William Dempster Hoard and His Ties to our Agricultural History in Eaton.

So when traveling on Route 46 from Oneida to Hamilton you might pass a beautiful, now deserted stone building on the side of the road. Missing windows and doors… it sits as reminder of Eaton & Munnsville’s past, a past that included many famous people and famous products. One such man was born in the building and passed his childhood there observing the area and interested in its development, his name was William Dempster Hoard.

Hoard spent many hours observing the growing of hops that was a mainstay crop during his formative years; a crop that depleted the already thin soil of this hilly Madison County, NY area. The farmers who lost their fortunes and farms to this fickle crop, wiped out by blight and the commodity market, changed to milk production and Holstein–Friesian cattle that were imported from Holland.

The cows were a needed agricultural addition that was - with its bi-product of manure - an enhancement of the soil and a new way of life for this Madison county, NY area. Hoard as a young man moved to Wisconsin in the westward exodus of the 1800’s and landed in an area that also had agricultural problems much like his former home. One day siting on a hillside noting the farmers going out of business or struggling, he came up with the idea of making the same change to cows, an idea that made Wisconsin the “Dairy State” for many years.

Hoard also started Hoard’s Dairyman’s Journal that gave information to farmers on dairy practices. He is considered the father of the refrigerated railcar that was needed to ship milk to markets at a great distance and today his drawings of the perfect barn have been copied by Cornell University. His motto was that happy cows produced more milk and that entering his dairy you were to treat his cows like “mothers” with kindness and respect.

In his lifetime he became the Governor of Wisconsin and helped bring abolition to the state, staunchly supporting legislation to accompany his beliefs.Today Madison County, NY is still an agricultural county and much of what was learned by our founding dairy farmer’s came out of Hoard’s Journal! 

I Have at the museum a wonderful letter he wrote about attending school at Pine Woods.  Charming remembrance of the one room school.

Winter, Cows, Fog, The Old Town of Eaton Museum and Me!

Burchard Farm as it used to look...still standing in Pine Woods

It seems everyone has been down with something health wise this winter.  For those that haven’t been affected physically they have been depressed by the ups and downs of the weather.  I myself am one!  It had to be tough on animals with near zero to mid sixties and back again. This got me thinking about the cows, yes the cows.

Few people realize the role the Town of Eaton has played in the history of the Holstein-Friesian breed whose relatives still dot the countryside today.  Many know of Gerrit Smith Miller and his famous cow, but few realize that the Chenango Breeders Association brought the first actual breeding herd here from Holland in the 1800’s.  As a matter of fact the group of Eatonites included Sylvester Burchard, Charles Payne and a very interesting man called by many Deacon (Alva) Cole.  As a matter of fact Burchard and Payne wrote the rules the breed was judged by. (I have some of Cole’s and Burchard’s artifacts and pictures in the Old Town of Eaton Museum.) It is also interesting to note that the old Burchard Farm was the first dairy in Madison County.

So with that being said… the “FOG” we had the other night down here made me think of a good story I remembered. One of the many things I did not realize when I move here was the meaning of the term “leavings”.  Old Nellie Wooten always would say as she went here or there that there were a mess of leavings. Okay, what are leavings? But not inquiring…. I would just shrug my shoulders and figure it was something or other. I finally realized the actual meaning once, which made sense months later.

It was a hot spring week, but the nights were still quite cool, and my cat Chat my cat woke me up and kept running to the side door. I got up and followed him as Chat was very smart, and I assumed some- thing was wrong. As we went out onto the porch I could hear this mooing that sounded eerie. It was dancing in the thick pea soup fog that had arisen. It seemed to be moving at one point, then sounded as if it was in my back yard, but neither the cat or I could see anything.

The next morning I went across the street to my neighbor Mike Curtis’ and asked, “Were there cows loose running around town last night”? He just laughed at me. ”It’s the fog, it makes everything sound that way!” I walked over to Bob Rollins, struck up a conversation and told him about it. He said, “Oh the fog can really fool you; it was for sure the farm up above.” He told me a story about how some local men had been lost in the local swamp after going bullhead fishing because the fog was so thick. He said they even had to send a search group after them when they did not return home! Something I stored in my memory should I ever go bullhead fishing in a swamp in spring! 

Just then Nellie came strolling down the street heading “over town” as she called it. I greeted her and asked her if she had heard cows roaming in the back yards last night. She said no but asked if I had looked in my back yard for leavings!

Ah, leavings. All of the bells and whistles went off in my head: leavings! Sure enough, there were cow leavings, and the piles of stuff that they left were quite visible. Even today I politely call them leav- ings!

So csome to the old Town of Eaton this Spring and view “Cow” history!

William Dempster Hoard & Madison County History you never hear of...the Wisconsin Dairy Business started here...

I was going through the Syracuse Newspaper and found an article  on Hellava Good Cheese moving to Wisconsin.  Many people would pass that information up but... being that little history genie that I am, I was very amused since it was a man from right here in Central New York who made Wisconsin “The Dairy State”…his name is William Dempster Hoard.  Yes the dairyman…from Munnsville.

So when traveling on Route 46 from Oneida to Hamilton you might pass a beautiful, now deserted stone building on the side of the road. Missing windows and doors… it sits as reminder of Munnsville’s past, a past that included many famous people and famous products. One such man was born in the building and passed his childhood there observing the area and interested in its development, his name was William Dempster Hoard.

Hoard spent many hours observing the growing of hops that was a mainstay crop during his formative years; a crop that depleted the already thin soil of this hilly Madison County, NY area. The farmers who lost their fortunes and farms to this fickle crop, wiped out by blight and the commodity market, changed to milk production and Holstein–Friesian cattle that were imported from Holland.

The cows were a needed agricultural addition that was - with its bi-product of manure - an enhancement of the soil and a new way of life for this Madison county, NY area. Hoard as a young man moved to Wisconsin in the westward exodus of the 1800’s and landed in an area that also had agricultural problems much like his former home. One day siting on a hillside noting the farmers going out of business or struggling, he came up with the idea of making the same change to cows, an idea that made Wisconsin the “Dairy State” for many years.

Hoard also started Hoard’s Dairyman’s Journal that gave information to farmers on dairy practices. He is considered the father of the refrigerated railcar that was needed to ship milk to markets at a great distance and today his drawings of the perfect barn have been copied by Cornell University. His motto was that happy cows produced more milk and that entering his dairy you were to treat his cows like “mothers” with kindness and respect.

In his lifetime he became the Governor of Wisconsin and helped bring abolition to the state, staunchly supporting legislation to accompany his beliefs.

Today Madison County, NY is still an agricultural county and much of what was learned by our founding dairy farmer’s came out of Hoard’s Journal! 

It is a great pity that riding on today’s Route 46 one cannot be made aware of this piece of Madison County history, instead we are beaten to death with Gerrit Smith, Oz and pass real history right by.  And of yes those are “Hop” plants coming back to Munnsville…everything old is new again or as I always say…”History always repeats itself”!

(http://www.syracuse.com/food/index.ssf/2015/04/heluva_good_closes_cheese_plant_in_wayner_county.html)