In the first thirty years after Thaddeus Selleck successfully shipped milk by rail from Chester, N.Y. to New York City in 1842, farmers largely controlled the entirety of the dairy farming market — from milking the cows to consigning the milk to the public. The lucrative nature of this market can be seen in this picture of an Erie Railroad milk train alongside the station at Orange Farm located a few miles west of the Orange County village of Florida, N.Y. Note the milk cans in the horse-drawn wagon which served as the primary method of transporting and retailing milk until the first glass milk bottle was patented in 1878. (Steamtown National Historic Site Archives)
Various wooden hogshead milk jugs advertised by Frank L. Jones, a supplier of dairy farming products from Utica, N.Y. Shortly after Thaddeus Selleck began shipping milk in 1842, the Goshen, N.Y., farmer Jacob Vail experimented with cooling milk during transportation by fitting an ice-filled lead pipe within one of these jugs. Vail was successful but, inadvertently, invented the ancestor to the modern-day metal milk can. (Courtesy of the author)
The Tuthill milk jar is in a class of its own. Featuring a ground lip and a pontiled base, it would have been used years before the first milk bottle was patented in 1878. (Udderly Delightful, John Tutton)
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Antique Bottle & Glass Collector
