Mixerr Reviews: Exploring the Pontiac Creamery.

Pontiac Creamery is one of the historic yet slightly forgotten businesses of Pontiac, Michigan. This news article will explain the history of Pontiac Creamery.

The Pontiac Creamery Company was organized in January 1886 with capital stock paid in of $85,200 dollars. Richard Bartlett was president of Pontiac Creamery Company. A. A. Lull was the treasurer and H. A. Wyckoff was secretary. Richard Bartlett and Norton Smith were the owners of Pontiac Creamery. Pontiac Creamery would be located on East Huron Street and south of Clinton River on a lot peculiarly adapted to dairy purposes. (Ref: https://digmichnews.cmich.edu/?a=d&d=OaklandPG18860430-01.1.1&e=-------en-10--1--txt-txIN----------)

[Our present purpose is a description of Pontiac’s new creamery, its organization and plan of working. We hare spread our bread with butter many years, and have often felt the palatable necessity and pleasure of uniformity in the quality of butter This essential condition has now been accomplished, and those who can afford the luxury can now spread their bread with the gilt-edged material; we have applied the pudding test, and can say without any fear of a strong denial that the genuine article is made in Pontiac, but how made? This question we will try to answer.]

[The Pontiac Creamery company was organized last January and is incorporated under the laws of this state with capital stock paid in of 85,200. All the stockholders constitute the board of directors. The following are the officers: Richard Bartlett, president; A. A. Lull, treasurer; H. A, Wyckoff, secretary. The practical man is E. W. Miles, of Niles. He is a man of large experience in the business which he obtained by some years of service in Iowa. The building proper is 32x50 feet with engine house attached. It is located on Huron street east, and south of Clinton river, on a lot peculiarly adapted to the purpose, being high and on a gravelly soil.]

[The Pontiac Creamery commenced business for the season last Friday and will make things fairly hum in a few days. Any one wishing to purchase a farm should read what W. J. Scott says in our fifteen cent column.]

Very few people were aware of the concept of how a creamery operated or what a creamery was. The Pontiac Bill Poster explained how the Pontiac Creamery operated. (Ref: https://digmichnews.cmich.edu/cgi-bin/michigan?a=d&d=OaklandPBP18860428-01.1.8&e=-------en-10--1--txt-txIN----------)

It is generally known that a creamery has recently been built in Pontiac, but as it is quite possible that very few people have even a general idea of the appearance and methods of the institution a brief description of the building and the contents may not be devoid of interest. Situated on Union street, near Huron is a one story brick building, resembling a country school house, as much as anything else, with the addition of a small side wing. Entering the front door of the building from a platform built the height of a wagon, for connivence in unloading the tremendous big cans containing the cream, the visitor is in sort of a vestibule used as a reception room for these cans. To the left is a little box office partitioned off, and here we find Mr. H. A. Wyckoff, secretary of the company, to whom we are indebted for the information here presented.

Each farmer is furnished, with cans for raising cream, and a tank in which these cans-are to be placed surrounded with water or ice to keep the cream at a regular temperature. The cans are made with a glass gauge fixed in the side so that the amount of cream given off from any quantity of milk may be readily ascertained. Farmers are paid by the gauge, this being an amount of cream which will produce on the average a pound of butter. The route men make their circuit once each day, gather the cream, and give the producer a check on which is punched the date, price, and number of gauges of cream supplied, a duplicate of which is kept for entry at the office. The cream is gathered in huge cans provided with an ingenious device to weight and prevent any change in the cream by jolting of the wagons, and returned to the factory, where it is dumped into huge tanks.

In the manufacturing room of the establishment. Three of these tanks occupy a large part of the room, two for the reception of cream, while one for testing the work of each route man by comparison is made with two compartments wherein is deposited the cream of two days, separately, and any deviation from the proper standard is at once observable. These receptacles are a tank within a tank, the outer one being filled with water of any degree of heat or cold, from cold water and steam pipes which run in pairs throughout the building, and the cream is thus kept at a fixed temperature.

On a floor level about three feet below that supporting the tanks, are two churns of 300 gallons capacity each. These are placed one at the end of each tank, so that the cream may be drawn directly into them. These as well as the moulding table are run by steam power and the butter is produced by a rotary motion. From the churns the moulding table comes next in order. This is a round table in shape of a very shallow inverted cone.

The butter by a circular motion of the table is run under two rollers, and the milk thus expressed runs through a hole in the center of the table. The next process is packing the butter into firkins or neat little wooden receptacles, and it is then placed in the store room which by the proximity of an ice house may be kept cold in the warmest weather. In the main room is a neat little U horse power engine supplied with power from a boiler in the adjacent wing, which runs the machinery and a force pump, water is pump ed from a crock well, and forced to all parts of the building, where by conjunction with the steam pipes, tanks, cans, and all paraphernalia may be washed and scalded in short order.

The floors are all built with a slight pitch to carry out any surplus of moisture, and the building and appointments are the very personification of cleanliness. It will be some little time yet before the creamery is running to its fullest capacity, it being necessary to convince the farmers the scheme is more beneficial to them than to anyone else. They are paid for the equivalent of their butter in cream, about one cent per pound above the market price, and by the appliances and instructions furnished by the company may perceptibly increase the yield of cream from a given quantity of milk, while they are entirely freed from the labor incident to making the butter. Once each month they present their checks and receive the cash therefor. On the other hand the company is enabled to make a small profit by raising the standard pf butter, which has been lowered by the introduction of oleomargerine and ether imitation butters, thereby commanding prices above the market valuation. They will have no difficulty in disposing of all the butter they can manufacture, in the eastern markets, where it has a “gilt edge” rating and a valuation according. During the summer Pontiacers will be supplied with fresh buttermilk from the creamery, at a nominal price, and those who know what a delicious and refreshing beverage cold buttermilk is, will profit by this feature of the business.

The butter was packed in tubs in packages from 5 to 60 pounds The buttermilk was delivered to the customer. This included all milk products. (Ref: https://digmichnews.cmich.edu/?a=d&d=OaklandPG18860430-01.1.1&e=-------en-10--1--txt-txIN----------)

[The butter is packed in tubs and packages from 5 to 60 pounds. The buttermilk will be delivered to customer or sold at the creamery for 3 cents a quart or 10 cents per gallon. The important question with the company is, Will the farmers patronize them? This question has always been an incipient embarrassment to the creamery enterprise, No greater labor saving inducement was ever offered the farmers’wives than the creamery method of butter making. The farmer must sell his dairy product as a rule as soon as made, or suffer a loss from depreciation in quality and price of product. In keeping qualities butter is different from wheat; it is the farmer's most sensitive article of production, easily tainted by atmospheric change, and effected by contact and association with or near vegetable and other substances. All these contingencies are avoided by the selling of cream at a price equal to the best dairy butter, We believe the farmers would find it to their interest and profit to patronize this local enterprise.]

Pontiac Bill Poster reported that Pontiac Creamery had been undergoing some difficulties regarding construction of the creamery in 1886. “Pontiac’s creamery is being built under difficulties, but she’s going up just the same.” Nevertheless Pontiac Creamery still opened. (Ref: https://digmichnews.cmich.edu/?a=d&d=OaklandPBP18860210-01.1.1&e=-------en-10--1--txt-txIN----------)

Norton Smith was remembered by Pontiac people as one of the original owners of the Pontiac Creamery. Pontiac Creamery was well known and remembered by many. He was one of the organizers and incorporators of the largest manufacturing plant in Pontiac during the 19th century. (Ref: https://digmichnews.cmich.edu/?a=d&d=OaklandPG18960103-01.1.7&e=-------en-10--1--txt-txIN----------)

Russell J. Potts was made manager of Pontiac Creamery in 1915. “Russell J. Potts is now manager of the Pontiac Creamery Co. at Pontiac. Mich.” Pontiac Creamery was shut down in 1920. (Ref: http://spartanhistory.kora.matrix.msu.edu/files/1/4/1-4-DD3-54-19160307sm.pdf)