Butter production in American history

In 2001, American consumed an average of 4.9 pounds of butter per person almost five four-stick packs.

Butter, one of the most traditional of women’s crafts, began the nineteenth century as a product hand-churned by women and ended the century as the factory-made product of a commercial marketplace.

For much of the century, and especially in rural communities, butter remained an important part of a women’s economy – produced from surplus milk and sold or exchanged at a local marketplace for other necessary family goods.

The first creameries or butter factories appeared in Upstate New York in the late 1850s and early 1860s. These were small plants that generally co0ntained a springhouse, filled with pans for separating cream form skim milk, and a churning area.

Around 1850, farm families began to sell their cream to larger, centralized creameries, rather than making butter in their home dairies. From about 1859 on, there has been a constant increase in factory butter production, and this was included in the census of manufactures for the first time in 1879.

This increase in factory butter output has been accompanied by a decline in farm butter production. The industrialization of butter production truly took off in the last decade of the nineteenth century, promoted by the invention of the mechanical cream separator.

Factory production of butter rose from 29 million pounds in 1879 to 627 million in 1909 to over 1 billion in 1921.
Butter production in American history

Cheese in United States

Many countries have developed one or more varieties of cheese peculiar to their own conditions and culture.

When the Pilgrims voyaged to America in 1620, they made sure that the Mayflower was stocked with cheese. When the colonists settled in the New World they brought with them their own methods of making their favorites kind of cheese. Cheese making in North America and specifically in the United States, remained a farmhouse process throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In 1851, entrepreneur Jesse William had built the first US cheese factory near Rome, Oneida County, New York and introduced production in a grand scale.

After extensive experimentation, Williams regulated the timing as well as the temperature for converting milk to curds, regardless of volume.

In 1867, Robert McAdam introduced the English Cheddar system in a factory near Herkimer, New York. This introduction made Herkimer County famous for its cheese.

For many years during this period, the largest cheese market in world as at Little Falls, New York.

As the population increased in the East and there was a corresponding increase in the demand for market milk, the cheese industry gradually moved westward.
Cheese in United States

German Mills American Oatmeal

In 1850, German immigrant Ferdinand Schumacher opened a grocery store in Akron, Ohio. His major customers were German and Irish immigrants and they bought a lot of oats - which, at the time, most Anglo-Americans considered animal feed.

Demand for his product was high and in 1856, he set up the German Mills American Oatmeal Factory in Akron, Ohio. The factory produced 20 180-lb barrels of oatmeal daily with a water-powered stone mill.

Sales were brisk, particularly to cities with large immigrant populations, so Schumacher opened additional mills to meet the increasing demand. His preoccupation with oat eventually branded him ‘The Oatmeal King.’

A Schumacher employee, Asmus J. Errichsen, developed a method of producing the millstones and was the first significant modernization in oat milling.

In 1878 Schumacher imported porcelain rollers from England to manufacture rolled oats.

In the early 1860s, the Civil War was a shot of adrenalin for his venture: the government found oats to be relatively inexpensive, accessible and nourishing and order hundreds of barrels from him to fortify the Union troops.

Soon he became the largest oat miller in America.
German Mills American Oatmeal

History of Nestlé in United States

The Company formed by the 1905 merger was called Nestlé and Anglo-Swiss Milk Company. In 1900, Nestlé first factory was opened in United States.

The factory is in Fulton, New York. As part of the arrangements of the 1905 merger, Nestlé agreed to withdraw from condensed milk market in the United States although it continued to produce baby food and milk chocolate at Fulton.

The World War I created tremendous new demand for Nestlé products, largely in the form of government contracts. To keep up, Nestlé purchased several existing factories in the United States.

In 1936, Nestlé had organized Unilac, Inc., incorporated in Panama. It’s served initially as the holding company for Nestlé’s activities in Latin America.

During war in Europe, Unilac opened and executive office in Stamford, Connecticut and from there Nestlé’s top leadership managed the international business.

In 1939, Nestlé began to manufacture and started marketing its first non-milk product, Nescafe in United States. In July 1940, it launched an impressive sales campaign to market the instant coffee.

Nescafe became an American staple after servicemen tasted it in Europe and Asia during World War II.

By the 1960s, as much as one third of home- prepared coffee was soluble.

Although Nestlé saw the opening of its first US production facility in 1900, the Nestlé USA subsidiary was not established until 1990.
History of Nestlé in United States