Manufacturer: Sterling China
User: Mishawaka Farmers Dairy Company
Date of plate: 1920s – early 1930s
Notes: The Mishawaka Farmers Dairy Company supplied the cities of Mishawaka and South Bend, Indiana.
Below is a 1922 company profile from An Account of St. Joseph County from Its Organization by John B. Stoll (Dayton Historical Publishing Co., 1923):
"… The Mishawaka Farmer Dairy Company was established in 1914 by Mr. Wallace of Goshen, who owned and operated it successfully until his accidental death on September 1, 1919… On September 1, 1920, the plant was taken over by the present company, which operates on the cooperative plan with seventy-seven farmers as stockholders, and with a capital stock of $50,000… The company does a retail and wholesale milk business, marketing the milk produced by the stockholders, while two trucks are used to collect the milk. The product, which runs about twelve hundred gallons a day, is clarified and pasteurized and then bottled… Two-thirds of the milk is sold to retail trade in the cities of Mishawaka and South Bend, and the remainder is wholesaled to grocers, bakers, etc. The officers of the company are Lemuel Sheets, president, H.T. Killan, secretary, O.P. Rogers, treasurer, and all three are directors together with six other men, John H. Fulmer, Ray Monhout, John Monhout, Leo Gertbauer, Joseph Meyers and C. E. Weiss. Mr. [Edward] Grunawalt became general manager of the company soon after its organization, previous to which he had been a milk retailer in Mishawaka for seven years…"
The Mishawaka Farmers Dairy of Indiana continued operations into the 1960s, as the company sponsored an afternoon children's cartoon show in 1962 with host "Sheriff Rufus Colepepper" played by Frank Dreighton on South Bend's WNDU Station-Channel 46. (Source: "Hi There, Boys and Girls! America's Local Children's TV Programs," by Tim Hollis, University Press of Mississippi, October 2001)
White body with a black line rim and verge border. Topmarked "Mishawaka Farmers Dairy Company" in black.