Anyone born and raised in Easton between the late 1930’s and the early 1960’s certainly remembers the Marsh Dairy. In an era where home milk delivery was the norm, if you didn’t get your milk from Marsh, you almost certainly knew someone who worked for them. There was a time in the early 1950’s when Marsh Dairy was likely the third largest provider of jobs in town behind the Bridgeport Hydraulic Company and the town government. Their fleet of white delivery vans with black fenders and the round orange logo with the angled name Marsh emblazoned on the sides were a common sight.
But the history of the Marsh Dairy began more than 110 years earlier when Thomas and Eleanor Marsh along with their brood of 8 children arrived in Easton after a harrowing voyage from their hometown in Trowbridge, England in 1850. Sailing aboard the ship El Dorado, they were forced to share their space with the survivors of another ship that sank in the Atlantic while traveling along the same shipping lane. An outbreak of measles had stricken the passengers of the other vessel and Thomas and Eleanor’s youngest son, Samuel, was soon infected with the deadly virus. Samuel succumbed to the illness less than a week after the family reached the shores of the United States.
In Easton, Thomas and his family would join his father and oldest brother John who had purchased a grist mill in the Narrows in 1845. Younger brothers, James, Christopher, and Samuel all lived in the valley above the Narrows on small farms that currently sit under the waters of the Easton Reservoir. Thomas would purchase a large 1790’s saltbox house on what is now 100 Flat Rock Road, along with approximately 120 acres of land. It was there that Thomas would begin his dairy farm.
In Easton, Thomas and Eleanor would expand their already large family by an additional three children, with the last boy, Ambrose, being born in 1855. The couple’s eldest son, also named Thomas, was a young adult when they emigrated to this country in 1850, and the next oldest male, Joshua, had moved to Rhode Island before 1860. The two eldest boys both served during the Civil War. It was only Ambrose, who was the youngest, that remained to take over the reins of the family farm as Thomas grew old.
By 1879, along with his father Thomas, Ambrose was running the family farm. That farm was then producing milk for sale to the growing population in neighboring Fairfield and Bridgeport. Of the 213 farms in Easton that were enumerated in the 1880 Non-population United States Census, the Marsh farm was the 4th largest producer of milk in the entire town. What makes that even more remarkable is that two of Thomas’s sons-in-law were also among the top 6 milk producers in Easton. Ambrose and Thomas sold 4,500 gallons of milk in 1879, while son-in-law Seth Jennings produced and sold the largest amount at 9,122 gallons. Son-in-law Levi Disbrow added another 2,880 gallons for a Marsh family total of 16,502. The other three producers of milk for the commercial market added another 14,300 gallons for an Easton total of 30,802. The extended Marsh clan then owned 291 acres of farmland.
As area farms began to fail during the 1890’s, Ambrose became a buyer of almost any large tract of land that sat between Sport Hill Road and Tashua Hill in Trumbull. He purchased over 110 acres of land from the Smith family whose farm sat next to his own on Flat Rock Road. By the turn of the new century, either Ambrose or members of his extended family (siblings, cousins, and in-laws) owned much of the land atop Sport Hill Road. By 1905, Ambrose owned all the back farmland that ran from the family homestead to the Seeley homestead just south of today’s Marsh Road, making him one of the largest landholders in the southern part of town. It was during this time that Ambrose’s two eldest sons – Frederick and Robert – teamed up to take over the milk business, formally naming it the Marsh Brothers Dairy, the direct predecessor to the Marsh Dairy that many of us remember.
By the early 1900’s, Ambrose was devoting more of his time to local politics and community causes. He served as both the second and third selectman in 1903 and 1907. He was a founding member of the new Easton Grange and the long-time choir master at the Jesse Lee Methodist Church. In 1927 and 1929, he would go on to serve in the State Legislature as the Representative from Easton.
In 1903, Frederick married Mabel Seeley who lived just to the south on Sport Hill. In 1907, Robert married Florence Beach Candee. Robert built the house at 218 Sport Hill Road in 1908 on land he had purchased from the Seeley family, a move that gave the Marsh family direct access from Sport Hill Road to all the land that Ambrose had previously purchased to the rear. The house and his new 24 X 30-foot barn were built by his cousins, Charles and Edward Marsh, who by that time had purchased a good deal of the vacant land on the opposite side of Sport Hill Road south of Beers Road.
By the early 1900’s, pasteurization was gaining momentum in the effort to eliminate pathogens that produce disease. As milk from Easton farms required a rather lengthy trip by wagon into Bridgeport, the product wasn’t delivered to homes until at least a day after it was produced by the cow. The general method of delivery was carried out by transporting the milk in a clean galvanized metal container that could be poured into smaller, patron supplied pitchers or bottles and then stored in the family ice box for a day or two. The shelf life of raw milk was extremely short, and any contamination during the delivery process could result in the user becoming ill. Warm weather shortened the shelf life by as much as half. Tuberculosis was a common pathogen found in raw milk. In 1908, Chicago was the first city in the United States that mandated the pasteurization of milk sold to the public. Dairies that invested in a pasteurization process soon began to capture business from those who didn’t embrace the idea.
The Marsh brothers had learned from their uncle, Seth Jennings, who was married to their father’s sister Hester, that more money was to be made by distributing and selling milk than there was in managing a large herd of cows and milking them twice a day. Seth had become the largest seller of milk from his Elm Row Farm in Easton in the late 1800’s by purchasing raw milk from other farms and then transporting it to Bridgeport and Fairfield and having his team of “milk peddlers” deliver it to residents and grocers. Their business plan would more closely follow that of their uncle than the one their father had pursued.
A fire in 1922 destroyed the family homestead on Flat Rock Road. Robert made a deal with his father to trade properties, with Robert building a more modern home on Flat Rock Road and allowing his parents to move into his house at 218 Sport Hill Road. Frederick and Mabel had built their new home at 212 Sport Hill Road a year earlier. It was around that time that the two brothers parted company, with Robert concentrating on real estate investments and Frederick assuming complete control of the dairy, renaming it F.A. Marsh & Son Dairy, the “son” being his only boy, Laurence Seeley Marsh who had just turned 20.
Fred and his son Laurence expanded the operation by building a full-scale pasteurization and bottling plant behind Fred’s house at 212 Sport Hill Road. This all occurred prior to Easton enacting its zoning regulations, so the Marsh family was free to do as it chose. Laurence soon built his house right behind that of his father’s with access coming from the newly constructed Sport Hill Place (today’s Marsh Road). At the same time, Ambrose established one of the first subdivisions in Easton on the new road with his cousins Charles and Edward constructing several new suburban residences, complete with electricity, indoor plumbing, central heat, and a garage for an automobile.
During the 1930’s, under Laurence’s forward thinking, the dairy expanded, and more delivery trucks were added, In the 1936 photo below, he added at least 3 brand new Chevrolet trucks that year alone – a major expansion in the height of the Great Depression. As Bridgeport’s population continued to grow leading up to WWII, the dairy was able to keep up with the demand, including that from local restaurants and diners that were feeding all those transient workers living in rooming houses and supplying labor to all those factories. The dairy’s name was shortened to allow for a cleaner logo that adorned even the smallest of bottles that restaurants served their cream in. The new logo simply read Marsh Dairy.
After the war ended, peacetime projects included a great expansion of the school system to accommodate the new generation of “Baby Boomers.” The Marsh Dairy was soon competing with the Snow family, the Dewhirst, Mitchell, Beechmont, and other area dairies for contracts to supply milk to local school districts. As a result, the Marsh Dairy was traveling as far away as Danbury and Ridgefield to pick up raw milk for processing on a daily basis.
Their pasteurization and bottling plant, along with the large garage where their fleet of delivery trucks were stored and serviced had remained mostly out of sight behind the houses at 212 and 218 Sport Hill Road throughout most of the first half of the 20th century. But when the dairy’s need for more space became evident in the late 1950’s, and Easton’s strict zoning regulations limited further expansion, the company began looking for a new facility to meet its requirements. By 1958, the company employed 21 full-time route men and the then current plant simply couldn’t process enough product to allow for further growth. In July 1960, the dairy finalized the purchase of a larger building at 265 Fairchild Ave in Fairfield and soon expanded the old Supreme Dairy facility by adding a 61-foot by 69-foot addition to house the new processing and bottling line. While distribution would remain in Easton for several more years, the new facility was the beginning of the end for the dairy’s presence in town.
David Marsh was Laurence’s only son, and he took over the reins of the dairy from his father. The dairy expanded into ice cream production and even operated two retail ice cream stores in Fairfield. The company continued to deliver quality milk, but the landscape had changed over the years. The days of home delivery were gone, glass bottles were replaced with coated paper containers, and large supermarket chains claimed most of the retail business. By the end of the 20th century, both small and medium size dairies were being forced to either sell or liquidate. The Marsh Dairy was acquired by the Guida-Seibert Dairy prior to David’s retirement in the early 2000’s, ending a family run business that survived and prospered for 5 generations.
