Topics Related to Artifact Spotlight

Today, grinding your coffee beans seems quaint in some ways. Many of us are used to going to our favorite grocery store or café and buying pre-ground beans. However, for centuries, unless you went to a coffee house or another establishment that served coffee, you would grind and sometimes toast the beans yourself. Hand grinders, like this one, tell the story of coffee in the United States, and its rise in popularity.

The processes of turning cream into butter changed little from the 1700s to the 1940s. While the implements to do so progressed, much of it remained a process requiring strength, good weather, and time. For generations, butter-making was seen primarily as a woman’s chore or a chore for the children. They spent time every week turning cream into butter, one of the most affordable and easily accessible fats. The hand crank butter churn provided some ease for making butter but required much manual labor.

On 2 August 1887, Mr. Adoniram J. Cushman of Monson, Maine received a patent for slate treatment. His invention “…relates to an improved composition bath for treating slate or other porous stone and has especial application in the preparation of the slate lining used in refrigerators, butter, berry, and fruit boxes…”. The “Arctic Butter Box” helped countless families in preserving their perishable food before electric refrigeration.

On September 11, 1869, a letter from a Mississippi farmer appeared in Scientific American inquiring on the best broom corn cultivation practices.

When George Vanderbilt set out to construct the Biltmore estate, he envisioned not only a grand place for himself and his family, he wished to reconstruct the French-style country, self-sufficient estate. This plan included dairy farming. Raising livestock was not unheard of in Western North Carolina, as the terrain made it difficult to grow large rows of cash crops. Vanderbilt, wanting the best, imported Jersey cows for their high quality of milk in 1889.