Download SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

Elinor F. Oakes
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
A TICKLISH BUSINESS: DAIRYING IN
NEW ENGLAND AND PENNSYLVANIA,
1750-1812*
THERE
is no question that American dairying underwent a great
ltransformation during the mid-nineteenth century. Improvements in animal husbandry; the factory processing of butter, cheese,
condensed milk, and ice cream; refrigerated railroad transportation
and commodity exchanges to handle dairy products represented an
entirely new level of technology. Alvord, Pirtle, Weist, Schlebecker,
and Selitzer have discussed these important developments.' But in
drawing a contrast between what went before and what came after
the 1850s, historians have generally characterized the earlier American dairying as thoroughly primitive-scraggly cows, careless
*Preparation of this paper was made possible by a grant from the Smithsonian
Institution to research early American dairying.
1. Henry Alvord, "Dairy Development in the United States," United States Department ofAgriculture Yearbookfor the Year 1899 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1900), pp. 381-402. "Dairying as a specialty did not appear in the United
States to any extent until well along in the nineteenth century . . . the methods
and utensils were crude. The average quality of the products was inferior;" Thomas
R. Pirtle, Histoy of the Dairy Industry (Chicago: Mojonner Bros., 1926), pp. 213-14;
Edward Weist, The Butter Industry in the United States (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1916), p. 15. "Up to 1850 there was no science in dairying. Everything was
done by guess; there was no order, no system, no science in dairy operations;"
John T. Schlebecker, A History of American Dairying (Chicago: Rand McNally and
Company, 1967), p. 10. "Commercial dairying flowered in the 1800s. Until then it
had remained an unimportant industry for several reasons. All dairy products
perished rapidly. In order to turn to commercial dairying, the farmer had to have
a market near at hand large enough to assure that he could sell all that he produced,
and promptly . . . Commercial dairying was something new in America in the
nineteenth century, and farmers naturally hesitated about entering it;" Ralph
Selitzer, The Daiy Industry in America (New York: Books for Industry, Inc., 1976),
p. 41. "No real effort had yet been made to develop the herds to provide consistent
milk quality and stable quantities . . . Cows were milked in open yards and sanitary
concepts were primitive indeed."
195
196
PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY
processing, and small scale, local marketing. This was not entirely
true. In the midst of backwardness, a highly sophisticated dairy
industry existed as well, from about 1750 to the beginning of the
War of 1812. Before the end of the eighteenth century, farmers built
irrigated pastures and elaborate dairy houses for herds of over a
hundred head of cattle. Dairywomen made cheese as good as any
in the world and processed butter that remained edible for up to
three years without refrigeration. The colonial dairy trade, along the
coast and to the West Indies, expanded after the Revolution. Well
before Jefferson became president, Americans exported butter to
China-a trade that required two crossings of the Equator. This
was no simple business by any means.
The hearths of American dairying were around Philadelphia and
in southern New England, mainly between Boston and New Haven.
As early as 1685, William Penn wrote that farmers in his colony were
trying to "get into Dairies as fast as they can,"-this only three
years after the earliest settlement. 2 The Quakers and other religious
sects who sought refuge in Pennsylvania came from Britain and
northern Europe, where dairying was already commercially important. In their old world communities, Welsh, Irish, English,
Rhineland, and Palatinate farmers had developed systems of husbandry suited to their peculiar circumstances. In Pennsylvania,
these several traditions mingled, for the first time on a large scale,
and vitalized the business of agriculture. English farmways dominated in New England, although the Huguenots brought their
dairying practices to Rhode Island. Almanacs-the farmers' practical
handbooks-helped further spread information about dairying
throughout the colonies.
During pioneering times, cattle were first a source of power for
work, second a source of meat, and third, almost incidentally, a
source of milk. The harder a cow worked, the less milk she gave, as
high milk production heavily drained the animal's energy. Gradually, farmers learned that contented cows milked best and began
treating them with care.'
2. Lyman Carrier, The Beginnings of Agriculture in America (New York: McGraw Hill
Book Co., Inc., 1923), p. 283; Wayne D. Rasmussen, ed., Agriculture in the United
States, a Documentary History (New York: Random House, 1975), p. 125.
3. D. B. Grigg, The Agricultural Systems of the World (London: Cambridge University
Press, 1974), p. 194; J. B. Grinnell, The Cattle Industries of the United States (New
York: Joseph Reall, 1882), pp. 7-8.
DAIRYING, 1750-1812
197
Almost from the time they arrived in Pennsylvania, German
farmers built substantial barns for their livestock, as they had in
Europe. The English colonists, on the other hand, were unaccustomed
to winters as severe as those in Pennsylvania and New England,
and had traditionally let their cattle forage outdoors year-round. 4
Peter Kalm seldom saw any animal shelters in the middle colonies. 5
In 1789, a Philadelphia almanac writer complained that American
cows lost one half of their milk for want of stabling, and that calves
commonly died of exposure.' Apparently, though, barns became
more numerous and better built. Samuel Deane, in The New England
Fanner (1790), described how to build a tight cow house, safe from
"the cold north wind," with stantions, but he thought farmers
needed "but little teaching concerning these apartments as they have
been so long acquainted with them." A Delaware man published
a plan for a stable and dairy having one hundred cows in 1793. The
building, with two sheds of 125 feet and two dairy houses, had
five-foot stalls for each animal and pipes connecting the stalls with
the dairy room, through which the milk flowed. 7 A farm offered
for sale in 1800 had among its improvements "a dairy, quite new,
on a very good plan, laid with marble."' If most dairymen neglected
to build proper animal shelters, successful ones did.
Without understanding the science of animal nutrition, farmers
knew well enough how cattle responded to different feeds. Native
weeds were poor food for cattle, although salt marsh grass served
as a fairly good hay. The many small islands on Narragansett Bay
had marsh-meadows for grazing that also had natural barriers
against wolves and straying. Farmers along the Delaware River
built dikes and tide gates during the 1750s to reclaim several thousand acres of salt marsh for pasture. Inland, the Pennsylvania
4. Stevenson Fletcher, Pennsylvania Agriculture and Country Life, 1640-1840 (Harrisburg:
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1950), pp. 150, 169; Percy
W. Bidwell and John Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United States,
1620-1860 (New York: Peter Smith, 1941), p. 107; Schlebecker, American Dairying,
p. 19; Hector St. John De Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches
of Eighteenth Centuy America (New York: New American Library, 1963), p. 303.
5. Peter Kalm, Travels Into North America, 1748-1750, trans. by J. R. Forster (3
vols.: Warrington and London: 1770-1771), 2:50.
6. Poulson's Town and Country Almanac ... 1789 (Zachariah Poulson, Jr., Philadelphia:
1788).
7. Samuel Deane, The New England Farmer (Worcester: Isaiah Thomas, 1790),
pp. 63-64; John Spurrier, The Practical Farmer (Wilmington: Brynberg and Andrews,
1793), pp. 309-11.
8. The American and Daily Advertiser, April 17, 1800, p. 1.
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PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY
Germans constructed irrigated meadows and "farms were valued
in proportion to the quantity of land capable of irrigation."
New Englanders ditched and diverted brooks to raise more hay.
English grasses-timothy, red clover, and saintfoin-increased in
American pasturage from 1750 on. Irrigation and better grasses
allowed graziers to fatten western cattle that drovers brought
east. But for dairymen, greener pastures meant smaller acreage
per cow and/or larger herds. On brush pasture, a milk cow might
require ten acres or more for foraging, where one acre of saintfoin
was sufficient."
While the average number of cows was small in the colonies
(3.7 per Pennsylvania farm in 1765; 2.28 in Connecticut in 1771),
there were some surprisingly large herds. Two Rhode Island farms
in 1755 had seventy-three and 110 dairy cows, while several Narragansett County farms had twenty-five to fifty head. Johann
Schoepf, on his travels through Pennsylvania in 1784, saw a plantation of 300 "black cattle" with a large dairy where "much butter
and good cheese are made." Average farm size in Chester and
Lancaster Counties, Pennsylvania ranged from seventy-five to 130
acres in both 1759 and 1782. In modern times, the typical American
dairy farm, of 200 acres, has twenty cows, while in Europe both
average acreage and average number of animals is smaller. "
The critical feeding problem came in winter. A cow ate about
forty pounds of hay a day, with a supplement of boiled potatoes,
9. Notes on Farming (New York: 1787), p. 35.
10. Fletcher, Pennsylvania Agriculture, pp. 103, 159; New York Historical Society,
Verplanck Family Papers, "Farm Book" (ca. 1790), p. 169; Josiah Twamley,
Dairying Exemplified or, The Business of Making Cheese (Ist American ed., from 2nd
British, Corrected and Improved; Providence; Carter and Wilkinson, 1796), p. 56;
Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture, p. 104; Deane, New England Farmer,
p. 115; Fletcher, Pennsylvania Agriculture, p. 159; Spurrier, PracticalFarmer, pp. 161-67,
307-08; Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, p. 54; James Humphreys, Gleaningsfrom the
Most Celebrated Books on Husbandy (2nd ed., London, 1803; Philadelphia, 1803),
p. 295; Arthur Young, Rural Economy (2nd ed., London, 1776; Philadelphia, James
Humphreys Jr., 1776), p. 45.
11. Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture, pp. 73, 106; Carrier, Beginnings of
Agriculture, p. 193; Johann D. Schoepf, Travels in the Confederation, 1783-1784, trans.
and ed. by Alfred J. Morrison (Erlanger: J. J. Palm, 1788; reprint ed., New York:
Burt Franklin, 1968), p. 191, James T. Lemon, "Household Consumption in
Eighteenth Century America and Its Relationship to Production and Trade: The
Situation Among Farmers in Southeastern Pennsylvania," Agricultural Histoy, 41
(1967): 68; Grigg, Agricultural Systems, pp. 189-90.
DAIRYING, 1750-1812
199
turnips, bran, buckwheat, lentils, carrots, malt dust, or corn crops. 12
Several almanacs offered advice on feeding calves, i.e. ways to get
them on vegetable food and off their mother's milk."8 Poor Richard
noted in 1790 that "if you live within thirty miles of a good market,
you will find it much cheaper to sell all your calves for veal and
keep up your stock of milch cows by purchasing such as are bought
from distant parts at a low price." Josiah Twamley, who wrote
the first book on dairying published in America (1796), instructed
that "great care ought to be taken with respect to the food of animals
which furnish . . . so great and necessary a part of our sustenance,"
an idea that would come to fruition with Morrison's Feed and Feeding
generations later."
Dairy cattle needed protection from disease and pests to milk
productively. Common troubles such as "hollow horn," "wolf in
the tail," and "loss of cud" came from exposure, but improved with
care. To control foot rot, farmers had to keep their animals out
of mud and filth. Using antiseptics was not understood, although
some farmers probably applied home remedies, that in some cases
had alcohol which acted as a disinfectant. The more serious bovine
diseases-tuberculosis and brucellosis-infected humans as well as
calves through milk. Hump back deformities in people evidenced
a case of bovine tuberculosis. A century before Koch and Pasteur,
these dreaded diseases raged in Europe and America without control. Farmers' almanacs carried advice about controlling cattle
sickness, but not in any scientific fashion. Then in 1806, the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture offered a gold medal
"for the best essay and plan for promoting veterinary knowledge
and instruction." Eventually, the University of Pennsylvania
12. Edwin Morris Betts, Thomas Jefferson's Farm Book (Princeton University Press,
1953), p. 73; Verplanck, "Farm Book," p. 171; Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, pp.
51, 54; Spurrier, Practical Farmer, p. 264; Thomas Cooper, Some Information Respecting
America (Dublin: William Porter, 1794; reprint ed., New York: Augustus M.
Kelley Publishers, 1969); p. 126; Hutchins' Improved Almanack . .. 1771 (New York:
Hugh Gaine, 1770); Poor Richard's Improved Anlmanack . . 1773 (Philadelphia: D. Hall
and W. Sellers, 1772); The Lancaster Almanack . . . 1778 (Lancaster: Frances Baily,
1777); New Jersey Almanack . . . 1792 (Trenton: Isaac Collins, 1791); Thomas'
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont Almanack for . . .
1793 (Worcester: Isaiah Thomas, 1792); Columbian Almanack . . . 1798 (Wilmington:
Peter Brynberg, 1797).
13. Hutchins' Improved Almanac . . . 1772; Father Tammany's Almanac . . . 1788 (Philadelphia: Young and McCulloch, 1787); Poor Richard Improved . .. 1793; Verplanck,
"Farm Book," p. 143.
14. Poor Richard Improved . . . 1790; Twamley, Dairying Exemplfied, p. 53; John
Smith, The Husbandman's Magazine (Boston: Allen for Boone, 1718), 15 16.
200
PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY
would open the first veterinary medicine school in the United
States. '5
Peter Kalm thought that cows in America degenerated in size
with each generation. Other Europeans probably thought as much
of American people. The opposite was true. Early cattle importations
brought small animals to save space on ships. Farmers knew well
enough how to select the best stock for breeding and did so. George
Logan, in Philadelphia, told Jefferson he fattened his cows to 700
pounds. But probably few mature cows in the eighteenth century,
in either Europe or America, weighed over 400-500 pounds, and
were therefore substantially smaller than the fat beasts Edward
Hicks painted from Pennsylvania farms during the 1840s.'0
Farmers knew that the physical size of cows and their milk producing capacity went together proportionately. Samuel Deane
described a good New England cow as having "a broad forehead,
a large deep belly, thick thighs, round legs with short joints and a
long body." He also thought red cows were the best milkers while
black cows bore calves better.' Several authorities in the 1790s
advised farmers "to sell all their cows except those that were of a
breed remarkable for giving a great deal of milk," and to "breed
from those which produce the best and largest quantity of milk."'8
Devon cattle, developed in England about 1760, possibly came
to America before the Revolution, and there were importations
of milking Durham-Shorthorns in 1783. But even these pure breed
varieties were dual purpose animals to a large extent. Most colonial
cattle were simply described as brown, red, black, red and white,
15. Cattle medicines: Poor Will's Almanack . .. 1788 (Philadelphia: Joseph Cruckshank, 1787); Smith, Husbandman's Magazine, pp. 61-63; Spurrier, Practical Farmer,
pp. 297-99; Diseases: Fletcher, Pennsylvania Agriculture, pp. 172-73, 349; Schlebecker,
American Dairying, pp. 32-34; Dairymaids commonly contracted cow-pox, a mild
form of small pox, from touching pox postules on cows. Although dairymaids
broke out in spots similar to small pox, they didn't die from the infection. Edward
Jenner noticed this in England around 1775, which led to his successful discovery
and use of the small pox vaccination in 1796. Edward Jenner, An Inquiry into the
Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae . . . Known by the Name of Cow Pox (London:
Sampson and Low, 1798).
16. Kalm, Travels, vol. 2; Betts, Farm Book, p. 73; Weights: B. H. Slicher Van
Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe A.D. 500-1850 (London: Edward Arnold,
Ltd., 1963), p. 334; New York Historical Society, James Pitcher, "Farm Ledger,"
(ca. 1761), p. 109; Fletcher, Pennsylvania Agriculture, p. 172.
17. Deane, New England Farmer, p. 63; Verplanck, "Farm Book," p. 155.
18. Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, p. 56; Encyclopaedia (18 vols., Philadelphia: Thomas
Dobson, 1798), p. 797; Thomas G. Fessenden, The Register of Arts (Philadelphia:
C. and A. Conrad and Co., 1808), p. 50; Poor Richard Improved, 1790.
DAIRYING, 1750-1812
201
brown and white, black and white, mottlefaced, brindled, and
pied-crossed or crisscrossed breeds. Pure bred single purpose animals
came later.-Holsteins not until 1857. However, in 1809, the Pennsylvania Society for Improving the Breed of Cattle became the first
livestock improvement association in America. It held annual
fairs at Philadelphia until 1814. '
Certainly milking production improved with proper husbandry.
Around 1756, a New Jersey farmer noted that cows should give at
least two gallons of milk a day or else be changed. A New York farmer
in 1790 wrote that eight gallons a day was maximum. A cow could
lactate for forty weeks; so, theoretically, milking at two gallons a
day, annual production would have been 4,816 pounds. This was
only slightly less than the average 5,000 to 6,000 pounds of milk
Shorthorns produce in the twentieth century. A well cared for dairy
cow earned £5 to £6 for her owner each year, as Charles Reed reckoned in New Jersey in 1757 and Samuel Deane reiterated for New
England in 1790. Thus, dairy cattle were often the most profitable
farm animals during the late eighteenth century. 2 0
For most farmers in the eighteenth century, even those in southeastern Pennsylvania and southeastern New England, dairying was
not a commercial activity. Among farmers who did market some
butter, cheese, or milk, most did so only as a sideline. But for some,
dairy husbandry involved building irrigated meadows, planting
lush grasses, putting up fine barns and stables, paying smart attention to the care and feeding of their animals, and learning more
about their complicated business. What was true of most farmers was
not necessarily true of farmers who produced the most.
Husbandry was only half of dairying; processing was the other
half. Generally, women handled dairy processing on the farm. They
were the farmers' wives, daughters, employees, or servants, although
Samuel Deane warned that dairying was too "ticklish a business to
be trusted to servants." The remarkable thing about dairy processing
in the eighteenth century was how dairymaids made wholesome
19. Fletcher, Pennsylvania Agriculture, pp. 176-77; Pitcher, "Farm Ledger," p. 109.
20. Carl Woodward, Ploughs and Politicks, Charles Reed of New Jersey and His Notes on
Agriculture, 1715-1774 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1941), pp.
344-45, 349; Verplanck, "Farm Book," pp. 175, 17 6a; Deane, New England Farmer,
p. 63. Cow value and profit: Encyclopaedia, p. 797; Carmen, ed., American Husbandry
(London, 1775: Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, Inc., 1964), p. 144;
Spurrier, Practical Farmer, p. 264; Pitcher, "Farm Ledger," p. 13. Milk yield: Van
Bath, Agrarian History, p. 284.
202
PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY
foods with no knowledge of bacteriology. Milk is the perfect culture
for germs. 2
Calf births in March and April brought the traditional "spring
flush" of milk, which continued flowing during the hottest months.
A good dairymaid could milk six to eight cows an hour, which she did
at dawn, dusk, and sometimes during midday. She milked each cow
thoroughly. Although the lactometer existed in the eighteenth
century, few dairies had such an instrument for measuring butterfat
content. But dairymaids knew from experience that the richest milkthe strippings-came last from the udder. They could put the milk
with the highest butterfat into one pail. '
The dairy house or room was as often a part of the farmhouse as
it was connected to the cattle stable. New England dairy houses were
most often annexed to the dwelling, partly above and partly below
ground. The dairywomen dried their cheese in the upper part and set
milk and cream in the lower.' One dairy had among its utensils
three wooden pails with iron or brass hoops, several iron pails, a
twenty-five gallon cheese tub with cover and stand, three churns
(one large plunger churn, a barrel churn, and a small hand churn),
two cheese presses, six cheese molds "with 8 to 16 inch diameter
round oak boards to fit them," two large glazed, earthenware pots
for three to four gallons of cream, one dozen glazed earthenware
pans for cooling milk, two cream skimmers, two skimming dishes,
a dozen cheese cloths of two sorts, and four double hanging shelves
for utensils and cheese.'4 Every authority on dairying advised maids
to scald or boil and thoroughly dry all utensils after use. They knew,
without understanding why, that dirty tools made milk go sour.?-,
21. Deane, New England Farmer, p. 67. Servants in the dairy: Twamley, Dairying
Exemplified, p. 8; Encyclopaedia, p. 798; Fessenden, Register of Arts, p. 50; Maria Eliza
Rundell, A New System of Domestic Cookey (Boston: Andrews and Cunningham,
and L. Blake, 1807), pp. 232-33.
22. Calf births: Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, p. 13; Verplanck, "Farm Book,"
pp. 149, 164; Rundell, Domestic Cookey, pp. 232-33. Milking times: Deane, New
England Farmer, p. 63; Verplanck, "Farm Book," p. 174; Thomas'Almanack ... 1803,
p. 40; Rundell, Domestic Cookey, pp. 232-33; Woodward, Ploughs, p. 349. High fat
milk: Verplanck, "Farm Book," p. 174; Thomas' Almanack ... 1803, p. 40.
23. Deane, New England Farmer, pp. 67-68; Humphreys, Gleanings, p. 100.
24. Verplanck, "Farm Book," pp. 211-12. Generally, it is unusual to find among
a museum's collection of dairy implements any that are definitively documented
to the eighteenth century. Rather, they have an approximate date of "Eighteenth
century-early nineteenth century." Among American museums having collections
of dairy implements are Old Sturbridge Village, Colonial Williamsburg, Shelburn
Museum, and Sleepy Hollow Restorations.
25. Torquato Tasso, The Householders Philosophic, Annexed, A Dairie Booke (Amsterdam:
DAIRYING, 1750-1812
203
The first step in making butter was separating the cream from the
skim milk. In springhouses, where shallow pans of milk sat in a
stream of running water, cream rising took from eight to twentyfour hours. Temperature determined the time required. If too cold,
the cream separated quickly but then soured. A moderate temperature of fifty-five to sixty degrees best suited separating. Skimming
went on during the time the cream rose, the best butter being made
from the freshest cream. There was enough fat in two gallons of milk
to make a pound of butter."
Having enough cream to churn into butter presented a problem. If
it took more than one or two days milking to collect enough cream,
it had to be stored somewhere, somehow. Deane advised dairymaids
not to keep cream in the milk house, because cream soured fresh
milk. In some cases, salt would be added to heated cream to restore
its freshness. Sal ammoniac and salt petre supposedly preserved the
flavor of fresh cream. Another recipe for preserving cream had the
dairymaid make a concentrated sugar water solution, mix it ounce for
ounce with warm cream, and store it in air-tight containers. Supposedly, the cream remained sweet for several months that way and
was suitable for keeping milk or cream at sea. 27
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1588; Norwood, New Jersey: W. T. Johnson, 1975);
Deane, New England Fanner, p. 67; Rundell, Domestic Cookery, pp. 232-33; Verplanck,
"Farm Book," p. 177; Humphreys, Gleanings, pp. 100, 328; Woodward, Ploughs,
p. 349; Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, p. 64; Encyclopaedia, p. 650; Fessenden,
Register of Arts, p. 50.
26. Cream rising: Thomas'. . . Almanack . . . 1803; Deane, New England Farmer, p. 65;
Woodward, Ploughs, p. 349. Skimming: Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, pp. 64, 67;
Verplanck, "Farm Book," p. 178. Butter yield: Pitcher, "Farm Ledger," p. 5;
Woodward, Ploughs, p. 343; Carrier, Beginnings of Agriculture, p. 193; Rundell,
Domestic Cookery, pp. 232-33. Every authority had an opinion about the proper
storage vessels for rising cream. Most popular were shallow ceramic or wooden
vessels. Some preferred vessels made with lead, although by the end of the eighteenth
century most writers agreed that leaden vessels would poison their contents. See
Alfred Prime, The Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia,Maryland and South Carolina, 1721-1785:
Gleanings from Newspapers (Topsfield, Mass.: The Walpole Society, 1929), p. 126;
New Jersey and Pennsylvania Almanac . . . 1797 (Trenton: Matthais Day, 1796);
Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, pp. 62, 66; The South Carolina and Georgia Almanac ...
1798 (Charleston: S. T. Elliot, 1797), Woodward, Ploughs, p. 349; Verplanck,
"Farm Book," p. 177; Thomas' Almanac ... 1803, p. 41; Humphreys, Gleanings,
pp. 100, 328; Encyclopaedia, p. 650; Fessenden, Register of Arts, p. 50; Joshua Johnson,
The Art of Cheesemaking (Albany: Charles R. and George Webster, 1801), p. 9.
27. Deane, New England Fanner, pp. 30, 49. Preserving cream: Humphreys, Gleanings,
p. 92; Verplanck, "Farm Book," p. 176; Woodward, Ploughs, p. 348; Salt: Twamley,
Dairying Exemplified, p. 69; Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanack
for 1791 (Baltimore: William Goddard, 1790); A handwritten recipe for preserving
milk at sea is in the Library of Congress copy of Poor Will's Pocket Almanack ... 1782
(Philadelphia: Joseph Cruckshank, 1781).
204
PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY
There was probably a certain touch that made churning more or
less successful. Twamley recommended continuous gentle strokes
when using a plunger churn. The temperature had to be right, but
the dairymaid could adjust the temperature by placing the churn
in a tub of hot or cold water. Still, churning could not have been too
technically demanding as dogs or goats sometimes powered churns
without appreciating the finer points. "
The dairymaid scooped butter out of the churn and placed it in a
bowl which she had rubbed with salt. Using a paddle, she pressed
the remaining buttermilk from the fat. Some maids worked butter
with their hands, on which an expert commented in 1803, "the
beating up of the butter by the hand is an indelicate and barbarous
practice."'
Keeping sweet butter fresh required a certain hide-and-seek
genius. Pots of butter could be stored in a basket lowered to just
above the water level in a well, or covered with wet cloths and hoisted
up a chimney.3 0 In winter, butter pots could be kept in the middle of
the flour bin.3 '
Export butter had to be preserved chemically. A common "mode
of preserving butter," had the dairymaid take two parts of the best
common salt, one part sugar, and one part salt petre, and blend
them completely. Then she mixed one ounce of the preservative with
every sixteen ounces of butter. Butter so prepared kept for three
years. Before being eaten, heavily salted butter had to be washed
with fresh milk and hot water."2
28. Fora "Profitable Method for Making Butter in Winter," see Carleton'sAlmanack ...
1793 (Boston: Samuel Hall, 1792); Poulson's Town and Country Almanack . . . 1793
(Philadelphia, 1792); United States Almanac . . . 1793 (Elizabethtown, New Jersey:
Shepard Kollack, 1792); Thomas' Almanack . . . 1793. Other references to churning:
Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, pp. 67-68; Verplanck, "Farm Book," pp. 178-79;
Thomas' Almanack . .. 1803. For a detailed description of a dog churn, see Spurrier,
Practical Farmer, pp. 312-14.
29. Thomas'Almanac ... 1803, p. 41; Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, p. 67; Woodward,
Ploughs, p. 350; New Jersey Almanack . . . 1790; Encyclopaedia, p. 797; Fessenden,
Register of Arts, p. 51.
30. The American Calendarfor ... 1772 (Philadelphia: William and Thomas Bradford,
1771).
31. Verplanck, "Farm Book," p. 189; Woodward, Ploughs, p. 349.
32. To preserve butter for three years: Humphreys, Gleanings, pp. 48-49; New
Jersey and Pennsylvania Almanac . . . 1797; Columbian Almanack . . . 1798; South Carolina
and Georgia Almanac . .. 1798; Thomas' Almanack . .. 1803, p. 42; The Town and Country
Almanac . . . 1804 (Baltimore: John Butler, 1803), p. 28; Baltimore Almanac . . . 1819
(Baltimore: William Warner, 1818), p. 3. To preserve butter for a few weeks:
Poulson's Almanack . . . 1791; Poor Will's Almanack . . . 1791; Pennsylvania, Delaware,
DAIRYING, 1750-1812
205
William Waring, in the New Jersey Almanac for 1790, noted that
"large quantities of butter, exported from New England to the East
Indies," sold at low prices for the following errors: not working out
the buttermilk, putting large quantities of salt between the layers,
salting the butter with unsuitable salt, not soaking the kegs with
strong brine before the butter was packed, and using "sappy" kegs
of unfit wood. He admonished that "it is of the utmost consequence
to have our butter superior in quality as it soon will be in quantity,
to those in Ireland; otherwise we shall be deprived of foreign markets." A Philadelphia ordinance in 1789 regulated the size and
construction of butter casks on the notion that it would "establish
the reputation of our butter and raise its value." As a consequence
of the way it was preserved and packed, butter was among the least
perishable of all food products (only ships bread kept longer) exported from North America. Perishability set the practical limits
of trade.'
Successful cheesemaking was more complicated than making
butter. Cheese processing involved more techniques and there was a
greater variation of size, color, texture, and flavor than with butter.
Charles Reed, in 1756, thought it was not unusual for a dairymaid to
make two tons of cheese in a season. Obviously, cheesemaking was
no great mystery. 4
Dairywomen understood the basic steps in cheesemaking, most of
which they learned from their mothers. First, they prepared the
rennet. Dried stomach linings from calves retained the enzyme rennin that caused milk curds to coagulate. Dairymaids also used fresh
Mayland, and Virginia . . . 1791. To renew butter: Verplanck, "Farm Book," p. 185;
Woodward, Ploughs, p. 348.
33. Butter casks: New Jersey Almanack . . . 1790; James T. Mitchell and Harry
Flanders, The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682-1801 (16 vol., Harrisburg:
1896-1908), 13: 220. Trade: G. Terry Sharrer, "Flour Milling in the Growth of
Baltimore, 1750-1830," Mayland Historical Magazine, 71 (1976): 322. Packing
butter: Thomas'Almanack... 1803, pp. 41 -42; Woodward, Ploughs, p. 350; Encyclopaedia,
pp. 798-99.
34. Woodward, Ploughs, p. 344.
35. The Art of Cheesemaking, Taught From Actual Experiments (Concord: George Hough,
1793; Litchfield, Conn.: Thomas Collier, 1798);Poulson'sAlmanack... 1793; Verplanck,
"Farm Book," pp. 186-88; Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, pp. 17-26; Johnson,
The Art of Cheesemaking, p. 2; Deane, New England Farmer, pp. 48, 237; Humphreys,
Gleanings, p. 282; Spurrier, PracticalFarmer,pp. 3 07 -08; Encyclopaedia, p. 369; Fessenden,
Register of Arts, p. 54; New Jersey Almanack . . . 1791. Artificial rennet recipes: Verplanck, "Farm Book," p. 189; American Almanac ... 1792 (Philadelphia: Thomas
Bradford, 1791); New Jersey and Pennsylvania Almanac . . . 1797; Twamley, Daiying
Exemplified, pp. 59-61; Humphreys, Gleanings, p. 292.
206
PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY
mawskins. Too little rennet had no effect; too much ruined the
cheese. Rennet problems were the largest cause of bad cheese." 5
Next, milk had to be heated or cooled to a temperature of about
100 degrees. Otherwise the rennin would not act properly. Twamley
advised that a thermometer was a worthwhile investment, although
most dairymaids probably relied on a touch of judgement." 6
When the dairymaid added the rennet, she also put salt in for
texture; marigold petals, cochineal, annato, or carrot juice for color;
and possibly sage, pennyroyal, mint, or saffron for flavor. When the
curds had formed, she sliced them with a wooden knife and allowed
them to sink below the whey, which she drained off about fifteen
minutes later. After another fifteen minute rest, she used her hands
or a curd knife to chop the cheese. Wrapping the broken curds in a
cheesecloth, the dairymaid put the bags into a mold and then
placed the mold on a cheesepress. Cheesepresses were simple lever
devices that either had weights or screws to apply the pressure. Pressing caused excess whey to drain off. From time to time, for several
days, the dairymaid had to turn the cheese in the press for a uniform
effect. 37
Aging cheese took up to two years, during which time insects,
rodents, mold, and temperature excesses took their toll. As a protective covering, the dairymaid sometimes coated her cheese with
butter to keep the rind from drying out or with tar to keep insects
away. Salt petre and pearl ashes supposedly shooed away flies, but
probably at some cost of flavor. Export cheese had to be scalded to
toughen its rind. Twamley also thought that low-fat cheese kept
best on long sea voyages."
By varying the processing, American dairymaids made a surprising
variety of cheese in the eighteenth century, although almost all
were English types. The most popular were Cheshire, Narragansett,
36. Art of Cheesemaking, Taught From Actual Experiments, pp. 3-4; Twamley, Dairying
Exemplfied, pp. 16-17.
37. For detailed cheesemaking recipes, see: Deane, New England Farmer, pp. 48-49;
American Almanac . . . 1792; Verplanck, "Farm Book," pp. 190-210; Poulson's
Almanack ... 1793; The Art of Cheesemaking, Taught From Actual Experiments; Humphreys,
Gleanings, pp. 68-72; Encyclopaedia, p. 369; Spurrier, Practical Farmer, p. 307; Johnson,
The Art of Cheesemaking; Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, pp. 7-8, 26-28, 44; Fessenden,
Register of Arts, pp. 53-56. Many eighteenth century cookbooks also carry such
recipes.
38. Detailed descriptions of aging cheese: Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, pp. 56-58.
Preserving cheese: Johnson, Art of Cheesemaking, p. 7; Woodward,
Ploughs, pp.
346-47; Deane, New England Farmer, pp. 49, 67. Low fat cheese: Twamley, Dairying
Exemplified, p. 33.
DAIRYING, 1750-1812
207
Gloucester, Double Gloucester, Stilton, Wiltshire, Suffolk, Somersetshire, and Connecticut. They made Cheddar as well, although
possibly not by the same "cheddering" process Robert McAdam
introduced into the United States in 1867. Recipes for Slipcoat-a
soft cheese, Brickbat, and cream cheese were also well known.
Pennsylvania farmwomen made a potato cheese that supposedly
tasted like German Westphalian cheese."9
According to Twamley, cheese rounds from large English dairies
commonly weighed between eighty to 140 pounds. Americans also
could produce cheeses that large. The New Jersey Agriculture
Society in 1790 held a contest for the best cheese over three hundred
pounds. In 1793, one New Jersey farm produced a monstrous cheese
of five hundred pounds.'0 Generally, most cheeses were about five
inches thick, a foot in diameter, and weighed between twelve and
twenty pounds. One authority on cheese thought that rounds
smaller than five pounds lost their natural moisture and that cheeses
six inches thick of twenty pounds were consistently the best."1
Probably there was a considerable range of 'goodness' in American
cheese, as Twamley pointed out was true of cheese in England. 4 2
Peter Kalm, who liked practically nothing in America, thought that
a Swedish cheese made in Racoon, New Jersey, could rival any
English variety. It was unclear what he thought of English cheese.'
Certainly, cheesemaking improved as almanacs, farm books, and
agricultural societies dispersed information about better techniques.
The Burlington (New Jersey) Society for the Promotion of Agriculture and Domestic Manufacturers resolved that "every improvement in the quality of our cheese is of the greatest importance to
the agricultural interests of this country." One of the Society's
first projects was a cheesemaking contest.'4 In 1790, Alexander
39. For references to cheese by name, see above cheesemaking recipes; also: Richard
Briggs, The New Art of Cookery (Philadelphia: Spotswood, Campbell and Johnson,
1792), p. 16; Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery (2nd ed., London: By the Author,
1747; Alexandria: Cottonwood and Stewart, 1812), p. 268; Woodward, Ploughs,
p. 347. Newspaper advertisements often carry cheese for sale by particular names.
40. Twamley, Daiiying Exemplified, p. 12; Woodward, The Development of Agriculture
in iVew Jersey, pp. 53, 59.
4
1.Johnson, Art of Cheesemaking, pp. 7-8; New Jersey and Pennsylvania Almanac ...
1796.
42. Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, p. 15.
43. Adolph B. Benson, Peter Kalm's Travels in North America (2 vols., New York: Dover
Publications, 1966), 2:646-47.
44. Woodward, Development of Agriculture in New Jersey, p. 53.
208
PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY
Hamilton wrote that "our farmers are directing their attention
to dairies and we are now furnished with large supplies of excellent American cheese."' Perhaps by Hamilton's wish to encourage
this activity, Congress levied an import duty of four cents per pound
on imported cheese. In 1794, the duty was increased to seven cents
a pound.4 6
With the making of butter and cheese, farm women matched
the sophistication of their men in the dairy industry of the eighteenth
century. It was a complicated business involving a greater degree of
biological control than any other form of farming. Their success
was a remarkable achievement.
There is probably no way of accurately knowing how much of
dairy production went into domestic consumption. Milk was not
the popular drink in the eighteenth century that it became much
later. The Navy, in 1794, figured that twelve ounces of cheese was
a suitable amount in a sailor's weekly ration, but sailors probably
got less than the ration allowed and ordinary folk likely ate less
than that. 47 Butter was the most important dairy product in the
diet. Travelers' accounts and diaries spoke of meals with meats,
vegetables, and breads covered with butter. In 1787, an Annapolis
family, "consisting of ten persons, half of whom are servants,
keeping two horses and one cow," estimated requiring 150 pounds
of butter a year.' That figure compares to the 15.1 pounds Richard
Cummings estimated for average annual butter consumption per
capita in the United States during the 1850s and the 15.2 pounds
Merril Bennett and Rosamond Pierce calculated for 1879.49 The
45. Arthur Harrison Cole, Industrial and Commercial Correspondence of Alexander Hamilton
(New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968), p. 119.
46. Federal Almanack . . . 1790 (Philadelphia: W. Young, 1789); American Repository
of Useful Information, 1796 (Philadelphia: B. Davies, 1795); References to good cheese:
Rasmussen,Agriculturein the United States, pp. 120, 154-56; Virginia Gazette, 11 November
1773; J. P. Brissot De Warville, New Travels in the United States of America Performed
in 1788 (2nd ed., London: J. S. Jordan, 1794), pp. 154-55; FatherAbraham's Almanac...
1775 (Philadelphia: John Dunlap, 1769), p. 13. References to causes of bad cheese:
Deane, New England Farmer, p. 237; Twamley, Dairying Exemplified, pp. 7, 15, 18,
20-21, 32-33, 37; Art of Cheesemaking, Taught From Actual Experiments, p. 15; Johnson,
Art of Cheesemaking, p. 3; Verplanck, "Farm Book," pp. 206-10; American Almanack ...
1792; New Jersey and Pennsylvania Almanack . . . 1796.
47. John Y. Mason and Mechlin and Winder, A General Register of the Navy and Marine
Corps of the United States . . . (Washington: C. Alexander, 1848), p. 234.
48. The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, 6 April 1787.
49. Richard Osborn Cummings, The American and His Food (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1940), p. 236; Merril K. Bennett and Rosamond H. Pierce, "Change
in the American National Diet, 1879-1959," Food Research Institute Studies (Stanford,
Calif., 1961), 2: 95-119.
DAIRYING, 1750-1812
209
growth of such cities as Philadelphia (20,000 people in 1755; 69,000
in 1800), New York (12,000 in 1761; 60,000 in 1800), Baltimore
(100 in 1752; 26,000 in 1800) and Charleston (8,000 in 1763;
20,000 in 1800), created the principal commercial markets for
milk, butter, and cheese food.'
"Convenience and a ready market is [sic] the life of a settler-not
cheap lands," wrote a New Yorker in 1795.5 The building of turnpikes during the 1790's increased the flow of goods and speeded
them to market. The Lancaster Turnpike, connecting Lancaster
and Philadelphia, opened in 1795. Richard Parkinson, in 1798, told
how farmers loaded their wagons with butter, eggs, fruits, and other
perishables and made their way to market at 2 A.M., in the cool
night air.52 Hucksters sold milk on city streets from carts or from
containers they carried yoked around their necks. In the 1770s New
York confectioners began to advertise ice cream for sale, as did
others elsewhere by 1800. Merchants handled the trade in butter
and cheese little differently than they did other food products.
Between 1768 and 1772, more than twice the amount of butter
and cheese went into the coastal trade as went to foreign export,
2.2 million pounds compared to one million. Philadelphia, from
1770 to 1772, shipped 62,235 pounds, 38,420 pounds, and 45,610
pounds of butter to North American coastal ports compared to
13,650 pounds, 18,670 pounds, and 15,540 pounds to the West
Indies. Philadelphia usually led in the export of butter, while
Newport, Rhode Island and New London, Connecticut exported
the most cheese consistently. Boston had a substantial trade in both
butter and cheese, occasionally leading in cheese exports. The
coastal trade to the North of Boston included Halifax and Quebec
in Canada, while below Savannah it included St. Augustine and
Pensacola in Florida and both Bermuda and the Bahamas. Indeed,
Halifax and St. Augustine were the principal coastal markets
for butter and cheese during the late colonial period.'3
50. Evarts B. Green and Virginia D. Harrington, American Population Before the
Federal Census of 1790 (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1966), pp. 22, 101, 118, 133,
178; Marshall Smelser, The Democratic Republic 1801-1815 (New York: Harper
Torch Books, 1968), p. 22.
51. Neil McNall, Agricultural History of the Genesee Valley, 1790-1860 (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1952), p. 96.
52. Richard Parkinson, A Tour in America in 1798, 1799 and 1800 (London: Harding
and Murray, 1805), 1:222.
53. Public Record Office, Customs, "16/1: Accounts, Ledgers of Exports and Imports," passim. A copy of this record is in the Manuscript Room, Library of Congress.
210
PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY
As with all food products, the British North American colonies
provided the West Indies with their groceries. Flour, beef, fish,
vegetables, and dairy products went to the islands so the planters
there would not have to divert any agricultural resources from sugar
production. American butter and cheese exports to the British and
foreign West Indies were 123,310 pounds in 1770, 236,838 pounds
in 1771, and 279,699 pounds in 1772. Small amounts of butter
and cheese went to Southern Europe and the Wine Islands and to
Africa. A voyage to the tropical West Indies from Philadelphia or
Boston might require three or four months one way. That Americans
consistently sent dairy products to hot climates evidences the
quality of the processing.'
The Revolution broke the mold of colonial trade. On 2 July 1783,
English Orders-in-Council restricted the West Indian carrying
trade to British bottoms and excluded barreled meats and fish,
butter, and cheese of the United States from entering the British
islands. Parliament hoped to encourage the export dairy industry
in Ireland by eliminating the Americans. John Adams wrote:
"Obstinate attempts to prevent the islands and the Continent,
by force, or policy, from deriving from each other those blessings
which nature has enabled them to afford, will only put both to
thinking of means to come together."'
The French, however, opened their West Indian ports for American
trade in August 1784. The Dutch on St. Eustatius and the Danes
on St. Bartholomew allowed American butter and cheese in on
paying a ten percent duty. The Spanish, too, permitted and taxed
American provisions in their islands. But even the trade to the
English islands continued on the basis of emergency authority the
island governors had during times of shortages.
Until 1790, though, the exports of American food products
languished. But by then the French Revolution had broken out,
which shortly would lead to a quarter century of almost constant
warfare in Europe. The Napoleonic Wars once again opened the
West Indies to American trade, as the Europeans were entirely
unable to provision their island colonies. In the decade of the
54. Ibid.
55. Lowell J. Ragatz, The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean, 1763-1833
(New York: Century Company, 1928), p. 174.
56. Edmund Buron, "Statistics on Franco-American Trade, 1778-1806," Journal
of Economics and Business History, 4 (1931-1932): 573; Vernon Stetser, The Commercial
Reciprocity Policy of the United States, 1774-1829 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-
vania Press, 1927; reprint ed., New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1953), p. 80.
DAIRYING, 1750-1812
211
1790s, United States dairy exports amounted to twenty-eight
million pounds. Exports in 1796 alone amounted to 2.5 million
pounds of butter and 1.8 million pounds of cheese. Butter and
cheese prices had never been so high. Never less than three-fourths
of the export dairy trade went to the West Indies. Some butter and
cheese went to Florida, the Wine Islands, Africa and Southern
Europe-about the same as it had during the colonial period. But
in 1790, for the first time, three percent of the butter and cheese
exports went to the East Indies. In 1794, China appeared for the
first time in the dairy trade and in 1796 China and the East Indies
accounted for five percent of American dairy exports, or 130,000
pounds.57
In itself, the Far East trade meant commercially little. But to
send any butter or cheese at all to the Orient involved a voyage
half way around the world, with two crossings of the Equator. The
methods of keeping butter and cheese preserved for long periods
of time indeed had to work.
In 1801, the export trade of the early American dairy industry
reached its zenith. Butter and cheese exports amounted to 4.5
million pounds-a mark that would not be reached again until
1841. Napoleon attempted to starve Britain into defeat with the
Continental System, but American food exports poured into England under protection of the Royal Navy. Between 1802 and 1812,
American dairy exports totalled nearly twenty-eight million pounds.
By comparison, exports in the decade of 1815 to 1825 were seventeen
million pounds and in the following decade, 22 million pounds.
Certainly Americans responded to the opportunities for business
that the European wars created. As Jefferson had glibly commented
in 1791, "we have only to pray that their soldiers may eat a great
deal." They did.'
The peace that followed 1815 allowed the European powers to
reestablish mercantile policies toward their colonial possessions.
Once again, American dairy products were shut out. In 1833, the
British abolished slavery in their colonies, and the traditionally
57. Adam Seybert, Statistical Annals of the United States (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson
and Son, 1818), p. 154; Bidwell and Falconer, Histoy of Agriculture, p. 494; Arthur
Harrison Cole, Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States 1700-1861 (Harvard
University Press, Cambridge Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1938), passim; New American
State Papers: Commerce and Navigation (47 vols., Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, Inc.,
1973), 1, 2: passim.
58. Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture, 494; Louis M. Sears, Jefferson and
the Embargo (Durham: Duke University Press, 1927), pp. 16-17.
212
PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY
important trade of American food products to the West Indies
diminished ever after. The decline of dairy exports deprived farmers
of market alternatives. For practical purposes, the early American
dairying industry thus ended with the War of 1812-as did the
pattern of trade, food processing, and farming that had begun
sixty years earlier. Where preservation, processing, and foreign
trade were the keys to marketing dairy products in the eighteenth
century, transportation and urban markets became the keys to
dairying from the 1850s onward.
RACIAL PREJUDICE-1819 STYLE
The Legislature, at the last session evinced great sensibility
as to the state of public morals by suppressing banks, and by
their law providing for the guardianship of drunkards. We
shall feel happy, if they would follow up their strokes at next
meeting, and take into consideration the evils that are flowing
from the state of our society as regards vagrant free negroes.
Pittsburgh is becoming a perfect St. Domingo, and the free
blacks may be viewed as a privileged order-they enjoy all
the rights of freemen, and they are exempt from the burden of
militia duty and fines. This is not, however, what we complain
of; they have become a perfect nuisance on the face of industry;
we have four or five respectable exceptions to be sure, but they
only operate to make the case the more striking. Pittsburgh, for
many years, has been remarkable for the industry of its inhabitants; notwithstanding this, the labouring class, with all its
economy can no more than support their families.-This free
gentry, however, who spend three[-]fourths of their time in
lounging through our streets, or leaning against corner posts,
and who never engage in any regular employment, are always
well fed, and very generally tolerably clothed. How is this accomplished? is a question worthy of the notice of our police and
of our legislature. We shall be happy for the sake of morality;
as well as for the security of property, if the subject could be efficiently brought up.
[Pittsburgh Gazette, 2 July 1819.1
CONTRIBUTED BY ROBERT M. BLACKSON, THE PENNSYLVANIA
STATE UNIVERSITY, ALTOONA CAMPUS.