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Dane County Wisconsin |
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INDUSTRY The very small size, hilly terrain, and agricultural orientation of the Town of Perry did not favor the growth of industry on any scale so it is not surprising that only four resources having an industrial history were found by the Survey. Three of these examples were originally cheese factories that have now been converted into single family residences. A fourth building that is believed to have originally been the Town's only saw and grist mill is also extant in the hamlet of Daleyville as well, but it was divided into two separate buildings in 1920, both of which were then converted into houses. Milling The history of Wisconsin's milling industry and its associated technology is detailed at length in the Milling study unit of the CRMP's Industry Theme section. Therefore, this history will not be repeated here except as it amplifies the history of the Daleyville mill. The importance of milling as an early local and statewide industry can hardly be overstated. As a result of the region's early emphasis on wheat farming, flour mills in Wisconsin were of immediate and vital importance. In the days of poor transportation and scattered development, each village needed a flour mill, and by the 1840s and the 1850s, small wind or water-powered mills were scattered across the settled portions of the state. While only 29 grist mills were located in the state in 1840, by 1850 the number had reached 117 and 392 workers were employed to produce over $3,536,000 worth of flour and milled grain in Wisconsin. ... The location of a mill was often the key to development of a commercial village center, the mill acting as an early hub for trade and business, as well as a meeting place for the exchange of news. Many of Wisconsin's early communities developed around the pioneer local mill.(1) The only known mill in the Town of Perry was built in Daleyville in the 1880s. This was the Daleyville Mill, a saw and grist mill that was developed by Thore Smesrud, who had several other businesses in the Town at that time including a windmill and well-drilling business and a blacksmith shop. Before moving to Iowa in the early 1900s, Smesrud sold the mill to Carl Paulson and it was subsequently run by Carl Rud and John Dahlby and others until 1920, when it was purchased by Dr. E. D. McQuillan. McQuillan then turned the mill building around 90 degrees and divided it into two separate buildings which were then remodeled into two Bungalow style houses that are still extant today and one of which was surveyed.(2) Cheese Manufacturing The manufacturing of cheese is the only manufacturing activity that has been pursued in the Town of Perry and while it never achieved the levels of production found in neighboring townships to the south located in Green and Lafayette counties, it was never-the-less an important activity in the Town in the last years of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century. The growth of cheese manufacturing was a natural by-product of the growth of dairying as the dominant agricultural activity in the Town. By the 1880s dairying had become the mainstay of local farming and by the beginning of the twentieth century gave the area an identity that it still retains despite the drastic reduction in the number of dairy farms and dairy related enterprises in the area. The transition to dairying in the area also marks the transition from semi-subsistence agriculture to a market-focused, profit-making business agriculture in the area. No one knows when the first cheese factory was established in the Perry Norwegian Settlement. The five cheeses factories whose start-up dates are known began operations in the 1880s. The Indian Hill Cheese factory was the first to start in 1882. There were about 28, of which about half are still standing.(3) All of these factories were small neighborhood operations that served farms in their immediate area and while the earliest ones apparently date from the 1880s, new factories were still being built in the area as late as 1910 and 1911 according to items printed in the Daleyville Doings for those years.(4) In all probability, these factories represented a range of variations on the standard building type and it is possible that more than the three that were surveyed still survive in the Town of Perry today. The three that were surveyed, however, are all located close to roads, which was a typical practice, and they are simple Side Gable form buildings that have a long principal story placed above a partially exposed full length basement story. Some cheese factories provided a living space in the principal story for the cheesemaker and his family with the manufacturing being conducted in the basement story, and all three of the surveyed factories fit this general scheme. Little is known of the history of these three, however, and all three have now been converted into single family residences and all three have also now been altered to the point where they are ineligible for consideration for NRHP listing. That so few of these cheese factories remain or can be identified as such is not surprising, unfortunately, since changes in the industry have long since rendered them obsolete. Transportation improvements also related to the decline of the small neighborhood cheese factories in the 1950s and 1960s. The milk industry here began being concentrated into milk zones larger than the local cheese factories' service areas when milk trucks began gathering milk from the farms and bringing it to centers in the towns that were often owned and operated by outside companies and had the character of industrial plants. The few neighborhood factories that survived, expanded and began serving larger areas. But these too, began closing or being bought out during the farm crisis of the 1980s. No cheese is made in the Perry Parish now [1994]. There isn't even a bulk milk plant or cheese factory left in Mt. Horeb to the north or Blanchardville to the south. Only large plants serving huge areas still exist.(5)
NOTES ON SOURCES A fine overview of Dane County's historic agriculture-related industrial sites such as mills was compiled by David Donath in 1977. This study was not published but it includes an excellent inventory of such sites with attributions. This study is a Dane County site file kept in the collection of the Division of Historic Preservation at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison. The history of Wisconsin's cheese industry and its associated technology is detailed at length in the Industrialized Dairy Production and Dairy Expansion study units of the CRMP's Agriculture Theme section. In addition, the recently published book by Jerry Apps entitled Cheese: The Making of a Wisconsin Tradition, gives an excellent illustrated overview of the history of cheese making in Wisconsin and of the processes involved.
EXTANT RESOURCES SURVEYED Film Code Address Original Owner Date DA 186/22 1088 STH 78 Daleyville Mill/Dr. E. D. & ca. 1880/1920 BIBLIOGRAPHY Apps, Jerry. Cheese: The Making of a Wisconsin Tradition. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press, 1998. Donath, David. Preliminary Inventory of Nineteenth-Century Agricultural Produce Processing Sites in Dane County, Wisconsin. Madison: Division of Historic Preservation, SHSW, Spring, 1977 (MSS) Wyatt, Barbara (Ed.). Cultural Resource Management in Wisconsin. Historic Preservation Division, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, 1986, Vol. 2, pp. 10-1 — 11.10 (Agriculture). Endnotes: 1. Wyatt, Barbara (Ed.). Cultural Resource Management in Wisconsin. Historic Preservation Division, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, 1986, Vol. 2, pp. 8-2 (Industry).
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