Were area’s grapes processed on county machines?
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Sometimes local history answers one question only to raise several more.
Recent research into Huntley Manufacturing, Fredonia Preserving and Bedford Products is beginning to reveal an intriguing trail through Fredonia, Silver Creek, Brocton and Dunkirk.
Huntley Manufacturing was known for its Monitor machinery, but surviving catalogs and records show that its work extended beyond grain equipment into canning and fruit processing, including washers, separators, conveyors and specialized fruit machinery. Even more intriguing are surviving Chautauqua Maid Quality Grape Juice labels bearing the name Huntley Manufacturing Co., Brocton.
Then Fred Bedford enters the story.
Bedford began his business in 1933 and, according to local historical accounts, moved in 1934 to the "Huntley packing plant in Brocton." By 1938 he had moved to the former Dotterweich Brewery in Dunkirk, where Bedford Products grew into an important local food-processing company.
A remarkable Bedford Products promotional film preserved by the Darwin R. Barker Historical Museum provides another piece of the puzzle. Thanks to curator Max Walters for allowing me to view this important piece of local history. The film shows Bedford's plant, grapes, tanks and processing machinery, and describes Fred Bedford's early work with frozen juice concentrate, including a process that removed water as ice crystals rather than boiling it away in an effort to preserve flavor.
The trail may go back even further. Around the turn of the century, Fredonia Preserving Company, associated with A. F. French and H. G. Huntley, expanded into grape-juice production. That Fredonia property later became associated with American Grape Juice and eventually Bedford Products.
The names and places keep intersecting: Huntley, French, Fredonia Preserving, Brocton, grape juice and Bedford.
We have pieces of the story. What we do not yet have are the connections between all of them.
So perhaps OBSERVER readers can help answer three questions:
1. What exactly was the "Huntley packing plant" in Brocton where Fred Bedford operated in 1934? Does anyone have photographs, deeds, employee recollections or family stories about it?
2. Did Huntley Manufacturing build machinery specifically used to process grapes or grape juice? We are especially interested in old Huntley or Monitor catalogs, photographs, advertisements or machinery carrying a Huntley or Monitor nameplate.
3. Who remembers Chautauqua Maid grape juice or Fredonia Preserving? Where was Chautauqua Maid produced, what machinery was used, and are there photographs or records still in local families?
The most exciting part of this project is realizing that the answer may not be in a museum or archive. It may be sitting in an attic, basement, barn or box of old family papers.
In fact, I recently purchased four old Huntley photographs from a local woman who told me she had found them in a box of books and did not even know who Huntley was. That is exactly how pieces of local history survive.
If your family worked for Huntley, Fredonia Preserving, American Grape Juice, Bedford Products or another local food processor, please take another look at those old photographs, catalogs and papers. Something that never meant much to the family may be the piece that finally connects this story.
A special thank you also goes to John D'Agostino and the OBSERVER for continuing to give these local-history stories a place in the newspaper. The response from readers to those articles is helping uncover photographs, memories and records that otherwise might never have surfaced.
Tom Muldowney can be reached at tommuldowney7@gmail.com