Paul Minor

Delving Into Yester~Year

Local historian and writer Paul Miner takes items from The Republican’s Yester-Year column to develop an interesting, informative and often humorous article.

To the Editor:

Before Velveeta, the uncontested king of modern plastic cheese, North Salem’s cheese factory in late 1896 produced a “superior quality” product. The factory by 1898 could sell more cheese “if it were possible to get a sufficient supply of milk.”

A 93-year-old in 1973 remembered the place was on South Broadway. The site originally was a creamery.

That old-timer claimed to recall the precise formula: two ounces of rennet and an ounce of coloring to 1,000 ounces of milk. A horse-drawn wagon delivered the cheese as far away as Greencastle and Marshall. Then the business petered out. Plainfield had a cheese factory, too. The new A. Kellum & Co. outfit produced a thousand pounds of cheese each week in 1877. Kellum took “best cheese” at that year’s county fair.

“Indiana Farmer” sent someone to check out Asher Kellum’s operation in July that year. The guy brought his wife and they enjoyed the midday meal with Kellum and his wife, along with the field hands at the 200-acre farm roughly two miles southwest of Friendswood at Guilford Township’s southern edge.

The cheese factory was a two-room one-story affair a mile from the farmhouse. One room contained the curdling vat, scales and the cheese presses. The second, filled with shelves, was the curing room. Each cheese, made from “pure, whole milk,” was dated (month and day).

Danville fielded an inquiry from Binghamton, New York, about launching its own creamery and cheese factory in 1889, but I don’t know whether that panned out.

Hadley had a cheese factory in the early 1880s. E.H. Hall, Danville, advertised “New York Factory Cheese” in 1883.

A place on Washington Street in the Capital bought homemade Hendricks County cheese, bacon and hams “at highest market price” as far back as early 1849.

Imagine walking into William Cline’s new store, recently purchased in October 1851 from Black Hawk War veteran Colonel Thomas Nichols in the new Nave Building at the Public Square’s northeast corner. He sold cheese, and he had 10,000 pounds of bar, rod and hoop iron, and nails.

That store had almonds, all kinds of dishes, dry goods, a wide selection of clothing materials, mackerel, salt, grindstones, gunpowder, boots and shoes. Cline accepted cash and country produce. In 1887, The Republican reported Italians were making cheese from tomato pulp at a

New Jersey cannery. The 1888 Cincinnati Exposition had a microscope which revealed cheese dust was filled with insects “as large (apparently) as cockroaches.” I assume that’s American cheese and not any of that stuff named after some place in a certain country with devices for slicing necks rather than cheese.

Folks were told they could make their own electric rat trap – the “latest” – in 1898. Just take a small piece of cheese, insert an electric wire “and the instant the rat touches the cheese he receives a shock which kills him.”

Was the wire live prior to insertion, how was it hooked up to power, what was the UL listing?

I learned how to eat cheese from an 1898 recommendation. The cheese is grated and heaped in a bowl which is passed from diner to diner. Each takes a spoonful and places it on the tiny plate to the left of the big plate. Then celery stalks are handed around and they’re dipped into the cheese. Since celery usually isn’t passed around until after dessert, it appears that’s when you eat the cheese.

That year, the Dutch supper was in vogue in New York for Sunday night teas, especially when the hostess had only one maid handy. Cheese was involved. Blue delft plates were recommended.

Imported frankfurter sausages were dropped into boiling water in a chafing dish. Sauerkraut was already prepared for the gathering, scalded and then baked a couple hours with fresh pork.

There was Dutch mustard, black bread or pumpernickel, potato salad, pickled red cabbage, pretzels, “plenty of good cheese” and fine coffee.

The affair “will be a delight to friends, who will welcome such a change from the regulation Sunday suppers.”

I assume the maid instructed the sophisticates how to fork their sausages and wrap bread around them, and then managed the rest, herself.

Some put mustard on pretzels, but I don’t.

Paul Miner Lizton ______________________________________________________________________