At the December History Artifact and Pop-up Library presentation at the Waterbury Area Senior Center, Skip Flanders from the society's Outreach Education Committee showed a butter mold recently donated by a Maine antiques collector.
The stamp of quality butter
The mold, found an at antiques shop in New Hampshire, held one pound of butter and stamped "Waterbury, VT" on the slab. According to Flanders, such hand-carved molds included a stamp to identify the farm or creamery where the butter was made. "Whose butter was whose was super-important back then," he explained.
It's not known whose farm or creamery used this particular mold, but Flanders suggested it was likely someone well-to-do. Patented in 1890 by Perley Kimball of Bellows Falls, Vermont, this mold was dubbed the "Eureka" model and sold by the Vermont Farm Machine Company. It is made of maple, a dense wood with few pores, ensuring higher quality butter. The handle is brass. This "basic" model sold for $3.50, or about $120 in today's currency.
A butter town
Butter played a significant role in Waterbury's economy during the 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition to dairy farms and creameries, local manufacturers like Cooley-Wright used wood from nearby sawmills to make such products as butter boxes and churns. A "butter train" with special refrigerated cars ran weekly between Vermont and points in New England, starting in 1854 until the late 1920s, when competition from western farms shifted Vermont farmers' focus to the increasing demand for fluid milk from cities in the region.
The last operating creamery in Waterbury was Winnesquam Farms, located in the present-day Zachary's Pizza building. Winnesquam closed in the 1950s.
