One Saturday afternoon, on June 2, 1951, more than a thousand people gathered at the stadium at Rome Free Academy to honor the man who, one hundred years earlier, had revolutionized cheese-making in the United States forever by opening the first cheese factory in the country.
It was located just north of Rome. The man who invented the factory and its machinery was Jesse Williams – a farmer born in Rome on Feb. 24, 1798.
The event at RFA was just one of many during the week-long Cheese Centennial in Rome that attracted dignitaries from across the country. One was C. Chester Du Mond, commissioner of the state Department of Agriculture, who told the crowd: “The life of Jesse Williams illustrates the things that have made America great.”
Before 1851, there was nothing uniform about cheese-making in the country. Most of the cheese was made on family dairy farms and greatly varied in quality, size and shape. Sometimes, the curd was made on the family farm and sold to cheese-makers. Nevertheless, there was nothing scientific about the process.
Williams changed all that when he convinced dairy farmers in the area to deliver their milk directly to his new factory. Then, using machinery he had invented (and never patented), he began to convert the milk into high-quality cheese.
The Rome Weekly Sentinel wrote on July 9, 1851, that Williams had opened a cheese factory in town and that “he purchases much of the milk from several hundred cows and makes his cheese of superior quality and uniform size.”
In 1864, it was reported that Rome was producing so much cheese that it had become the “cheese capital of the world.” (In Herkimer County, cheese-making also had become a major industry in the 19th century.)
At the Cheese Centennial in Rome in 1951, one of the many events was a play about Williams’ founding of his cheese factory. Kenneth A. Kenna portrayed Jesse. Barbara Merritt was crowned queen of the centennial.
At a banquet in the Elks Club, the main speaker was Joseph H. Kraft, president of the Kraft Food Co. He said: “Thank God we of the cheese industry can claim such a man as Jesse Williams as the founder of the cheese factory system.”
Commissioner DuMond agreed and added: “Jesse Williams (who died on Dec. 20, 1864, at age 67) left behind a lot of people who revere his name.”
(For information about Jesse Williams, see “Jesse Williams, Cheesemaker,” by Frederick A. Rahmer. It’s available to be read at the library at the Oneida County History Center.)
Mohawk Valley Milestones is a history series written by O-D historian Frank Tomaino. It publishes Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays until June 15. Missed a chapter? Catch up at uticaod.com/topics/mvmilestones