Written By: Jim Farfaglia
Since we’re in the middle of summer, I wanted to take a look at an Oswego County town that has made significant contributions to farming. Agriculture is big business in our county, with unique growing environments like the muck lands around Fulton and Oswego and the abundant apple orchards in the Mexico area. Up in the northeastern part of our county, in the Williamstown community, farmers have been innovators for centuries.
In the 1800s, Williamstown’s rural expanse provided acres of land for dairy farms and for growing feed for cattle. Producing milk became so successful in Williamstown that, in 1919, a Dairymen’s League was formed there by 60 farmers, becoming one of the first communities to provide individual dairies with a support system for their product year round. Along with fresh milk, cows provided raw material for cheese and by 1894, there were three cheese factories in the Williamstown area.
Williamstown was also a leader in the canning industry, with resident Peter Rever starting a factory in 1866. Workers canned peas, corn, beans and pumpkin, providing steady income for area residents. Factory owners even worked with farmers by supplying them with seeds needed to plant their crops, assuring the factory that it would have ample vegetables to preserve.
Another food staple once grown in abundance in Williamstown was potatoes. By the early 1900s, several farmers began growing the tuber exclusively. The versatile crop was so popular that, by the summer of 1938, Williamstown hosted the North Eastern Potatoe Growers Field Day. Six thousand people attended, sampling potatoes prepared in a variety of tasty recipes.
Potato farmers carried on for generations. In the 1950s, when David deGraff, of Adams Center, bought a potato farm from Walter Miller, he began by planting 100 acres of potatoes; by 1958 it was 300 acres, enough to supply the A & P Supermarkets in northeastern United States. But deGraff didn’t stop with potatoes. By 1968, he’d expanded to growing strawberries, blueberries and cranberries.
Not only were Williamstown farmers growing popular foods, they were also developing more efficient ways to do so. Back in the 1920s, when Walter Miller was growing potatoes, he created an irrigation system to water his fields. Miller manufactured his own equipment, experimenting with rejected auto steel from the Ford Motor Company. When David deGraff bought an irrigation system from Miller, in 1945, he was so impressed that he became a system dealer, eventually acquiring the company in 1949 and selling them throughout the Northeast.
Innovative farming stretches back even farther in Williamstown’s history, due to one of its prominent families, the Cases. This began with Jonathan Case (1788-1880), who spent over half of his life working on a project that would change how farmers protected their land: stone walls. Material for those walls was plentiful in Oswego County, thanks to the Ice Age, which moved through this part of the world over 10,000 years ago, leaving behind stones of all shapes and sizes.
Jonathan noticed how the large flat stones didn’t need mortar if they were properly stacked and he built remarkably sturdy walls to keep out animals and intruders from his prized apple orchard. Other landowners liked the idea and used the walls to set boundary lines and keep herds of cattle and other domestic animals on their property. Parts of what remains from Case’s wall can be seen today if you travel on a road off County Route 17 heading out of Williamstown toward Redfield.
The next generation of Cases included Jonathan’s nephew, Jerome Increase Case (1819-1891). Jerome was one of four brothers who grew up working their dad’s farm, spending hot summers growing and harvesting wheat and then collecting its nutritious kernels on a barn floor through cold winters. While using a handheld scythe to begin the labor intensive harvesting process, Jerome imagined that there had to be an easier way.
Around this time, the Case family heard of a new threshing machine, the Groundhog, which started the harvesting process mechanically. Using spiked-toothed cylinders powered by horses on a treadmill, the machine separated the valuable head of the grain from the straw and chaff, a vast improvement over the Case boys’ manual labor. Jerome’s father purchased a Groundhog.
Though Jerome saw benefits of the machine, he thought he could do better, spending evenings sketching out his ideas. Noting Jerome’s inquisitiveness, his father sent him to Rensselaer-Oswego Academy in Mexicoville (now Mexico). Committed to further developing the harvesting process, Jerome moved west, to the prairies, which he believed would be the new center for wheat production. In the spring of 1842, he shipped out from Oswego on steamship bound for Chicago; from there he traveled on horseback to Rochester, Wisconsin.
For the next year and a half, Jerome developed an improved version of the Groundhog, introducing the first Case Thresher in 1844. It was immediately successful separating grain from straw, prompting Jerome to use his ingenuity in marketing his new machine. Thus, Case became a pioneer in agricultural advertising by placing ads in farm papers, sending out mailings and staging demonstrations.
Jerome continued tinkering with farm machinery. In 1869, he began working with fitting a steam engine to farm equipment; fifteen years later Case had created one of farming’s first tractors. Though by today’s standards the machine was loud and cumbersome, it proved itself capable of pulling plows and providing power for other farm chores.
Others saw the potential of the tractor and began developing it. Unfortunately, Jerome Case never lived to see the first version of the tractor we know today, a gas-powered model. The first ones were shipped from Case’s tractor factory in 1892, just a few months after his death. Today, a farmer wouldn’t consider a career growing vegetables or raising cattle without a tractor. Next time you drive by a farm field and see a worker sitting atop one, remember it was the imagination and dreams of a Williamstown boy that made it all possible.
