Many can still remember when milk was delivered to a home’s doorstep each day in glass bottles. Milk bottles have an interesting history, and two men from upstate New York made them practical and highly available. One of them once called Otego and Oneonta his home.

Francis E. Baldwin was born in Otego in 1856, a son of the village blacksmith. The family sold the business and resided a few years on a nearby farm. In 1876, the family then moved to Oneonta. Francis Baldwin attended school here. After completion, he taught school for a year on Richardson Hill. That was the old District No. 3 school, near today’s upper reservoir on Wilber Lake Road. Apparently, low pay and the five-mile walk to and from the one-room schoolhouse had Baldwin quickly seeking better career opportunities.

Francis’ brother Erwin had gone to Elmira to practice law, so Francis went there as well to study law. Erwin and Francis established a law partnership after Francis was admitted to the bar in 1881. Baldwin married Miss Anna Grandin, and they had two daughters.

Around 1900, Baldwin had a bit of a diversion from his law career. He became interested in the Thatcher Manufacturing Co., then located in Potsdam.

Dr. Hervey Thatcher was a druggist and chemist in Potsdam. In 1884, Thatcher was convinced that contaminated milk was the major cause of epidemics in his community. Consider at that time milk was sold from horse-drawn wagons, by pail and dipper. Dust, dirt, hair from the horses and much more easily sifted into those pails of milk.

Thatcher reasoned that a glass bottle would prevent contamination and provide more convenient customer delivery. Thus came the birth of the quart milk bottle, and Dr. Thatcher established the patent rights.

Thatcher Manufacturing was in financial trouble in 1902. The directors and stockholders insisted that Baldwin take charge of the business, so he finished up with his last law clientele in Elmira and soon became president, general manager and treasurer at the company in northern New York.

At the time Baldwin took over, the company was doing less than $150,000 of business a year, and the equipment was old and worth little.

Baldwin had heard of a new automatic bottle-making machine in Toledo, Ohio, designed to make more bottles less expensively. Most bottles were made from blown glass at the time. Baldwin closed an exclusive contract with this progressive company, and began building factories, including one in Elmira in 1913. It soon became company headquarters. Baldwin discovered other bottle-making machines and bought those companies as well. Baldwin had investing assistance from Edward D. Libbey, a well-known Ohio glassmaker.

Baldwin was forced to retire in 1927 due to health issues. By the time of his retirement, the volume of business had increased to around $6 million a year and the company had become highly successful in manufacturing a majority of milk bottles around the world. While the headquarters was in Elmira, other factories around New York were found in Dunkirk and Lockport. Other factories were in West Virginia, Ohio and Illinois.

Thatcher Glass got into many other types of bottle and glassmaking, and other container manufacturing after Baldwin’s years of leading the company. It had to, as home delivery of bottled milk declined rapidly around the mid-20th century.

Times grew hard for Thatcher Glass in Elmira and elsewhere in the mid-1980s. Layoffs began at the company in July 1984. Company officials said a bottle law, which took effect in New York in 1983, was the cause of much of the company’s troubles. That law required a deposit to be paid on each container, resulting in the decline of new bottle sales.

In 1985, a company named Diamond-Bathhurst, Inc. bought Thatcher, and it was announced in August that the name Thatcher would be re-named Diamond Thatcher, Inc.

The company never regained its former prominence. The remnants of the headquarters on Grand Central Avenue were torn down in November 1994.

On Monday: Clyde Wright had plans for a bigger and better Oneonta YMCA day camp in the mid-1960s.

City Historian Mark Simonson’s column appears twice weekly. On Saturdays, his column focuses on the area during the Depression and before. His Monday columns address local history after the Depression. If you have feedback or ideas about the column, write to him at The Daily Star, or e-mail him at simmark@stny.rr.com. His website is www.oneontahistorian.com.