Where do you get your milk from? Almond? Soy? The grocery? Cows? There was a time when most folks went out back of their house to the shed or barn and got a pail of the refreshing white liquid from Bossie. Many city dwellers even had a family cow that every once and awhile would kick over a pail while being milked; unfortunately, however, in Chicago Mrs. O’Leary’s cow missed the pail. When I was about eight or nine years old, I spent a week of my summer vacation on a farm east of Martinsville, Indiana on State Road 44 where my paternal grandmother was raised. The farm was then owned by one of her cousins, and he taught me how to milk the family cow. A curious barn cat sat watching, and a squirt of milk was its reward. What would we do without milk on cereal, butter on bread, and cheese with wine?
Indianapolis residents were fortunate in the city’s early days to have the Bolton farm nearby at Mt. Jackson (future site of Central State Hospital). Hoosier poet Sarah Bolton would pause from her writing, lay down the quill and see to “a dairy of ten cows, caring for the milk, and making large quantities of butter and cheese for the market.” By the time of the Civil War, there were six dairies around the city with Sugar Grove Dairy milking over fifty cows daily and supplying Indianapolis hotels and many families with the “purest and freshest milk.” Later, the Churchman farm, six miles southeast of the city, received accolades for being “unsurpassed in quality of cows and cleanliness and all the appointments that should distinguish a dairy farm.”
By the late 19th century, there were dairies of all sizes in and around Indianapolis; not all with the sound of tinkling of bells as cows roamed meadows of the “greenest grass,” waded in streams of the “clearest water,” or laid peacefully under a grove chewing their cuds. Smaller dairy operators throughout the year drove their cows from barns and sheds “over city pavements, past city houses” in the morning to nearby commons to graze during the day, returning to their enclosures at night. Some milk wagons carried names like “Sunshine” or “Bluegrass,” “Spring Hill” or “Cloverdale,” evoking images of an ideal dairy. Others noted a location like “Mapleton” and “Crown Hill,” or “Irvington” and “Brightwood.”
One dairy operation that emerged at this time was that of W. H. Roberts, a farm of 547 acres on Millersville Rd. six miles north of Indianapolis. What began as a small milk operation grew by 1900 to a dairy with 111 Shorthorn, Jersey and Holstein cows, “good and healthy, none diseased…kept in good stable, producing 160 gallons of milk daily.” His four sons joined the business in 1910, and W. H. Roberts & Sons expanded dairy operations distributing ninety percent of its products directly to city households. Roberts was a pioneer in producing nutritious “nursery milk” for babies that came from selected cows with milk testing high in butterfat. After 110 years in operation, Roberts Milk became a victim of the supermarket “milk wars” of the 1980s and was forced into bankruptcy.
Not all dairy farms serving the people and institutions of Indianapolis were located in Marion County. One of the earliest of these dairies to have a processing facility in the city was Polk’s Creamery, 325 E. 7th St. (16th St and Park Ave.). James T. Polk operated a dairy farm near Greenwood in Johnson County with 230 Jersey cows, the facilities and cows “kept scrupulously clean.” After a decade of providing milk in and around the Hoosier capitol, Polk Sanitary Milk Co. was incorporated in 1904 and built its new dairy plant, with its two distinctive fifty-foot corner towers of white enameled brick resembling milk bottles, at 1100 E. 15th St. Polk wagons and later trucks delivered milk to residents until bankruptcy proceedings forced the company’s sale in 1963 and Maplehurst Jersey Farms acquired the family-owned business.
On hot summer days a glass of cold milk can be refreshing, but when given the choice most of us prefer the frozen option, ice cream. For more than three quarters of a century, Ballard Ice Cream Co. served up packaged ice cream, molded frosted treats, and soda fountain scoops to all who craved the frozen delicacy. What began in 1875 as Ballard’s Milk Depot, a wholesale and retail milk business in the first block of North Delaware St., became a commercial maker of ice cream five years later. By 1900 Ballard Ice Cream, along with two other large Indianapolis producers, controlled the ice cream market in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. To meet this demand, Ballard Ice Cream opened a new manufacturing plant in 1903 at 315 N. Alabama St. Nearly fifty years later, this locally owned ice cream pioneer business was bought by National Dairy Products Corp., and retaining the name, production was moved to 1417 N. Harding St. A few years shy of its centennial, the Ballard Ice Cream name disappeared.
Southwest of the city near West Newton, the Edwin Mills farm began selling sweet cream to Indianapolis ice cream makers around 1910 and sixteen years later his sons — Sumner, Howard, and Newlin — formed Maplehurst Jersey Farms. With 75 head of cows, the dairy established milk routes for home delivery in the city and was incorporated in 1932. Maplehurst Farms served the people and businesses of Indianapolis until 1997 when Dean Foods Co. bought the business. Two years later the Marion County dairy farm closed.
East End Dairies also incorporated in 1932 and was located at 577 N. Highland Ave. This small milk processor received its product from “inspected herds near the city” for delivery to 15,000 Indianapolis families. When the dairy founder retired in the mid-fifties, it merged with the Borden Co. Jersey Dairy Farm served customers north east of the city while Maywood Milk Co. served customers in the south west; Christensen Dairy Farms of New Augusta served the north west while Bosma Dairy of Beech Grove served the south east. Irvington Dairy and Cumberland Dairy served the Warren Township area. Weber Milk Co. promoted its “Angel Drink,” a blend of milk, chocolate, and malted milk, while Hornaday Milk Co provided customers with an insulated “all-weather cabinet [milk box] without extra cost” to keep its milk “fresh and sweet.”
Yes, once there was a time on hot July days when milk trucks slowly rolled down city streets with children scampering beside, waiting for the frequent stop when the driver ran chilled milk and butter up to a door, so they could grab a frigid shard of glistening ice from among those scattered atop and around the cases within the truck.
