These early Sheboygan County cheesemakers helped propel Wisconsin cheese past New York cheese: Throwback

SHEBOYGAN FALLS - Two brothers ignited the cheese industry in Sheboygan County with a farm factory and stand-alone operations in the 19th century.

Before the advent of a cheese factory, cheese was made in farm kitchens. That early cheese product was infrequently sold at market. It had several problems, which included, collecting, temperature control, rennet enzyme application, sanitation, refrigeration and aging.

John J. Smith started his cheese "factory" in 1858 by taking in gathering curd produced by his neighbors. Quality control was lacking as every curd-maker did things something slightly different and not to a uniform standard. The individual farmers' wives many times were responsible for curd production, according to information from Katie Riley of the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center.

Smith, after collecting the curds, would finish the cheese-making process. It was said that he had improvised facilities in his house, an existing shed or a corner in his barn. He packed the cheese in barrels for shipment.

Making cheese was one thing, but selling that early Sheboygan County cheese met stiff resistance in Chicago. In fall 1858, Smith barreled cheese and took the barrels to Chicago to sell. Because early Wisconsin cheese was of poor quality and with the superior quality of New York cheese, dealers refused to buy his cheese until Smith paid one of them to sample his cheeses. That entire lot was then sold for 8 cents a pound.

Cheese made in Sheboygan County was starting to mean something.

Smith's brother, Hiram Smith, started a bit later in the cheese business when in 1870 he bought the McKinnon Cheese factory from A.D DeLand and Manning McKinnon, who had built that factory in 1867. Smith would only own own the factory for six years when he sold it in 1876 to brothers Ferdinand and Frank Mathers.

The Mathers brothers, who would be two of the first in the county to join the Sheboygan Falls Dairy Board of Trade in 1878, would crank up the reputation for Sheboygan County cheese. They won a gold medal as first prize for their cheese entry at the Wisconsin State Fair in 1879.

The word was getting around that Sheboygan County cheese was something special.

Hiram Smith was a large figure in Sheboygan County and the dairy industry. He was a member of the State Board of Regents for the University of Wisconsin and constantly advocated improvements in the agriculture programs at that institution. Many felt his contributions helped accelerate the growth of the dairy industry in Wisconsin in the 19th century.

With the early groundwork made by these cheese-making pioneers, Sheboygan County became so well known in cheese circles that Plymouth was picked as the location of the National Cheese Exchange, which set the commodity price of bulk cheese, a big deal at the time. The Exchange itself would move to Green Bay and in 1997 left to go to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Despite the departure of the Exchange, Plymouth would become known as a truly big cheese.

Today, Plymouth is home to cheese giants such as Sargento Foods, Inc., Sartori, Inc., Masters Gallery Foods, Inc., and Great Lakes Cheese Company, Inc.

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This article originally appeared on Sheboygan Press: Wisconsin cheese got boost past New York from Sheboygan cheesemakers