People have loved fresh apple cider for generations, but it’s just amazing that one cider press has produced it for people in Carroll County and Ogle County for well over 100 years.

As far as I can determine, Peter Horner was the first person to own this cider press. At least he is the first person recorded as owning it. It appears he may have owned it as early as 1872. The patent dates on the press itself are 1870-1872. Peter Horner’s farm was at what was then the east edge of Lanark, at the corner of southwest corner of Will and Franklin Streets. The cider press is made of wood, and over 10 feet tall, has a 50-bushel capacity and a 58 inch rack. Peter Horner used 4 Arabian horses to run it. People brought him the apples and he made cider, vinegar, and perhaps apple jack. He would get up into the press while wearing clean rubber boots and stamp the fruit into the mill. All of the cider appears to have been poured into barrels; whether people brought their own barrels or Peter Horner supplied them I don't know. I have no photographs of the press or the building which housed it when Peter Horner had it (and would dearly like one). Both “Carroll County, A Goodly Heritage” and Caralee Aschenbrenner’s “Please Don’t Quote Me” describe Peter Horner’s ownership of it in detail but illustrate each article with the same photo mislabeled as Peter Horner’s barn in Lanark. In fact, both photos are of the farm of the second owner, George F. Bickelhaupt and his son, Charles Elmer Bickelhaupt.

Peter Horner sold the cider press to the Bickelhaupts probably around 1893. It is debatable whether he owned his farm in Lanark or rented it from Emmanuel Stover. Harold Horner, a grandson of Peter’s, wrote the section on the cider press in “Carroll County, A Goodly Heritage” and said that Peter owned the farm. Census takers in 1880 did not note whether property was rented or owned, but Peter Horner is shown on the 1900 census to have owned the house, and whatever buildings he still had. What is known is that Peter Horner’s farm is part of the Stover Addition, which was land owned by Emmanuel Stover, and Emmanuel Stover is known to have given the land for the building of the new school after the old school burned in 1893. That land appears to have been Peter Horner’s cornfield. It may also have included the barn housing the cider press. In the 1893 Carroll County Plat Book this land is clearly part of the Stover Addition and not a separate farm owned by Peter Horner. (I don’t have an earlier plat book.)

George Bickelhaupt’s farm was on what is now Highway 52, the Mt. Carroll - Savanna highway, along the southern edge of Section 11, Mt. Carroll Township, just east of what is now South Preston Road. In the 1890s the road was dirt, with ample traffic and all of it slow moving, so it was probably was a convenient location for selling cider. The cider press was in a barn which was close to the highway, and like Peter Horner’s operation, people brought their apples to the cider press and had cider and vinegar and possibly apple jack made from them. The photographs show it was a great meeting place, where people went in apple season and chatted while they waited for their cider to be made. The Bickelhaupts owned it until sometime in the 1930s when Charles Elmer Bickelhaupt became concerned about possible contamination of the apples people were bringing to him.. (“Carroll County, A Goodly Heritage” implies it was still in operation at the Bickelhaupt farm in 1968, but that is incorrect.)

So he sold the cider press to Ray Smith, who ran the Center Hill Store. Charles Owen Bickelhaupt, grandson of Charles Elmer Bickelhaupt, believes the cider press was in a barn behind the store. Apparently it got a lot of business for several decades until it was sold in about 1965 to Richard Powell, who lived on South Harmony Road, west of Oregon, Ogle County, Illinois, near White Pines State Park.

Caralee Aschenbrenner had interviewed him in 1985 for her original newspaper article. “The mill with its wooden parts, scissor jack principle, now adapted to modern mechanical horsepower, …is much larger than normally used today but which produces a prodigious volume of nectar at apple harvest time at the Powell’s.”

Photo above is the Center Hill Store, taken by Grace Downing Getz (Mother of LeRoy Getz who sent us these pictures) just before it was demolished sometime after October 1979.
The old store was built by Charles E. Smith and it closed in the late "40's". The cider press was last used at Center Hill in the fall of 1963.

Many thank to Leroy Getz for the photos and some more history on the Cider Press On the left is the press in action with Ray Smith positioning the blocks under the press. The overhead jack shafts and pulleys and chain drives can be seen clearly.

Photo on the right is (from left to right) Myron Wilcox, Ella (Smith) Wilcox, Ray Smith. The Smith's owned and operated the press at Center Hill. Of note in this picture you will see the overhead chain and shaft with the scissors screw that pressed the top plate of the cider press. You can see the buckets in the box that caught the cider draining from the spout. A barrel and milk cans are in the foreground that were used to transport the cider to future home. Just a glimpse of Ray's old car and trailer can be seen through the open door that he used to haul away the pome (apple mush that is discarded after the pressing process).

I spoke with Wanda Wiggins, Richard Powell’s first cousin, who writes a weekly historical column in the Pine Creek News. She told me that after he’d bought the cider press he planted the property with 1000 apple trees and made cider from them every year. She’d helped him pick the apples in some years. Richard Powell died just last year (2005) but had sold the farm years before to Lamont Gaston.

Lamont Gaston told me he still owns the cider press but hasn’t used it for several years. He still has 1000 apple trees, so he might get interested again. But can you imagine picking apples from 1000 trees? On the other hand, going to a cider mill was more than about having cider made from your apples. It was about the camaraderie of seeing your friends and having a nice chat while you wait for your cider. Everyone always seems to enjoy doing that.

When Peter Horner had the cider press, Lanark poet Glenn Ward Dresbach frequented it often and wrote this poem about it:

Cider Press

The slow drip of the golden light, through gold
Of trees that filled with richness to the core
The flushed fruit, now more clearly than before
Keeps time with drippings from the press.
Grown bold
To potent lure are bees that leave the cold
Drained cups of late blooms to the wind. The
store
Of piquant essence of earth -- dreams is more
Than this array of earthen jugs can hold.

The last bright drops seem oozing slowly back
Into the glow and fragrance of the air,
But this stored verve and twinkle of the earth
Is saved for one who leaves a beaten track
From cider press to nooks beneath a stair --
And age shall blend a mellowness with mirth.

-- by Glenn Ward Dresbach

This poem was transcribed from “Carroll County, A Goodly Heritage
Alice Horner’s note: The first owner of the cider press, Peter Horner, was the brother of my great grandfather on my father’s side and the second owner, George F. Bickelhaupt, was my great grandfather on my mother’s side.

The Cider Press when it was set up in Polo. Photo contributed by Eleanor Rummel

Please visit the Peter Horner Family Page