forty tons of Western Reserve cheese at retail

in a single year.22   The only competition which at any time

threatened the predominance of the Western Reserve dairymen

came, beginning about 1834, from some "Yankees" on the Darby

Plains west of Columbus. Though the cheese made in this small

section of Franklin, Madison, and Pickaway counties had the

advantage of propinquity to market at Cincinnati and was ad-

mitted by Western Reserve dairymen to be the equal of their own

in quality, it never became a real menace to the Western Reserve.

The farmers of the upper Scioto Valley made such large profits'

from cattle grazing and cattle fattening that few among them paid

much attention to dairying, and so only a relatively small amount

of cheese was manufactured.²3

The progress of the cheese industry in the Western Reserve

after 1815 was steady rather than spectacular. Though by 1816

the farmers of the Western Reserve had practically a monopoly

of the cheese market at Pittsburgh,²⁴ they were forced by their

own increased production to look farther afield. In 1820 Harvey

Baldwin took a wagon load--less than a ton--of cheese from

Aurora, Portage County, to Beaver Point, Pennsylvania, trans-

ferred it to a small boat, peddled it at the towns along the Ohio

as far down as Louisville, and made a satisfactory profit.  His

imitators found that the river market was somewhat disappoint-

ing, presumably on account of the depression then prevailing

throughout the West. Two of them in consequence started over-

land from  Louisville in 1826 with about thirty tons of Geauga

County cheese. One of the pair ultimately disposed of his share

in Alabama, and the other of his in Tennessee and North Caro-

lina. By 1830 the Ohio Valley had sufficiently recovered from

the depression so that one of these men had no difficulty in selling

thirty tons of cheese in Cincinnati, Louisville, and Nashville. The

 

21 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850 (Scott ed.), 362; Patent Office Report for

1851, Senate Executive Document, 32 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 118, 381.

22 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1853, 652.

23 Cincinnati Chronicle, quoted in Ohio Cultivator (Columbus), IV (1848), 77;

Ohio Agricultural Report for 1847, 75; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1859, 194;

Pioneer and General History of Geauga County, with Sketches of Some of the

Pioneers and Prominent Men (n.p., 1880), 30.

24 David Thomas, Travels through the Western Country in the Summer of

1816 (Auburn, N. Y., 1819), 63.

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DAIRY INDUSTRY PRIOR TO CIVIL WAR                     51

result of the activities of these and other dealers was that, even

before the Ohio Canal was completed in 1832, Cincinnati became

the chief outlet for Western Reserve cheese.²⁵      With an assured

ultimate market at every river town along the Ohio, the Missis-

sippi, and their tributaries, and with nothing to fear from the

cheese makers of New England and New York, the dairymen of

the Western Reserve felt justified in expanding their production.

In 1836 a single township in Trumbull County manufactured 150

tons of cheese, and in 1837 a single township in Portage County,

500 tons. About this time, too, a single farm in Cuyahoga County

had the reputation of curing approximately five tons annually.26

The period beginning in the early 1840's and continuing to

the outbreak of the Civil War was afterwards looked back upon

as a golden age for the Western Reserve dairymen.²⁷         The most

important factor contributing to the expansion which then took

place was the development of new markets and the continued

growth of old ones. One new market, which for a time promised

greater success than it finally achieved, was in the British Isles.

According to returns made to the House of Commons, there were

15,154 hundredweight of American          cheese imported    into the

United Kingdom     in 1841, 14,098 hundredweight in 1842, 42,312

hundredweight in 1843, and 53,115 hundredweight in 1844.28 The

amount of this cheese which was the product of Ohio is not

known. However, for reasons which will be pointed out here-

inafter, Ohio c heese met British standards in neither style nor

quality.²⁹  During the 1840's and ¹⁸50's Ohio cheese had an im-

portant share of the market in Upper Canada on account of the

emphasis most of the farmers there put on wheat growing.30 For

 

25 Pioneer and General History of Geauga County, 29.

26 The Hesperian: Or Western Monthly Magazine (Columbus), I (1838), 189.

27 "Between 1840 and 1863 thousands of farms on the Western Reserve were

purchased by young men on credit, and were paid for, in many instances, by pur-

chasers who were not remarkable either for energy or economy. During those years

families engaged in dairy husbandry could, without practicing painful economy, and

with only ordinary industry, pursue the even tenor of their ways, content with old

methods, with a practical certainty that each year would show at least a moderate

balance of income over expenditure." Ohio Agricultural Report for 1890, 115.

28 Patent Office Report for 1845, Senate Executive Document, 29 Cong., 1 Sess.,

No. 307, 325.

29 Ohio Cultivator, VII (1851), 201.

30 Journal and Transactions of the Board of Agriculture of Upper Canada for

1855-6 (Toronto, 1856), 56, 263. Cf. also: "The demand for American cheese in

Canada causes its production in such large amounts in Ohio." Census of Canada 1851-2

(Toronto, 1852), I, xxxvii.

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52    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

a few years, beginning in 1849, large shipments of Western Re-

serve cheese were made to California and even to China.³¹ On

the whole, however, most Western Reserve cheese sought outlets

in either the west or the east throughout the period. In Boston,

New York, and other eastern centers it had to be sold in compe-

tition with the cheese of Connecticut and upstate New York.

Even when Western Reserve cheese was being sold in New York

City, superior ("Hamburgh") New York cheese was being im-

ported into Ohio to satisfy consumers who did not favor the local

variety.³²

The steady expansion of cheese dairying in the Western

Reserve, especially the northeastern part of it, was the subject

of frequent comment in the 1840's and 1850's. According to the

records of the cheese dealers, in 1846 the dairymen of Portage

County brought to market 800 tons, worth about $76,000, and in

1847, over 1,OOO tons, worth about $100,000, a 25 per cent increase

in production. In 1848, 1,450 tons of cheese were exported from

this county, an increase of about 45 per cent over 1847. In 1850

the county exported 2,000 tons.³³  Other counties reported similar

increases, and attributed them to better prices for cheese. "Cheese

the great staple of the county," wrote a Trumbull County corre-

spondent in 1848, "has been made in greater quantities than in

any former year."34   "The amount of cheese produced in Ash-

tabula County the present season," according to a correspondent

in an adjacent county at the same time, "will greatly exceed the

amount of any former year. Many of our farmers, who have

heretofore been engaged in other modes of Agriculture, have

turned their attention wholly to the dairy business."35 The next

year witnessed an expansion of cheese dairying in Ashtabula

County estimated at fifty per cent over the level attained in 1848,

and brought forth the comment that in Geauga County mixed

 

31 Conneaut Reporter, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, V (1849), 198; Ashtabula

Telegraph, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, VI (1850), 297; Cultivator (Albany, N. Y.),

n.s., VII (1850), 315; Western Reserve Chronicle, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, VII

(1851), 291.

32 Cleveland Herald, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, III (1847), 126.

33 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1846, 59; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1847,

81; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1848, 96; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850 (Scott

ed.), 340.

34 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1848, 107.

35 Ibid., 32.

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DAIRY INDUSTRY PRIOR TO CIVIL WAR                53

 

farming was giving way entirely to dairying.³⁶   It was stated in

1856 that the number of dairymen had doubled in eastern Cuya-

hoga County within the space of two years on account of the

great profits to be made in dairying.37 The only interruption

came with the Panic of 1857. It was then reported from Ash-

tabula County that "the production of cheese has been equal to

the average of good seasons, but the 'times are out of joint' so

as to derange the market for this staple, and seriously lessen its

value."³⁸ According to the federal census, the Western Reserve

counties of Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lorain, Portage, and

Trumbull produced respectively 2,375,705, 1,433,727, 4,519,998,

1,177,293, 4,064,351, and 5,201,951 pounds of cheese in 1860,

while Ohio as a whole produced 21,618,893 pounds. It might be

pointed out that no other western state had anything near the

amount of cheese reported produced in the Western Reserve.

Illinois, with 1,848,557 pounds, was the second largest producer.39

Several aspects of the cheese-making industry, especially dur-

ing its years of rapid expansion on the Western Reserve, are

worthy of particular consideration. There was no uniformity in

the size of dairy farms, though there was a tendency for them to

be larger in the 1840's and 1850's than they had been earlier.

However, even at an early date, some were quite large. Thus, in

Trumbull County in 1835, most of the dairy farms had from forty

to 100 cows.⁴⁰ At the end of the 1840's the increased demand for

Western Reserve cheese brought about an increase in the size of

the dairies. In Ashtabula County, for instance, it was stated in

1849 that "where a few years ago two or three cows only were

kept, the same occupants now number their 40, 50 and 60 cows."41

Though dairies of from forty to sixty cows seem to have been

quite common in Ashtabula and Geauga counties, and parts of

 

 

36 Conneaut Reporter, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, V (1849), 198; Ohio Agri-

cultural Report for 1849, 102.

37 Ohio Farmer (Cleveland), December 20, 1856, 201.

38 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1857, 237.

39 The Agriculture of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original

Returns of the Eighth Census (Washington, 1864), lxxxiii, 114, 118.

40 Samuel P. Hildreth, "Miscellaneous Observations Made during a Tour in

May, 1835, to the Falls of the Cuyahoga, near Lake Erie," in American Journal of

Science and Arts (New Haven, Conn.), XXXI (1837), 24.

41 Conneaut Reporter, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, V (1849), 198.

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54    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Portage County, there were few that were much larger. How-

ever, in parts of Trumbull County there were at this time "dairies

of more than 200 to 300 cows, and embracing every convenience

and improvement that modern ingenuity has devised."42

Western Reserve dairymen (like most others at the time)

were of the opinion that it was cheaper to buy their cows than

to raise them. Accordingly every spring many of them would

travel into such near-by counties as Stark and Richland to buy

cows. The "Yankees" considered themselves sharp bargainers,

but apparently they were often taken in by the Pennsylvania

farmers of the Backbone Counties.⁴³  Sometimes the dairymen of

the Western Reserve even visited the Scioto Valley and the

Miami Valley, purchasing "much on the plan which has been

pursued in hiring the schoolmaster, that is, in regard to cheap-

ness."⁴⁴ If the Western Reserve farmers were too busy to go

on a cattle-buying expedition, they were ordinarily able to pur-

chase cows out of droves brought into their communities by

cattlemen from the more southerly and westerly parts of the

State.⁴⁵  The practice of buying dairy cows from     outside the

Western Reserve continued beyond the period of the Civil War.⁴⁶

As the dairymen typically considered that calves would not

be worth the expense of raising to maturity, they "deaconed"

them when they were a few days old, saving the skins and ren-

net,⁴⁷ and either feeding the carcasses to the hogs or throwing

them behind the fence for the crows. This slaughtering of calves

was regarded as the most unpleasant part of the labor of the

dairymen.⁴⁸  Tender-hearted individuals therefore no doubt felt

themselves fortunate when they were able to sell some of the

 

42 Ohio Cultivator, IV (1848), 109.

43 Ibid., VII (1851), 163; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1870, 490; Ohio Agri-

cultural Report for 1893, 311.

44 Ohio Cultivator, VIII (1852), 170.

45 Ohio Farmer, February 6, 1858, 44.

46 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1866, Part II, 174; Ohio Agricultural Report

for 1870, 490; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1874, 467.

47 For a method of preparing rennet, as used in Ashtabula County, see Ohio

Agricultural Report for 1857, 157.

48 Ohio Cultivator, VI (1850), 116.

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DAIRY INDUSTRY PRIOR TO CIVIL WAR                       55

 

young calves for vealing.⁴⁹ As dairying operations in the Western

Reserve were extended in the 1840'S and 1850's, many of the

calves of the dairymen were, however, kept till autumn, when

they were bought up by dealers, who ultimately transferred them

tc the beef-cattle raisers or fatteners of the Scioto Valley.⁵⁰ Some

of the calves, too, were raised to maturity on the farms where

they were born, or on others in the vicinity, and, with the dis-

carded dairy cows, therefore contributed to the maintenance of

a sizable beef-cattle industry in the Western Reserve itself.⁵1

In the dairies of the Western Reserve the "native" cattle

were long given preference over improved breeds, because it was

felt that they were better milkers, as well as being cheaper. A

herd of native cows, bought at from         $12 to $30 a head in the

spring, would, it was believed, furnish several animals of superior

milking qualities. These could be retained, while the inferior

ones could be sold to drovers. Yet, in the absence of modern

recording and testing, few farmers were really able to tell which

of their cows were most profitable, and still less were they able

to show any justification for their belief that improved cattle

might prove second-rate milkers.        It was therefore not till mid-

century that Devon and Shorthorn grades began to be used to

any extent in the dairies.⁵²     In any case the production of milk

per cow    was excessively small by modern standards.            Typical

estimates as to the, amount of cheese made per cow            in the late

1840's and early 1850's ranged from 350 to 500 pounds, with 400

pounds being regarded as more or less average, and being stated

 

49 A letter written from Twinsburg, Summit County, in 1858, says: "Most of

the calves are disposed of as soon as possible after they are three days old, (the

cow's milk then being good,) and fortunately for dairy-men, but unfortunately (I

would think) for those who eat them, there is a ready market. Men, who are called

Jews, go from house to house with horse and wagon every week, during the calf

season, and buy all they can find, paying from one to three dollars a piece, accord-

ing to size and the number of hours they are old. These wagons, when loaded,

leave town on the road that leads to Cleveland. Who eats the tender meat, or

whether it has anything to do with city sausages, [I] can't say." Ohio Farmer, Feb-

ruary 6, 1858, 44.

50 Agriculture of the United States in 1860, cxxxiii-cxxxiv; Ohio Agricultural

Report for 1866, Part II, 152.

51 [James H. Perkins], "Fifty Years of Ohio," in North American Review,

XLVII (1838), 40; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1847, 23; Ohio Agricultural Report

for 1848, 96; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 52, 204; Ohio Agricultural Report

for 1850 (Scott ed.), 165; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1853, 559, 598.

52 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1848, 32; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849,

79-80; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1851, 223; Western Reserve Farmer and Dairy-

man (Jefferson), I (1852), 65.

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56     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

moreover as the minimum       amount necessary to assure profitable

operation of a dairy.⁵³

Cheese dairying has been notoriously a branch of agriculture

which involves long hours of labor through the season.         Unfor-

tunately, even in the Western Reserve, the various operations

were frequently performed by those least fitted for their drudgery.

In the large dairies men usually did the cheese making, but in

the smaller ones, it was stated, "as a general rule cheese making

and severe female labor are combined.        Indeed the condition of

women in dairies is frequently little better than servitude; and

in too many instances this is the lot of the mistress of the fam-

ily."54 "When we take a look at the daily life of a dairy farm,"

Anson Bartlett wrote at the end of the Civil War, "all wonder

that the dairy farmer's wife should become prematurely wrinkled,

decrepit and old, ceases; and the wonder arises that any woman

could be found who can endure so much as she actually does, even

for a single season, to say nothing of a term of years, and retain

even the semblance of health and strength."⁵⁵ The only alleviation

seems to have been that in the Western Reserve, as in other parts

of Ohio where the family was of New England extraction, the

milking was done by the men and boys. However, even on the

Western Reserve there were households in which young women

milked eight or ten cows morning and night.56

The cheese-making technique of the pioneers was an inheri-

tance of literally centuries. Most cheese makers, male or female,

were content to follow traditional procedure without attempting

to improve on it. Yet there were a few dairymen who found it

profitable to manufacture something better than "white-oak"

cheese. Such a one was Elias Follett of Granville, who, while

 

53 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1847, 89; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850

(Scott ed.), 267; Documents, Including Messages and Other Communications Made

to the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, XVII, Part II (Columbus, 1853), No.

5, 255-256. Hereafter this authority is cited as Ohio Legislative Documents.

54 Ohio Cultivator, IV (1848), 111. This condition was largely owing to

the great difficulty which western farmers had in hiring girls to work in the dairy

in what was regarded as a menial employment. Cf. James Flint, Letters from America,

Containing Observations on the Climate and Agriculture of the Western States, the

Manners of the People, the Prospects of Emigrants, &c. &c. (Edinburgh, 1822), in

Thwaites, Early Western Travels, IX, 122.

55 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1865, Part II, 173.

56 Ohio Cultivator, IV (1848), 111; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1858, 304;

Martin Welker, Farm Life in Central Ohio Sixty Years Ago (Cleveland, 1895), 51.

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DAIRY INDUSTRY PRIOR TO CIVIL WAR                57

he obtained from eight to twelve cents for his ordinary cheese,

was able to sell his "Pineapple" and his "Brandied" cheese for

over eighteen cents.57 Pineapple cheese was a variety, it might

be noted, which was first manufactured in the United States at

Goshen, Connecticut, in 1808.58 Evidently most Ohio cheese

makers who attempted to manufacture it were less successful than

Follett, for the Pineapple cheese of the State enjoyed none too

good a reputation.    "Heretofore," according to one authority,

"they have been made more to grace the table than to please the

palate."⁵⁹ The "Brandied" cheese of the average dairymen ap-

pears to have been often enough simply spoiled cheese liberally

saturated with brandy.⁶⁰ Some Swiss cheese was being made in

Ohio prior to the Civil War, but its manufacture was confined

to "German" settlers in Monroe and Tuscarawas counties and so

was quantitatively insignificant till the 1880's.61

The method of manufacturing ordinary cheese in the Western

Reserve varied slightly with every dairy, but the common or

"Yankee" method was more or less as follows: In the evening

the milk was strained and "set" in clean tin pans over night. In

the morning the cream was removed for use in butter making or

cooking. The morning milk was then mixed with the skim milk,

which had already been heated to about the same temperature as

the fresh. Then rennet was added, with the result that in twenty

or thirty minutes the milk was curdled. After the curd had stood

a few minutes, it was cut, or rather broken, into cubes with a

long wooden knife, and the whey allowed to separate. The next

steps were cutting the curd again, dipping off a considerable part

of the whey, ladling the curd into a cheese-basket with a strainer

in it, and permitting or forcing the curd to drain. The next day

the curd was chopped fine, permitted to harden somewhat, and

scalded with hot whey. It was now ready for its final draining.

 

57 Western Farmer and Gardener, III (1841-42), 116.

58 Cultivator, quoted in Patent Office Report for 1845, Senate Executive Docu-

ment, 29 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 307, 989.

59 Western Reserve Chronicle, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, VII (1851), 291.

Occasionally, however, it met every expectation. For example 300 boxes sold at

Boston in 1849 were highly approved. New England Farmer, quoted in Ohio Cultivator,

V (1849), 55.

60 Ihna T. Frary, Ohio in Homespun and Calico (Richmond, Va., 1942), 129.

61 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1881, 256; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1886,

356.

• 12
 

58     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

its salting, and its pressing. The cheese was pressed for an hour,

then turned over and pressed again, this time overnight. Now a

fine cheesecloth band was wrapped around it, and it might be

pressed for another day or even longer. Then it was placed on

a shelf, where it was turned every day and rubbed all over with

melted butter, till such time as it was considered sufficiently cured

for market.⁶²

In the late 1840's there was a craze for making large cheeses,

that is, in excess of sixty pounds. The largest then produced in

the State was manufactured by Elias Follett in 1847. It weighed

1,000 pounds, and sold at Cincinnati for $250.63 Most of these

large cheeses were only partially cured at the time they left the

dairies, so that many of them decomposed even before they reached

New York, and all but a few of the rest in the warehouses of

either New York or Liverpool.⁶⁴ During 1849 and 1850 the big

cheeses were difficult to dispose of at five and a half cents a

pound, whereas the small ones, of from ten to twenty pounds,

were readily salable at nine cents and nine and a half cents.⁶⁵ In

the  1850's the largest cheeses manufactured appear to have

weighed about 30 to 35 pounds. These went to the "cut trade,"

that is, the eastern and southern groceries. The smaller cheeses

were shipped either abroad or to the remoter parts of the United

States.⁶⁶

Pioneer cheese making in the Western Reserve was carried

on with makeshift accommodations for the cattle and a minimum

of equipment. "As soon as a log-cabin was up," writes the his-

torian of Geauga County, "might often be seen a rail or pole,

with one end under the lower log of the cabin, and lying across

a rudely constructed cheese-hoop, with a weight attached to the

outer end, sufficient to press the cheese."67 In the early days

 

62 This was a method used in Summit County. Ohio Cultivator, II (1846), 29.

It is practically the same as the prevailing method in Connecticut about 1800. Cf.

Charles S. Phelps, Rural Life in Litchfield County (Norfolk, Conn., 1917), 76-77.

63 Cincinnati Chronicle, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, III (1847), 181.

64 Ashtabula Telegraph, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, VIII (1852), 193.

65 Ashtabula Telegraph, quoted in Cultivator, n. s., VII (1850), 105; Ashtabula

Telegraph, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, VI (1850), 297.

66 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850 (Scott ed.), 62; Western Reserve Chron-

icle, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, VII (1851), 291; Ohio Cultivator, XIII (1857), 233;

Cleveland Herald, cited in Country Gentleman (Albany, N. Y.), XIV (1859), 255.

67 Pioneer and General History of Geauga County, 29.

• 13
 

DAIRY INDUSTRY PRIOR TO CIVIL WAR                  59

 

cheese was made in such small quantities that a tub sufficed for

a vat and a woodshed or loft was considered an adequate--if

invariably foul smelling--place for curing.⁶⁸ During the late

1840's the dairymen of the eastern Western Reserve began to

make important improvements in their working facilities. They

began to build "milking barns," which were long, narrow struc-

tures with a feeding aisle down the center.       The cattle were

fastened in stanchions, and faced one another across the aisle.

Overhead there was a small loft. Though these buildings were

cold and drafty, they were an advance on the sheds which had

preceded them.⁶⁹ Beginning about the same time, the cows were

better fed, for in addition to the grass of the pasture, they were

now given whey and meal or shorts.⁷⁰ Notable among the new

contrivances which came into use in the dairies during this period

was the thermometer.71 About a decade earlier, that is, even

before 1840, patented cheese presses were fairly common in the

Western Reserve. A popular kind, "Whipple's Press," was the

same as that ordinarily sold in New England. Though it was

priced at only seven dollars, it was infrequently encountered in

other parts of Ohio.72 Another improvement was introduced into

Geauga County in 1849, and into other parts of the Western

Reserve then or shortly thereafter. This was a cheese vat or

steamer, the essential principle of which was that the milk in the

container was heated by a steam-pipe which could be moved back

and forth through it.⁷3 In spite of the introduction of all these

improvements, the dairy cheese of the Western Reserve never

quite kept pace in quality with the best New York cheese.⁷⁴

There was another innovation, however, which seemed for a

time to be the most important change of all. This was the coming

 

68 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1866, Part II, 171.

69 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 51; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1893,

312.

70 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1847, 25. However, at their best the dairymen

of the Western Reserve were years behind the Germans in the community at Zoar

in the manner of caring for dairy cattle. For dairying among the Zoarites, see James

S. Buckingham, The Eastern and Western States of America (3 vols., London, c1841),

11, 293, and The Silk Culturist, quoted in Maine Farmer and Journal of the Useful

Arts (Hallowell, Me.), V (1837-38), 187.

71 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 51.

72 Western Farmer and Gardener, II (1840-41), 91.

73 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850 (Scott ed.), 62; Ohio Agricultural Report

for 1865, Part II, 171.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 171.

• 14
 

60     OHIO  ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

into operation, beginning in 1847, of cheese factories, or rather,

of curd factories.⁷⁵ The first of these, an establishment at Hart-

ford, Trumbull County, may possibly have been modeled on a curd

factory which was mentioned in 1845 as being in operation at

Goshen, Connecticut.⁷⁶ By purchasing curds from      the neighbor-

ing farmers, the Hartford factory was able in 1847 to produce an

average of 1,000 pounds of cheese a day. In 1849 other factories

were opened at Richmond Center and Wayne, both in Ashtabula

County. During 1850 and 1851 several others appeared in these

two counties, as well as a few in Geauga and Portage counties.

All of them made what was called "English Dairy" cheese, which

for a time was more popular than the ordinary dairy cheese, as

is attested by the fact that in 1850 the cheese manufactured in

the factories of Geauga County sold at seven cents a pound, while

dairy cheese from the near-by farms brought only four and a

half cents.⁷⁷

The system    operated in this fashion:     Some individual or

firm  erected a building and equipped it with the necessary ma-

chinery.   Then, in the spring, the owner contracted with the

farmers within a radius of six or seven miles to furnish curd,

which was to be prepared in accordance with specific instructions.

Every weekday morning the farmers placed their unsalted curd in

sacks, which were gathered by covered wagons, each of which

had a route of from    five to ten miles. One factory, that at Gus-

tavus, Trumbull County, employed eight teams in thus collecting

curd.⁷⁸ As soon as the curd reached the factory, the workmen

commenced the manufacturing process.         A  visitor to the factory

at Gustavus in 1850 thus described the procedure:

The building in which the business is carried on is frame, and con-

tains some two or three large rooms. The first one you enter contains the

 

75 The Census of 1820 lists among the manufacturing establishments of Cham-

paign County a "factory" producing cheese. It employed six persons, used 12,500

gallons of milk, and had an output estimated as worth $1,190. Digest of Accounts of

Manufacturing Establishments in the United States, and of Their Manufactures (Wash-

ington, 1823), n.p. This was in all probability an ordinary dairy.

76 For the Goshen factory, see Cultivator, quoted in Patent Office Report for

1845, Senate Executive Document, 29 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 307, 989.

77 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1847, 92; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850

(Scott ed.), 165; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1865, Part II, 171; Conneaut Re-

porter, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, V (1849), 198.

78 Conneaut Reporter, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, V (1849), 198; Western Re-

serve Chronicle, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, VII (1851), 291; Ohio Farmer, December

5, 1856, 193.

• 15
 

DAIRY INDUSTRY PRIOR TO CIVIL WAR                    61

 

machines for cutting curd, presses and other utensils, (the common screw

press is the one used here,) and in one end of this room is a furnace, over

which is a large tank of water for various purposes, and a kettle, in which

is fixed a large pan, which is kept hot by the steam in the kettle. In this

pan or vessel the grease is placed, from which the cheese, when taken from

the press, are rubbed before being placed upon the shelves. Two men were

engaged in this operation, while another marked them before undergoing

the process. Several girls I was informed, were engaged in making sacks,

in which all the cheese are encased. There were two large rooms where

the cheese are placed upon shelves reaching from the bottom to the top of

the building or room, and a richer sight I have seldom seen than was here

presented. One of them contains as my informant told me, 6,000 cheese,

while in the other there were between three and four thousand. In these

rooms men are employed who turn the cheese every other day, to keep off

mould, etc. until they are ready to be shipped. . . . One hundred per day

is the average manufacture of this mammoth cheesery, being the product

from the milk of 500 cows.⁷⁹

It was stated in 1851 that the same factory made a daily average

of 300 small cheeses, weighing in all 5,000 pounds, and depended

on the milk of 2,500 cows.⁸⁰

The system had obvious advantages. Though the farmers

received only between three and four and a half or five cents

a pound for the curd,⁸¹ they had none of the labor and responsi-

bility of curing it or of marketing the final product. Theoretically,

too, the large manufacturer should have been able to introduce

economies into the process of curing, and to have a more uniform

quality of cheese than could be expected in the individual dairies.

Unfortunately there was one defect which he could not over-

come. There were almost as many different grades of curd as

there were farmers contracting to furnish it, and mismanage-

ment in the early stages rendered impossible the making of good

cheese later. Added to this defect was the fact that the demand

for "English Dairy" cheese shortly fell off. By the end of 1851

the factories found that the market for it was glutted and that

they could not get as much for it as ordinary dairy cheese was

 

79 Ohio Cultivator, VI (1850), 243-244. Another account of the same time

states that this factory was then making from 100 to 120 cheeses a day, from the milk

of 1,000 cows. Cultivator, n.s., VII (1850), 315.

80 Western Reserve Chronicle, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, VII (1851), 291.

81 Conneaut Reporter, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, V (1849), 198; Ohio Farmer,

December 5, 1856, 193; Ohio Cultivator, XIII (1857), 233.

• 16
 

62    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

bringing.⁸² In the spring of 1852 most of the factories either

closed or were about to close, and the sellers of curd were being

forced to go back to the making of dairy cheese. In 1857 there

was left apparently only a chain of four factories in the north-

eastern corner of Trumbull County which made in all about

250 tons of cheese.⁸³ In the autumn of 1859 it was reported

that the curd factories "have all gone down, most of them ruin-

ing their owners."84 The consequence was that when the modern

cheese-factory system was introduced into Ohio from New York

in 1862, it was handicapped less by its novelty than by the re-

membrance on the part of many dairymen of the failure of a

few years before.

As was the case with other staple products of Ohio, there

developed from an early date a somewhat specialized marketing

organization for cheese, though for many years after Ohio had

a respectable output, it was not unusual for cheese to be trans-

ported to a consuming center by its maker and there sold by him.

As late as 1842 Elias Follett of Granville took a boat load of

his own cheese and pork down the Ohio and the Mississippi.85

Sometimes, as was true of most other commodities, the country

storekeeper accepted small lots in trade. Between 1827 and 1842

much Western Reserve cheese was taken in by country merchants

in satisfaction of their store bills and shipped to New York.

As late as 1850 the storekeepers were still commonly buying

Western Reserve cheese for export, though probably in smaller

quantities than earlier.⁸⁶ However, even during the 1820's, there

appeared in the Western Reserve specialized dealers in cheese.

These men, as has already been noticed, gathered cheese from the

storekeepers and dairymen, and took it to the southern and east-

ern markets.    Around Youngstown in 1835 such traders were

said to "contract with the farmers for their cheese before it is

 

 

82 Cultivator, n.s., VIII (1851), 325-326; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850

(Scott ed.), 62; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1851, 222; Ohio Agricultural Report for

1865, Part II, 171.

83 Ashtabula Telegraph, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, VIII (1852), 164; Ohio

Cultivator, XIII (1857), 233.

84 Cleveland Herald, cited in Country Gentleman, XIV (1859), 255.

85 Western Farmer and Gardener, III (1841-42), 116.

86 Pioneer and General History of Geauga County, 29; Ashtabula Telegraph,

quoted in Cultivator, n.s., VII (1850), 105.

• 17
 

DAIRY INDUSTRY PRIOR TO CIVIL WAR                 63

made, stipulating a certain price to be paid on delivery, generally

from six to seven cents per pound, at the door of the dairy, or at

some adjacent store."87 Till about 1843 cheese sent to the east-

ern states, especially that forwarded by the country storekeepers,

was often handled by ordinary commission agents as part of their

general trade. After this date new commission houses came into

existence to deal exclusively in cheese or in cheese and other

dairy products. By 1848 there were several of these in both

Boston and New York. A single Boston commission firm sold

1,000 ordinary cheeses from Ohio in 1849, as well as 300 boxes

of Pineapple cheese.⁸⁸

The local dealers did not introduce as much system into the

trade as might have been expected. The practice, almost univer-

sal among them, of paying a uniform price for cheese regardless

of quality made it difficult for careful dairymen to profit from

their extra pains, and tended to bring the cheese, even of the

Western Reserve, into disrepute in the east. It was not till about

1850 that the dealers began to discriminate in their offers, and

then they did so only because they found that they were losing

money on the poorer grades of cheese they obtained and that

the better farmers were marketing directly through commission

men.89 Another difficulty arose in connection with a practice

which became fairly widespread about 1850--that of making con-

tracts whereby the dealer agreed to take from the farmer, at

specified times throughout the season, all the cheese he had on

his shelves which had been curing two weeks or more. If the

dealer took the cheeses and continued the curing process, there

were advantages in this plan, for he got a more uniform product,

and the workers in the dairy were relieved of much heavy labor.

Often, however, the dealer shipped the partially cured cheese to

market immediately. Much of it spoiled in transit, with the

result that the commission houses of Cincinnati sometimes refused

to trade in cheese during the hot months.⁹⁰

 

87 Hildreth, "Miscellaneous Observations Made during a Tour," 24.

88 Detroit Free Press, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, IV (1848), 78; New England

Farmer, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, V (1849), 55.

89 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1851, 221.

90 Ashtabula Sentinel, quoted in Western Agriculturist (Columbus), 1 (1851),

156; Western Reserve Chronicle, quoted in Ohio Cultivator, VII (1851), 291; Ohio

Cultivator, XI (1855), 217.

• 18
 

64     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

The second great branch of the dairy industry, butter mak-

ing, though found on every farm from the days of earliest settle-

ment, and being in the aggregate of more value than the cheese

industry,⁹¹ attracted much less attention than the latter.         This

was doubtless partly because there was little about butter making

in Ohio to distinguish it from        butter making in any of the

adjacent states and partly because there was not much concen-

tration of production in special areas. While it is true that the

leading butter counties were in the Western Reserve, owing to

the fact that butter was made in the dairies there as a by-product

of cheese making throughout the summer as well as after the

cheese season ended in the autumn, their predominance over

other counties was not marked. Thus, in 1860, of the five

counties in Ohio which had a production exceeding             1,000,000

pounds of butter--Cuyahoga with 1,162,665, Lorain with 1,243,-

992, Portage with 1,437,556, Stark with 1,091,923, and Wayne

with 1,169,⁵⁸¹⁹²--only the first three were in the Western Re-

serve. It is worth pointing out, however, that Ohio made more

butter in 1860 than any other state west of New York and Penn-

sylvania. Illinois, its nearest rival, produced 28,052,551 pounds.

Only two western counties outside Ohio at that time produced

as much as 1,000,000 pounds; they were Cook County, Illinois,

and Oakland County, Michigan.⁹³

As butter was an article of small bulk and weight in propor-

tion to its value, it formed part of the cargo ordinarily carried

down river on the flatboats to New Orleans at the beginning of

the nineteenth century.⁹⁴ The same quality made it one of the

few products of the farm which would bring cash in out-of-the-

 

91 In 1850 Ohio was credited with producing 34,449,379 pounds of butter and

20,819,542 pounds of cheese, and in 1860 with 48,543,162 pounds of butter and

21,618,893 pounds of cheese. Agriculture of the United States in 1860, lxxxiii. In

the early 1850's butter ordinarily sold by the pound for about twice the price of

cheese. Butter marketed in Mahoning County in 1850 brought from ten cents to

twelve cents a pound as compared with five cents for cheese, and in Ashtabula County

in 1852 and 1853 from twelve and a half cents to twenty cents as compared with

from five cents to nine cents. Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850 (Scott ed.), 267;

Ohio Legislative Documents, XVII, Part II (1853), No. 5, 255; ibid., XVIII, Part II

(1854), No. 21, 517.

92 Agriculture of the United States in 1860, 114, 118.

93 Ibid., 32, 78, 186.

94 F. A. Michaux, Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains, in the

States of Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessea, and Back to Charleston by the Upper Caro-

lines (London, 1805), in Thwaites, Early Western Travels, III, 191.

• 19
 

DAIRY INDUSTRY PRIOR TO CIVIL WAR                    65

 

way communities during the 1820's and 1830's.95 By the 1840's

butter became the chief medium      of barter between the farmers'

wives and the traveling hucksters. Such men went through the

country with a load of groceries, dry goods, and odds and ends,

and took butter in exchange, usually allowing a cent or so more

per pound than the storekeepers. They then sold it to the steam-

boats on the Ohio, or at river towns such as Portsmouth or Cin-

cinnati.96

Some of the butter made in Ohio was first class. This was

true especially of that brought to market by the Amish people

in Tuscarawas97 and other counties. However, the farmers of

Pennsylvania origin had in general a good reputation as butter

makers. Those in Stark County, and doubtless most of the others,

proceeded in this manner:

Our best butter-makers have what we call a "spring-house"--a small

building of stone or brick, with large shallow troughs, through which run

streams of spring-water. After milking and straining, the pans or crocks

of new milk are placed in these water-troughs, and the cream soon rises

to the top. The barrel churn is the kind in general use here. To preserve

butter in warm weather for a week, it must be worked over until the milk

is all expelled; to preserve it for winter use, it may be packed in stone

jars, containing about 20 pounds each, with 1 pound pulverized rock salt,

1/2 pound loaf sugar, and 1/2 ounce saltpetre. The crock or jar should

then be covered, first, with a clean white cloth, and then with drilling

or heavy muslin, dipped into a preparation of melted tallow and beeswax,

and bound round tight with wire, to exclude the air, and then deposited in the

spring-house for winter use.98

Butter manufactured in this careful fashion never lacked a market.

Thus there were farmers in Muskingum County about 1850 who

had come originally from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, whose

butter went to supply a private clientele in Philadelphia.99

Ohio butter in general was, however, very poor. One dealer

 

95 D. Griffiths, Two Years' Residence in the New Settlements of Ohio, North

America: With Directions to Emigrants (London, 1835), 74.

96 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850 (Scott ed.), 109, 234, 397; Ohio Agri-

cultural Report for 1853, 554.

97 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1855, 213.

98 Patent Office Report for 1852, Senate Executive Document, 32 Cong., 2

Sess., No. 55, Part II, 257. In the late 1840's there was a great rage for patent

churns, most of which were inferior even to the old dash variety. Ohio Cultivator, V

(1849), 17.

99 Patent Office Report for 1851, Senate Executive Document, 32 Cong., 1 Sess.,

No. 118, 400.

• 20
 

66    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

wrote in 1845: "I have had occasion to examine a good deal of

Ohio butter, in that State, and at various points out of it. I am

sorry to say that I have found it uniform in only one particular,

and that was bad."¹⁰⁰ Again, of something over 6,000,000 pounds

of butter from Ohio received at Buffalo during 1849, it was stated

that "a very small proportion . . . ranked as prime; far the greater

proportion only as grease butter."¹⁰¹ One reason for the inferior-

ity was the small-scale and slovenly method of manufacture. On

the typical wheat, wool, livestock, or general farm, butter was

commonly made from the milk of a few cows, partly to satisfy

the needs of the family and partly to provide pin money. The

farm wives knew nothing of the chemical and mechanical prin-

ciples involved in butter making, and if they had, would have

been indifferent to applying them, for the peddlers and store-

keepers seldom discriminated in price between good and poor

samples. Ohio farmers were, of course, reluctant to admit that

the prevailing methods of working butter were defective, so they

claimed that the reason their butter was inferior to that of Orange

County, New York, was that the grass of Ohio was different

from that of New York, or else that the common Syracuse or

Onondaga salt sold in the west was not so well suited for butter

making as West India salt.¹⁰² A second and no less important

reason for the inferiority of Ohio butter lay in careless handling

by the storekeepers and the peddlers. The butter made by the

farm wives, it was afterwards stated only too truthfully, "was

taken in by storekeepers for merchandise, thrown in an old box

or barrel, the best assorted over and sold at cost to the few who

were compelled to buy, and the balance, after being tossed around

for perhaps months, during which all the noxious gasses of the

cellar penetrated it through and through, was packed up and sent

to market, and then perhaps tossed about one or two months

longer, and at last sold only to those who could only buy, cheap

butter, or else it was traded to the lard and tallow chandlers."103

It is no wonder then, that as late as 1858, the best butter of Ohio

 

100 Ohio Cultivator, 1 (1845), 22.

101 Ibid., VI (1850), 180.

102 Ibid., IV (1848), 93; Western Agriculturist, 1 (1851), 339; Ohio Agricul-

tural Report for 1855, 256.

103 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1873, 270.

• 21
 

DAIRY INDUSTRY PRIOR TO CIVIL WAR                  67

to find its way into ordinary trade channels ranked "about with

the second and third grades" of the butter of New York.¹⁰⁴

Bad as Ohio butter was, it was no worse than that of other

parts of the western country nor than that of most of the east,

and therefore it could always be sold somewhere. Till the end

of the 1840's the chief outlets were in the east and the south.

It was stated in 1851, for example, that for several years past,

a large proportion of the butter of Portage County had been

bought up by one New Orleans dealer.¹⁰⁵ The gold rush resulted

in the opening for a time of an important market in California.

This was partly because little butter had ever been made by the

Mexican inhabitants, and that little was dirty grey in color and

disagreeable in flavor,106 but mostly because the demands of the

forty-niners and their successors vastly exceeded any thereto-

fore known. Large amounts of butter were being exported from

Ohio by 1852, to sell in some cases for as much as $1.50 a

pound.l⁰⁷ One New York dealer announced in 1852 that he

intended to buy butter to the amount of 405,000 pounds at his

three agencies in Ohio, 230,000 pounds at Salem, 125,000 pounds

at Wooster, and 50,000 pounds at Circleville, to repack it, and

to ship it to San Francisco.¹⁰⁸ It was stated in 18₅8 that butter

from the Western Reserve "has been largely shipped to Califor-

nia."¹⁰⁹ By this date, however, California was becoming in-

creasingly independent of outside dairy supplies, so that Ohio

butter was again being marketed mostly through its old eastern

and southern channels.

Owing to the general increase in the consumption of butter

which occurred throughout the nation in the late 1840's and the

1850's, butter was in greater demand in Ohio than it had been

earlier. The coming of the railroads fostered this demand in

 

104 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1858, 299.

105 Ohio Legislative Documents, XVI, Part II (1852), No. 2, 552.

106 Alexander Forbes, California: A History of Upper and Lower California from

Their First Discovery to the Present Time, Comprising an Account of the Climate, Soil,

Natural Productions, Agriculture, Commerce, &c. (London, 1839), 266-267.

107 Patent Office Report for 1852, Senate Executive Document 32 Cong., 2

Sess., No. 55, Part II, 257; Ohio Legislative Documents, XVII, Part II (1853), No.

5, 284, 489.

108 Ohio Cultivator, VIII (1852), 329.

109 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1858, 299.

• 22
 

68    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

regions which formerly had been isolated too much to engage in

the industry to any extent, as, for example, Preble County.¹¹⁰

It was reported from Portage County at the end of 1852 that

"butter buyers have been so numerous the past season, that we

find it impossible to ascertain the amount of butter exported."111

The expansion in the production of butter which in consequence

took place between the census of 1850 and that of 1860112 was

not, however, a phenomenon peculiar to Ohio, but was character-

istic of most of the other states. The tendency to shift from

cheese making to butter making, noticed in Mahoning County as

early as 1850,113 was likewise universal.¹¹⁴

The third branch of the dairy industry--that of furnishing

fluid milk to urban consumers--was insignificant in comparison

with cheese making and butter making prior to the Civil War.

However, in the late 1840's raw-milk dairying was taking on

local importance in the vicinity of Cincinnati and Cleveland.

When the Little Miami Railroad came into operation, milk was

shipped to the Cincinnati market from Warren County and even

from Clark County; but until long after the Civil War at least

ninety per cent.of the dairies supplying Cincinnati were located in

Hamilton County, just as those supplying Cleveland were almost

entirely in Cuyahoga County.115 It is scarcely necessary to men-

tion that the need for sanitary handling of the milk was seldom

recognized and that the day of regulation and inspection was still

in the future.

The dairy industry in its several branches was so firmly

established in Ohio by the outbreak of the Civil War that the

introduction of the "Herkimer County factory system" of cheese

making developed in upstate New York into Geauga County in

the spring of 1862 and into other parts of the Western Reserve

 

110 Ohio Legislative Documents, XVIII, Part II (1854), No. 21, 649.

111 Ibid., XVII, Part II (1853), No. 5, 437.

112 See above, note 91.

113 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1850 (Scott ed.), 267.

114 For these general developments in the dairy industry, see Percy W. Bidwell

and John I. Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, 1620-1860

(Washington, 1925), 429.

115 Ohio Agricultural Report for 1849, 65, 79, 213; Ohio Agricultural Report

for 1851, 271; Ohio Agricultural Report for 1879, 268; Ohio Agricultural Report for

1883, 306.

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DAIRY INDUSTRY PRIOR TO CIVIL WAR                      69

 

shortly thereafter involved no radical alteration in the farm

economy of the State.¹¹⁶ Subsequent innovations, such as the

creamery method of butter making, similarly caused no furor in

Ohio. Technological improvements were welcomed and adopted,

it is true, but in an old dairying region they lacked the revolu-

tionary implications they possessed in wheat-sick Iowa or Wis-

consin or Upper Canada. By merely keeping abreast of changes

in the industry, the sons and successors of the pioneer dairymen

maintained the position of Ohio as one of the leading dairy states

till the end of the century.117

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

116 For the introduction of the New York factory system. into the Western Re-

serve, see Ohio Agricultural Report for 1865, Part II, 171-174.

117 In 1900 Ohio ranked sixth among the states in the farm value of its dairy

produce. It was credited with $25,383,627, New York with $55,474,155, Pennsyl-

vania with $35,860,110, Illinois with $29,638,619, Iowa with $27,516,870, and Wis-

consin with $26,779,721. Twelfth Census of the United States, Taken in the Year

1900 (Washington, 1902), V, Agriculture, Part I, clxviii.

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