Today in History - 1801
On New Year’s Day, 1802, President Thomas Jefferson received a gift of mythic proportions. Amid great fanfare, a mammoth cheese was delivered to the White House by the itinerant Baptist preacher John Leland. It measured more than four feet in diameter, thirteen feet in circumference, and seventeen inches in height; once cured, it weighed 1,235 pounds.
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The colossal cheese was made by the staunchly Republican, Baptist citizens of Cheshire, a small farming community in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. The religious dissenters created the cheese to commemorate Jefferson’s long-standing devotion to religious liberty and to celebrate his recent electoral victory over Federalist rival John Adams.
On the morning of July 20, 1801, the devout Baptist families, in their finest Sunday frocks, turned out with pails of curds for a day of thanksgiving, hymn singing, and cheese pressing. The cheese was distilled from the single day’s milk production of nine hundred or more “Republican” cows. (Because this was a gift for Mr. Jefferson, the new Republican president, the milk of “Federalist” cows was scrupulously excluded.)
The cheese was transported down the eastern seaboard by sloop and sleigh, arriving in the Federal City on the evening of December 29. (By the time it reached Baltimore, one wag reported, the ripening cheese, now nearly six months removed from the cows, was strong enough to walk the remaining distance to Washington.) The “Mammoth Priest,” as the press dubbed Leland, recounted that along the route he paused frequently to preach to “large congregations” of curious onlookers.
According to press accounts, Jefferson personally received the cheese on New Year’s morning. Dressed in his customary black suit, he stood in the White House doorway, arms outstretched, eagerly awaiting the cheese’s arrival. The gift was received with cordial expressions of gratitude and exuberant cheese-tasting. The cheese-makers heralded their creation as “the greatest cheese in America, for the greatest man in America.”
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The colossal cheese was made by the staunchly Republican, Baptist citizens of Cheshire, a small farming community in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. The religious dissenters created the cheese to commemorate Jefferson’s long-standing devotion to religious liberty and to celebrate his recent electoral victory over Federalist rival John Adams.
On the morning of July 20, 1801, the devout Baptist families, in their finest Sunday frocks, turned out with pails of curds for a day of thanksgiving, hymn singing, and cheese pressing. The cheese was distilled from the single day’s milk production of nine hundred or more “Republican” cows. (Because this was a gift for Mr. Jefferson, the new Republican president, the milk of “Federalist” cows was scrupulously excluded.)
The cheese was transported down the eastern seaboard by sloop and sleigh, arriving in the Federal City on the evening of December 29. (By the time it reached Baltimore, one wag reported, the ripening cheese, now nearly six months removed from the cows, was strong enough to walk the remaining distance to Washington.) The “Mammoth Priest,” as the press dubbed Leland, recounted that along the route he paused frequently to preach to “large congregations” of curious onlookers.
According to press accounts, Jefferson personally received the cheese on New Year’s morning. Dressed in his customary black suit, he stood in the White House doorway, arms outstretched, eagerly awaiting the cheese’s arrival. The gift was received with cordial expressions of gratitude and exuberant cheese-tasting. The cheese-makers heralded their creation as “the greatest cheese in America, for the greatest man in America.”
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