Beverly Community History

Cherry Hill Days

Visiting Cherry Hill in North Beverly today, one can easily understand its role in the story of Beverly industry. A developer, the Flatley Company, has transformed open fields into an important complex of business and industrial buildings. But, to those who remember the time before World War II, Cherry Hill will never mean an industrial park, but instead will conjure visions of the open fields of the H.P. Hood Cherry Hill Milk Farm.

Acquired by H.P. Hood and Sons in 1912, Cherry Hill was traditionally considered one of the oldest operating farms in the country, originally settled as early as 1636 following the Old Planters' Grant that brought men like John Balch and Roger Conant to Beverly. It had also gained the reputation as something of a "gentleman's farm" throughout the years, with owners being more interested in entertaining than economy. The owner around the time of the Civil War, Richard Waters, traveled the world in the employ of David Pingree, the great merchant prince of Salem, and brought back guests like the Sultan of Zanzibar and Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. When purchased by the Hood Company, the family used it as their summer residence.

The farm itself was an experimental "certified" farm. Wrote a Beverly Times reporter:

The visitor to Cherry Hill Farm in the late afternoon at milking time sees milking under conditions that would scarcely be recognized by our forefathers. Gleaming white on the outside, the three barns herding upwards of 200 selected cows are also spotless white within. Attendents, clothed in white, wheel in the covered milking pails for machine milking. The sterilized tubes are fastened to the udders of each cow, and Bossie stands quietly while a gentle vacuum pressure draws milk unseen into the gleaming pail. As each cow's milking is completed, the dairyman weighs and records her supply.

From the sterile milking process, the product traveled through a rigorous pasteurization and bottling production line. Even Bossy herself was not free of science. "The diet of each cow," wrote an observer, "is planned separately in accordance with that cow's particular reaction to the different items of food." A ration of yeast helped boost the Vitamin A content. The nationally respected operation was visited frequently by dairymen and health officials from around the world.

But, if Cherry Hill is remembered, it will be by the hundreds of children who made the trip to the farm, stopping at the picnic area or the petting zoo or the ice cream stand following their tour of the barn and milking operation. Since it was not an economic boon to the company, even from the start, increasing operating costs and the exploding value of real estate forced Hood to suspend operations in 1965, ending Beverly's contribution to the dairy industry and opening land for a new era of industrial development.

Taken from "Made In Beverly-A History of Beverly Industry", by Daniel J. Hoisington. A publication of the Beverly Historic District Commission. 1989.

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