In the Old Mentz Heritage Center collections, we have hundreds of images that show the “downtown” business area of Port Byron, but few that show the businesses outside that core area. It seems as though few people wanted to cross the Owasco Outlet to see what was on the west end of the village. And without photos to spark those long ago memories, people forget what was there. So, I am always delighted to find photographs that help to fill in those voids in our history.
When the “Flying Ditchman” flew over Port Byron in the early 1960s snapping photos of old canal sites, he also photographed some of the missing area west of the downtown. One of the buildings he caught was the Port Byron Creamery, which was one of those businesses that existed for decades, and yet, few remember what it was. So I went looking to see what I could find. And it was not easy.
The Port Byron Creamery with its grand columns sat along Church Street. The Catholic Church can be seen in the lower right corner. Bush’s Garage was located along the Outlet where the church parking lot is today.
The first question is, “What exactly is a creamery?” In short, a creamery was a place where local farmers could take their milk, or the cream separated from the milk, and have it churned into butter. They might sell the milk outright or take the butter for personal use or to sell elsewhere. These were operated as a local co-operative where local dairymen pool their resources in order to buy better and more efficient butter making equipment.
The idea of the co-operative creamery began in 1856, when the first “factory creamery” in the States for was started at Campbell Hall in Orange County, NY. This idea was conceived shortly after the first cheese making co-operative was opened in 1851 by Jesse Williams of Rome, NY. The difference was that the creamery needed some way to cool the milk to separate the cream from the milk, whereas in cheese production, this was needed. Local creameries could be found in many of the villages around the county.
Our local creamery began in 1898 paper, when the three-year-old Sennett Creamery was establishing branch houses, where milk would be separated into skim milk and cream, and then the cream would be shipped to Sennett from butter production. This had to be a way to reduce the weight of the raw milk. One of those branches was in Port Byron and it was located in the rear of Tanner’s Mill (later Wilt’s Mill) on Green Street. However, the Sennett Creamery ran into issues, and in 1909, the Chronicle noted the 25 local businessmen had purchased the Sennett Creamery in the village and formed the Port Byron Creamery Company. The officers of the company were Charles Weston, William Root, Guy Van Anterwrep, William Ball, and Jay Fowler. This group of men would run the creamery for its entire life. They also had a second creamery in Emerson, but I am not sure of how that was acquired.
The John J. Tanner Mill on Green Street. This later was purchased by the Wilt family.
Even as a small local creamery, early accounts show that this was a fairly successful business, taking in over a million and a half pounds of milk and cream and producing over 166,000 pounds of butter a year, generating $51,694.00 in revenue in 1914. That would be 454 pounds of butter per day!
Tax records show that the company moved to a location on River Street around 1918, and this might have been forced by the sale of the Mill to the Wilt family, or just the need for a separate location. By 1925, the Creamery had purchased the building at the corner of Rochester and Church. The building on River was kept as a residence.
This undated and unlabeled photo shows two ladies standing in front of the Creamery.
I was puzzled at how the creamery would cool the milk, but a mention of ice harvesting from the Outlet answered that question. Maybe the old mill pond was the source of this ice? In any case, ice, instead of a cool spring, was used. As we have discussed before, the Outlet at that time was basically Auburn’s sewer, so hopefully, they were not using it to make ice cream! But, the village was electrified in 1910, and refrigeration was certainly in use as soon as the business could afford it.
From its beginning, Guy Van Antwerp was the manager and chief butter maker. Guy was born in Pecatonica, Illinois, and after moving to Carthage, NY, he came to Port Byron in 1899 to work as a butter maker. He ran the company up through the 1950s. His daughter Leitha married Howard Ball, who ran the large dairy where Meadowbrook Golf Course is today.
If you have any photos of the business, please contact us at Old Mentz.