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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.