HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                      33

abandoned United Brethren church, 30x40, with addition and improve-
ments. This company placed in charge of their industry a supposed
experienced and competent man. The capacity of this factory was rated
at a thousand pounds of cheese per day, the product, however, having
been less than half this much during the time that it was operated.
Neither of these industries came up, practically, to the anticipations of
their promoters and founders. From mismanagement or other causes,
neither plant was operated any considerable length of time. It was
claimed by the proprietors of the plant in the north end of the county
that home dealers discriminated against them, buying cheese of inferior
quality from manufacturers elsewhere at prices with which they could
not compete. This plant, as represented by the proprietors, had conclu-
sively demonstrated that nine cents worth of milk is necessary to produce
a pound of cheese of first quality.
    At the time of the building of the grade of the Indianapolis Division
of the Southern Indiana Railroad, Perry A. Morgan, a substantial, pro-
gressive farmer of Perry township, through whose farm this grade
passed, projected a creamery in anticipation of the early completion of
the road, which he proceeded to build immediately alongside the grade,
then equipped and operated it for the season of 1906. The indefinite
suspension of work on the railroad proved disastrous to the operation
and success of this industry, as all the butter produced for the market
had to be hauled to Cory for shipment over the E. & I. Railroad. Having
contracts for the season with patrons of the plant, on abandonment of
the production of butter, he resorted to the shipping of the cream to
Terre Haute, which proved to be more inconvenient, hazardous and
unprofitable than the handling of the butter, when the industry was sus-
pended. Later, the plant was converted into a feed-mill and operated for
a time as such.
    A pioneer infant industry of significance in the later development
of the growth and wealth of the county was the production of earthen-
ware, or pottery, of which the primitive manufacturing plants were
known as potteries, or potter-shops. The founding of this industry dates
back to a very early day in our local history. Its importance to the strug-
gling early settlers may be measured from three considerations—affording
remunerative employment to a limited number in production and dis-
tribution, providing necessary household utilities, and as a marketable
product and source of cash. Comparatively speaking, potter-shops were
numerous, and much of their output was wagoned over the country and
sold to the retail dealers. There are yet survivors of the times just
preceding the Civil war who may be heard to relate their experiences in
the distribution, sale and exchange of “crockery” by drives made through
Greene, Sullivan and other adjacent counties. In the later fifties and
early sixties, Cyrus Rinehart produced large quantities of this ware in
the neighborhood of what is now Cardonia, for whom John Triplett was
distributor and salesman. Though the first developments in this industry
were in the north end of the county, as early as 1844 Truman Smith went
from Cloverland down to Middlebury and established a shop in that local-
ity, which he conducted for twenty years or more, very nearly on the same
ground now occupied by the plant owned and operated by Beryl Griffith,
on the south side of Clay City. Immediately in the same locality was
another shop, operated for a time during the life of the original one, by
Peter Harp, which stood near the site of the later Correll, now the Henry

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