The prize-winning Cooksville Cheese Factory was established
in 1875 adjacent to the village on the present State Highway 59 (then called
“Union Road”), just to the west of William Porter’s farm. The multi-talented Cooksville
resident Benjamin Hoxie bought the land that was part of the large Dow farm and
erected the small building, obtained the necessary apparatus, and began
manufacturing and selling cheese on May 10, 1875.
Hoxie had tested the interest in the Cooksville area for a
cheese cooperative business with meetings in the schoolhouse and by canvassing
the community in March of 1875. The results were favorable with many “patrons”
willing to send their milk to the new factory.
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| Hoxie House etching 1873 |
Hoxie was, among other things, a very active architect, carpenter
and builder of a number of houses and structures in Cooksville, including the
Cooksville Congregational Church, as well as buildings and churches elsewhere
in the area. He was also a maker of bee hives and butter churns and had a keen
interest in agriculture and horticulture.
The Evansville Review reported on Hoxie’s venture into
cheese-making as follows: “Cooksville Cheese Factory. This Institution
commenced operation Monday morning with even better prospects than what it was
expected it would have. The building is 18 x 28, two stories high, with an ell 20
x 26 one-story high. The main building
is provided with a fine basement which can be kept at good temperature for
curing cheese at any season, when the weather is not suitable for the two upper
rooms. The building is well made—closely boarded, papered and sided, which
gives a substantial effect, and preserves a more uniform temperature for the
business. The pumping is done by hand;
but the heating is done with steam apparatus.”
To ensure “a perfectly fine flavored cheese, the factory’s
walls were double-thick and plastered, and the basement had stone walls and
‘cemented’ floors, with every precaution taken to have an even temperature in
the curing rooms.” Probably a well-cured “English” cheddar cheese was produced
or perhaps the new Wisconsin brick, or maybe a purely local variation.
George H. Kemp, an Englishman and “a gentleman who has
worked at the business a year or two…thoroughly experienced…will have charge of
the business.” The newspaper continued: “A
meeting of the patrons was held at the Factory Saturday and resulted in the
election of the following officers. Harrison Stebbins, President; J. T. Dow,
Secretary and Treasurer; B. S. Hoxie, salesman; W. M. Porter, Isaac Wright,
Josiah Sperry, Associates. B. S. Hoxie, Proprietor.” The farmers’ cheese
cooperative was up and running.
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| Benjamin Hoxie (1827-1901) |
The Cheese Factory initially received about 3,000 pounds of
milk each day, and samples of the cheese were ready to be distributed locally
in June. Over 200 wooden cheese boxes were made in Evansville and delivered to
the factory in August, and business increased rapidly. Near the end of October, the factory closed
for the season, the patrons were paid off, and the remaining cheese was moved
from the factory to the cellar of William Porter’s nearby farmhouse.
The next year, after hauling in many loads of wood in March
(“A big wood pile at the cheese factory, means business again this summer…”), the Cheese Factory opened for the season on
May 1, 1876, having been “overhauled and
put in thorough trim for business, and looks as neat as a maid’s parlor,” the
Evansville newspaper reported. “There is
certainly not a neater looking, or more thoroughly appointed cheese factory,
for its size, in the State than the Cooksville factory.”
The first shipment of cheese was sent to St. Paul,
Minnesota, where the local St. Paul Press newspaper gave “the Cooksville cheese
a marked notice, for its excellent qualities.” Later in the summer, a Montreal,
Canada, cheese buyer shopping in the area gave “especial praise of the curing
rooms of the Cooksville factory—being so cool that July cheese are about as
mild in flavor as ordinary August cheeses are,” according to the Evansville
paper. “Wisconsin butter and cheese stands as high in the market as any made at
the east.” The cheese did “not become old and hard.”
The factory was now using about 4,170 pounds of milk a day.
In an experiment with the milk at the factory, it was discovered that it took
26 ¼ pounds of milk to make one pound of butter, and with the cost of milk at
90 cents per hundred pounds, it put the cost to produce butter at about 24
cents a pound. Cheese was selling at
about 7 cents per pound; more could be produced; and cheese could safely be shipped
long distances without refrigeration.
In 1877, the little Cooksville Cheese Factory won second
prize at the Wisconsin State Fair—but only after a tie vote that was settled by
the toss of a penny, giving the top prize to a Sheboygan factory. The prize was won competing with over twenty
other more established factories from throughout the state.
The Cheese Factory flourished for the next few years, with
cheese shipped to such places as Chicago, New York, and Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Wisconsin was becoming famous as a quality cheese producing state, and the new
Cooksville factory was contributing to the state’s early prominence in the
growing agricultural enterprise of cheese-making.
In 1878, Hoxie added another vat and during the year used
1,189,081 pounds of milk to make 114,242 pounds of cheese. At the beginning of 1879, the cheese factory
closed out its entire lot of last season’s cheese at 7½ cents per pound, and at
the end of that season, cheese was selling at ten cents a pound. Mr. Kemp, the
cheese-maker, called one of his products “Young America” cheese, each of which
weighed about eight pounds.
But by 1880, although there were favorable prospects for a
good supply of milk and efforts to ensure that “the reputation will be
maintained” were favorable (“Wisconsin cheese is commanding a better price in
New York’s market than New York cheese”), some of the cheese-makers—as well as some
of the dairy farmers—began moving west to the Dakotas. George W. Kemp leased the factory from Hoxie
for the season, and although he had to temporarily close it down in mid-season
for lack of milk, the local newspaper reported that he intended “to buy the
cream and fresh butter from the farmers as soon as suitable arrangements can be
made for regular delivery.” Business declined;
there was greater competition for milk from other local cheese makers. At the
end of 1880, Kemp married Mary, the daughter of Hoxie, but that didn’t help his
business prospects.
In January 1881, Hoxie placed the Cooksville Cheese Factory
up for sale. “He will also sell his
house and lot in connection with the same, if desired,” reported the Evansville
Review. By the next year, the cheese
factory was “used as a dwelling house by two families.” Larger cheese-making operations elsewhere
diminished the supply of milk. Hoxie, it seems, was headed for retirement, as
was his cheese factory.
“The Dakota fever has broken out afresh,” reported the Evansville
Enterprise, and cheese-maker George Kemp (who had been making cheese in Lodi by
1882) and Frank Newman left Cooksville to visit the “beautiful land” of Dakota,
the new Western Frontier.
The Dakota Territory had been established in 1861, and the
federal Homestead Act of 1862 (160 acres of free land if you remained for five
years) made farming prospects there rather appealing. The Black Hill Gold Rush of the mid-1870s
made Dakota even more appealing to the adventurous. But what ensured a more massive exodus of
people to the new Western frontier of Dakota was the completion of the Chicago
and North Western Railroad and the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad in
1880 to the Dakota Territory.
Early in 1883, Kemp
and Newman went for another visit to Dakota, this time joined by several other
Cooksvillians. By the middle of 1883,
the Stoughton Hub newspaper reported that the wives of Kemp and Newman “expect
to ship their household goods to Dakota this week, for the ‘boys’ write they
have the shanties ready…”
A rumor was reported, both in 1883 and 1884, that the Cooksville
cheese factory might be started up again, either for cheese or as a
creamery. The Stoughton Hub hoped “the
farmers will look to their interests and be ready for their patronage. Dairying
will pay and must be the measure of our success in Wisconsin.” But in March 1884, Hoxie sold all his cheese
fixtures to a Mr. Fish of Lone Rock in Richland County.
The Hub also reported on April 3, 1884, that “Mr. B. S.
Hoxie has sold his house and lot in the village to Julius Savage, and has taken
a temporary residence in his factory building until he decides for a change of
location or business. He will sell his fruit farm of fifteen acres, with the
building, which can be made into a fine residence at a trifling expense.” Hoxie retired to Evansville in 1884, and in
1886 he sold the cheese factory building, but he kept his hand in his design
business and in his horticultural interests.
Hoxie had been very active in the Wisconsin State
Horticultural Society for many years, and in 1893 he managed the Society’s
exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Many years later,
Hoxie’s unusual apples from his fruit farm behind the cheese factory would be
re-discovered and re-cultivated. Apples and cheese must have been an especially
tasty combination for him.
Today, the prize-winning Cooksville cheese factory has become
a simple residence and survives as one of Cooksville’s historic structures.
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The Cooksville Cheese Factory
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