Silverbrook Legacies is presented monthly by the Niles Daily Star and the Friends of Silverbrook Cemetery. We welcome your feedback and suggestions for future stories about Niles’ former residents and the city they called home.

Ever run out of milk for the kids? Or cream for your coffee?  What if you could wake up and find freshly delivered milk, cream and butter waiting on your doorstep? Sounds like some crazy new entrepreneurial service venture, but some of us remember when it was part of daily life.

Long before giant box stores and picking up milk along with filling your car’s tank, the clippety clop of horse-drawn carriages was among the earliest sounds on early morning streets. The local dairy products were exactly that: local.

Local dairy farmers awoke and milked their cows. They delivered the raw milk to local dairies and creameries to be made into butter or delivered to area homes in glass bottles often with a special “bubble” top in which the cream gathered.

This area was rich in dairy farming and with locally owned dairy businesses. The 21st Annual Report of the Michigan Dairy and Food Commission for the year ending June 31, 1914, listed 14 dairies and creameries in Berrien County.

Niles Creamery, owned by Albert G. Rooks, now resident in Silverbrook Cemetery, accepted milk exclusively provided by Guernsey cows. The Pipestone Jersey Creamery’s very name suggests it took perhaps a different view of which cow produced the better milk. Buchanan had the Glendora Creamery and Baroda had its Cream Station but, at the time of the report, they all were getting to know that Big Brother was watching.

Jas Helms, author of the report, in his letter of transmittal to Governor Woodbridge N. Ferris, stated, “In accordance with the provisions of the act creating the Dairy Food Department …. We have been compelled to print a second edition of our bulletin showing farmers how to construct a model cow stall and demands for this pamphlet have come from every state in the Union .… We have continued the educational scoring contests of butter at various points in the state, and, at each contest, the number of entries has increased and the creamery men who participate in these conferences are greatly encouraged by the benefit they derive therefrom. I have prepared a pamphlet on the care of cream by the producers. A very large edition of this pamphlet was printed and sent to the various creameries and cream buying stations of the state.”

The onset of government regulations for the dairy industry had its casualties. In Case No. 744 People vs Elmer E. Rouse, a charge of selling ice cream below the legal standard was brought before the justice court in Benton Harbor on Aug. 11, 1911. The defendant was convicted and fined $100 plus costs. However, Rouse had the case dismissed on appeal when the standard for ice cream was lowered.

More dairies were developed in Niles. The City Dairy was organized by William Saathoff who moved to Niles from Staunton, Ill., when he purchased the Forburger Dairy at Seventh and Howard streets in 1925. At first, he ran the dairy with only his wife, son and a car. Two years later, they bought the Hunter Company’s ice cream and ice business.

By 1936, the firm employed 15 people and had five trucks and three wagons delivering their product to Niles’ families and prided itself on being “modern and sanitary and in compliance with all regulations,” according to an article in the March 24 edition of the Star. Its president was early Niles settler Carmi R. Smith.

The paper also carried large advertisements for the company proclaiming City Dairy Ice Cream as Niles favorite, urging readers that “you can buy it the way you like it,” in bricks, factory-packed containers or in bulk and in a wide variety of delicious flavors as “sold and served at all leading fountains.”

Another showed an art clip of a man, looking suspiciously like a pharmacist, peering into a microscope, as it declared that at City Dairy: Cleanliness is paramount. “It has to be fresh and pure and rich; pasteurization and fast delivery then assures you that City Dairy products reach you in the finest condition.”

Horse-drawn wagons gave way to carts with rubber wheels, and they led to the use of motorized trucks. Our streets became perhaps cleaner, but certainly lost one of the main symbols of a simpler time when horse’s hooves were no longer heard in the early morning.

The 1956 City Directory lists Exner’s Dairy Inc., with Richard P Hochmuth as its president, at 1307 Eagle St. Gone is the three-digit phone number that was imprinted on the early City Dairy trucks which proclaimed “I replaced Good Old Dobbins on the job.” Now Exner’s Dairy phone number was Tel Mutual 3-6222. The times they were a-changin’.

One of the joys of doing this column is that I often get to meet the most interesting people. Looking for some remaining sign of Exner’s Dairy, I came across a small 2-inch-high bottle embossed with the words “Exner’s Dairy Niles MI” on eBay. I contacted the seller, Ernie Dilmer, known as The Bottle Guy from Baltimore, to see if he would mind me using the picture for this story.

Dilmer reacted by posting a notice on the listing, that the bottle should be purchased by someone who lived in the Niles area in order to bring this piece of history home. In addition to his business of refurbishing pool tables in Pasadena, Md., he has a museum in his home with 800 to 900 bottles on display and another 2,000 in storage.

A true history buff, Dimler said he wished he had known how rare and historic the bottle was and had donated it to our local museum. He is on the lookout for another.

The weeklong auction had more than 51 views and 12 watchers for the little bottle from Niles. When the auction ended Tuesday morning, the bottle was purchased by an Owosso resident for $42.66. Empty!

Imagine the amazement on Hochmuth’s face had he been told that one day his smallest bottle would command such a price. That would have been a lot of milk in his day. Not so much now.

My husband, a lifelong resident of Niles, remembers going with his dad to get ice cream at United Dairy on Ninth Street, where John’s Glass is now located, between Sycamore and Main streets. Evidently, in an attempt to survive, several of the dairies, which remained into the late ‘50s and early 1960s, had combined their efforts, to continue serving locally made ice cream to Niles’ children.

For more information on Friends of Silverbrook, contact: Friends of Silverbrook Cemetery c/o 508 E. Main St. Niles MI 49120, Tim and Candace Skalla at 684-2455, wskalla@sbcglobal.net or contact Ginny Tyler at sphinx1974@aol.com.