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FROM THE BRYANT ROOM ARCHIVES
By Myrna Sloam ©March/April 2008
A View of the Mackay Estate, Part 16: The Dairy,
By Stewart Donaldson, July/August 2008.
The following article is part 16 of a continuing series taken from the memoirs of Stewart W. Donaldson (1907-1994) who grew up on the Clarence H. Mackay estate in what is now East hills. These memoirs were written in the 1950s recalling the estate in the 1910s and 1920s. Stewart’s father, William, was a coachman/chauffeur on the estate, and Stewart was born and raised there.
The [cow] barns and dairy [from 1914 onward] were in [the] charge of Peter Letson. The herdsmen were Frank Mackshimac, Fred Grunner, Rocco Abbondondola and Pete Letson [father of Peter Letson]. They fed, milked, cleaned up and cared for about 15 head of registered Guernsey milking cows, 10 heifers and I think 5 bulls, one of which was a champion, Masher Galore.
There were always 3 cows on butterfat tests. They were always kept in stalls and milked 4 times a day, and fed just as often. Each milking was weighed and recorded for the Guernsey Club of America. These tests went for about 30 days at a time and these cows never left the stalls while on test!
The milking was all done by hand [and milk was] put into 20 quart milk cans and transported over to the dairy across the road in a 2 broad-wheeled iron conveyor. The cans were taken into the dairy, where Mr. Drake (Peter Letson’s father-in-law) and Mr. Letson (Peter Letson’s father) poured the milk into a large container. The milk ran through, or rather around, water-cooled pipes. It was then put into steam washed glass bottles. They separated whatever cream was necessary for the [mansion] house to make butter. They [also] ran an electrically operated butter churn and put the butter up in one pound packages with an imprint of “Harbor Hill” and a cow on each package. The milk, cream and butter were kept in a large walk-in ice box in the dairy. They also had buttermilk, which was delicious….
The dairymen and herdsmen wore white coats, knee length boots and white skull caps with wide brims on the sides. The herdsmen came in at 4:00AM and worked until 10:00. Then they were off until 2:00PM and worked until 5PM. This was a nine hour day. Each man had one day off a week. At 4:00AM, they would bring the cows in, put them in their stanchions, then [they would] wash the udder and under belly and dry them, feed them, and later milk them by hand. Next, [they would] take the milk over to the dairy for the dairymen to cool and bottle. At 6:00AM [they would] put the cattle out to pasture, clean and wash up the barns, take care of the bull pens, and feed the bulls and young cattle…. One man each week had to take the long shift and milk the test cows at 10:00PM.
The test cows were milked 4 times a day—at 4AM, 10AM, 4 PM, and 10PM. In the dairy the milk bottles would be steam cleaned, the milk chilled by letting it flow over
ice-water cooled pipes, down into a container, which had a faucet at the bottom. The bottle would be placed under the faucet and filled, capped and then refrigerated.
The front part of the dairy [building] and the 2 top floors were living quarters for Mr. Letson. There was Peter Letson, his wife, 2 sons, 3 daughters, his father, father-in-law, plus 2 school teachers. This made a total of 11 folks living there. That was a big family.
Mr. [Frank] Lupton [the farm superintendent] grew corn for fodder and also some clover and hay. But, the greater amount of hay was purchased, along with the bran and other feeds, from Hennessey, later Hamilton’s feed store, in Roslyn. The cattle were always shown at the County Fair and usually did well in getting blue ribbons. They had a special trailer (a low bed type) that was used to transport the cattle to the Nassau County Fair Grounds, [and] also to take cows to other estates to the bull for breeding purposes, or if necessary, to cart [any] cattle that they sold to other estates. They were always buying and selling in order to improve the herd. There was a great deal of kidding about the cost of a quart of milk on the C.H. Mackay estate. Someone once said it cost Mackay at least $5.00 a quart for the milk and probably $3.00 a lb. for the butter. I can tell you [that] these cows received the best tender loving care….
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