PLEASANT HILL CREAMERY
North Vernon Plain Dealer - August 28, 1889, Page 3
A Visit to a Jennings County Creamery and Cheese Factory
An enjoyable ride early the other morning brought us to the Pleasant Hill Creamery, located 1/2 mile west of Paris Crossing. The proprietor, Mr. A. S. Deputy (Alban S. Deputy), very courteously showed us through the factory and explained the various features of this rather novel enterprise.
The building was formerly designed for a cheese factory, but last year the machinery for making butter was put in and they began to operate the creamery, May 14, 1888. Statistics are usually considered dry reading, but it may be an interesting fact to many that this firm paid out more than $5,000 last year for cream, in the neighberhood of their creamery. They will pay more this year, although butter is only 10 cents per pound, while this time last year it was 16 cents. They make about 1,000 pounds of butter a week, and have shipped about 12,500 pounds this season. They ship mostly to Louisville markets.
To those who have never seen a creamery in operation, this butter making on so large a scale is decidedly interesting.
They use the Davis & Rankin machinery, which is operated by a four-horse power engine.
When the men bring in the cream of nights, it is poured into a large zinc-lined vat, which is provided with hot and cold water pipes They usually begin churning about nine o'clock in the morning. We arrived early, while the "cream still in golden lanuor slept." As the weather was extremely warm, the temperature had to be reduced by a liberal supply of ice. The cream is churned at about 58 degrees, if it can be managed. Soon the power was put on and the huge churn began to revolve, and in forty minutes steady work, about 150 pounds of beautiful yellow butter was ready for working. We could not stay to see the butter worked, much to our regret. They use the Mason Power Butter Worker. It is a large circular table upon which upon which revolve two large rollers, which do their work thoroughly. The butter is then salted, put into kegs and is ready for the market.
An interesting part of the business is to see how the cream is graded. The men who gather up the cream throughout the county have small graded glass tubes which they fill with five inches of the cream they get at every house. The cream is then churned in these tubes, and each patron credited with the per cent, of butter that his cream makes.
They also make cheese, but not on a large scale. The milk designed for the cheese is put in a vat, and gradually heated to a temperature of 85 degrees. At a mysterious moment known only to the operator, the milk, though apparently sweet, curds, and stands a mass as smooth as ice. It is then cut into small cubes and the whey soon separates. The curd, rennet, etc., is soon ready for the presses, and cheese-making is not the complicated business to the observer that it seems to be to one who has never seen the process.
The floor is arranged with ample drains that carry the buttermilk, whey and all refuse to the hog pens several hundred yards away. After the butter is worked and the cheese put in press, the vats and floors are scrubbed and put in order for the next day's work. Everything is scrupulously clean and it requires constant vigilance to keep it so.
Taking it altogether we were very much edified and interested by our visit to the creamery.
Mr. Deputy says it is a paying business, and he thinks it might be made an important industry in Jennings county as so much of the land is better adapted to grazing than it is to farming. L. B. W.
The Obituary below is on another page on this web site, but I thought it would be good to put it here also. He was only about twenty seven years old and had been married less than a year when the above article about the
creamery was written.
North Vernon Plain Dealer - August 27, 1901
ONE OF THE MOST PROMINENT TEACHERS OF THE COUNTY
PASSED AWAY LAST THRUSDAY
Leaving to His Friends the Memory of a Lovable and Beautiful Character
Mr. Alban S. Deputy, of Paris Crossing, aged 46 years, died at his home last Thursday, August 20th, 1908, of typhoid fever, after many weeks of illness.He was born January 29, 1862, on a farm near Coffee Creek church and received, his education in the little country school of that vicinity. In 1885 he united with the church and received his education in the little country school of that vicinity. In 1885 he united with the church at Coffee Creek, and at the time of his death was superintendent of its Sunday school. On December 25, 1888, he was united in marriage To Miss Lily Wilson. Such as to chief dates is the life of Mr. Deputy, "and again the Recording Angel has closed the volume."
One who was a bosom friend says: "Brother Deputy was a man whom to know was to respect and love, and the going out of the light of such a life is an irreparable loss to this community. As superintendent of this Sunday school we feel that his place can not be filled; strong in conviction and noble in purpose his influence is felt as of one whose delight is in the law of the Lord. As a teacher, in Jennings county he ranked at the head, his sole interest being to teach the boys and girls that education's highest motive is to mold strong men and women. Words can not tell the influence of such a broad and unselfish life. He, for years, had been active and proficient member of the Order of Masons, and at the time of his death was Master of the Lodge."
Mr. Deputy leaves a wife, three daughters-Gail, Cora and Ethel-and one son Walter, a mother, two brothers, and many, many friends to mourn his early departure.
Funeral services were conducted Saturday afternoon at Coffee Creek church by Rev. Charles Hudson, a very large concourse of friends being present, a majority of who had been pupils of Mr. Deputy. The remains were lowered to their last resting place in the nearby cemetery by Paris Lodge, No. 221, F. & A. the conclusion of the beautiful ceremonies of the order.
Mr. Deputy the writer enjoyed the pleasures of intimate social and fraternal acquaintance; at all time he was genial, whole souled and companionable, free from hypocrisy-spreading sunshine and gladness everywhere. His whole life was spent in the community in which he died, and the sorrow displayed by the thousand or more present at the funeral was a proof of the high esteem in which he was held. W. Find A Grave Link
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