June 3, 2024 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Thomas Jefferson is often known for championing religious freedom in our nation's infancy, but not many people know about how a preacher thanked him in the most unusual way.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories. And up next, well, it's
a story about our history today. Robbie brings us a
story about a piece of history you've probably never heard before,
and it comes from one of our favorite contributors, Clay Jenkinson.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
While a wise ruler, a priest, a four foot block
of cheese, and or giant loaf of bread baked by
the navy may sound like the makings of a fairy tale,
it's actually a true story about our third President, Thomas Jefferson.
Here's Clay Jenkinson to tell us more about it.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Really, he regarded his election as the second American Revolution,
and he meant it that we'd had a revolution in
seventeen seventy six, and then we'd created and installed a government,
but that government moved in the wrong direction, towards monarchy
and aristocracy and a strong central government, and we needed
to restore the principles of seventeen seventy six. So he
(01:09):
reluctantly stood for the presidency in eighteen hundred, and there
was such anger against Jefferson in federalist circles. People thought
that he was a dangerous man. He spent too much
time in France, he had been infected by the radical
principles of the French Revolution, that he was unreliable and
that he might destroy the country. The great majority of
(01:31):
the American people wanted a restoration of the more democratic
principles of seventeen seventy six. One of the places where
Jefferson was weak was in Massachusetts and Connecticut and New
England basically. And so in eighteen oh one, after his
(01:54):
installation as president, a minister up in the Cheshire Hills
decided that he would do make a great tribute to
Thomas Jefferson by way of creating the world's largest cheese.
And so the Reverend Leland decided that he would pay
(02:15):
tribute to Jefferson by getting the people of his district
to milk their cows and present all of that milk
to create this cheese. And they did it. They claimed
that they only milked Republican cows, never Federalist cows, and
most of this was collected in a single day. But
the resulting cheese was four feet in diameter fifteen inches thick,
(02:41):
and it weighed over twelve hundred pounds. It weighed twelve
hundred and thirty five pounds, and so the Reverend Leland
had two interests in supporting Jefferson. One was to show
the country in Jefferson that New England was not one
hundred percent federalist, and the second was in praise of
Jefferson's principles of separation of church and state. So Jefferson
(03:07):
wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty. It was passed
into law in seventeen eighty six. At that time it
was the boldest statement in human history of the need
to separate church and state and to protect religious sensibilities
from any coercion by the larger public and certainly by
the state or national government. And Leland was a Baptist
(03:30):
in a state that was largely Presbyterian, and he would
have been he and his sect would have been seen
as upstarts, nonstandard, possibly heretical, and deserving of state persecution,
certainly of social shunning in this era. And so these
Baptists really counted on Jefferson as their champion because they
(03:54):
would not have had a chance to establish their own
market share in the world of Christianity had it not
been for the tolerance that was being shown in the
protection they were getting from people like Jefferson and also
James Madison. So now they've built the world's largest cheese,
or what they think is the world's largest cheese. But
(04:16):
they have to get it to President Jefferson, and there
was no FedEx or UPS or adequate postal system at
the time to send the cheese, so John Leland decided
to deliver it himself. This was actually something of a
logistical nightmare. First, he had to take it on a
(04:37):
sleigh to get it to the Hudson River. Once he
got it to the Hudson, they went down in a
sloop to New York City and on to Baltimore, and
there they transferred this twelve hundred and thirty five pound
cheese to a wagon and they hauled it into Washington,
d c. Into the New District of Columbia to the
White House in time for one of Jefferson's two annual
(05:02):
White House receptions. Jefferson only opened the White House to
the public twice per year, once on the first of
January and once on the fourth of July. Jefferson didn't
quite know what to make of all of this.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Well, thankful for their gift, Jefferson wanted to make sure
that everyone knew this was not a bride. What a
bride that would have been.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
So he actually gave a check of two hundred dollars
to the congregation that Leland represented, so that he would
have paid for this cheese and not simply accepted it
as a gift from friendly constituents. And then he served
some of that cheese at his New Year's reception in
(05:44):
eighteen oh one. Be hard to eat that much cheese,
and so we don't know exactly how long this cheese survived.
Accounts vary, but certainly he served it again the next
year's reception on New Year's Day eighteen oh three, so
it lasted for more than a year. And there are
accounts from contemporary letters and diaries guests coming to the
(06:09):
White House to eat at Jefferson's famous White House dinner parties,
and when Jefferson wasn't in the room, asking one of
the serving staff, could I see the could I see
the cheese? Would you show me the cheese? And some
people were allowed then to go and look at this monster.
It wasn't refrigerated. Washington is a very hot place, especially
(06:32):
in the summer months, and the cheese therefore deteriorated him.
And we have accounts of their having to carve out
chunks of it from the middle that had molded or
gotten runny. But the sense we get from such historical
records as still exist is that the cheese lasted a
couple of years and was served on at least two
(06:53):
New Year's receptions and maybe on other occasions, and that
it was sort of wheeled out on a lazy Susan
and made available on those occasions because lifting a thousand
pounds or thirteen hundred pound cheese would be almost impossible,
so they had to find a way to move it,
and they didn't want to leave it simply in one place.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
The term mammoth cheese came from a Federalist newspaper referencing
one of Jefferson's strange fascinations.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Everyone knew that Jefferson had a special interest in the
wooly mammoth and the mastodon, and that his friend Charles
Wilson Peel was digging up mastodon bones up in New
England and displaying them at his museum in Philadelphia. So
it soon became known that this was the mammoth cheese,
which was a sort of playful, somewhat ironic, slightly irreverent
(07:45):
tribute to Jefferson's scientific interests, and Leland became known as
the Mammoth Priest for this stunt, and he took a
lot of ribbing all along the route from Massachusetts to Washington,
DC and back, but it made him sort of famous.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
If giant cheese weren't enough, Jefferson would then receive a
similarly odd gift from the Navy.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Well, then the US Navy decided to create the world's
largest loaf of bread, and they used a whole barrel
of flour to make a prodigy of a loaf of bread.
The thing about bread, as opposed to cheese is that
bread doesn't stand up very well over time. You can't
preserve bread for a couple of receptions. You have to
(08:31):
serve it. Jefferson was not famous for his interest in
the Navy. He actually created the Navy. But Jefferson starved
the Navy of funds and not only made the War
of Aching twelve inevitable, but made us nearly lose it
once it came. The Navy in producing the world's largest
(08:51):
loaf of bread, or this mammoth loaf of bread, may
have had more strategic interests in mind.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
During a Senate sponsored party to rally support for a
naval war in the Mediterranean. A navy baker, just around
noon wheeled in the mammoth loaf, said to be twelve
feet in length, two feet in breadth, and of suitable height.
Along with the loaf, they brought out the remnants of
the mammoth cheese, an enormous side of roast beef, and
quite a bit of alcohol. President Jefferson stepped up, pulled
(09:19):
out his pocket knife, and cut the first slice of bread.
From there, all we really know is that the party
quickly devolved into a noisy, drunken affair.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Probably if you'd said to Thomas Jefferson at home, if
he and Madison were were sitting in Jefferson's library and
having a glass of Bordeaux, and Madison had said what
about the cheese, Jefferson probably would have rolled his eyes
and said, this is the sort of thing that happens
in a democratic culture. You know. P. T. Barnum was right.
(09:51):
You know, the American people love stuff like this. They
love carnival, they love freaks, they love prodigies, they love fairs.
And to this day, Hey, you go to the state
Fair in Iowa and you'll see a giant butter sculpture
of Elvis Presley. We have the world's largest Holstein cow
in North Dakota, and Minnesota has the world's largest prairie chicken,
and the world's largest pelican in the world's largest walleye,
(10:14):
and so on. This is just some zany part of
the American spirit.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Indeed, and you've been listening to Clay Jenkinson tell the
story of the mammoth Cheese and the mammoth Loaf, and
great job as always to Robbie. Clay Jenkinson is the
director of the Dakota Institute and co host of Public
Radio's Thomas Jefferson Our So we know its a little
bit about this subject, the story of the mammoth Cheese
and the mammoth Loaf. Here on our American story.
This is our American stories. And up next, well, it's
a story about our history today. Robbie brings us a
story about a piece of history you've probably never heard before,
and it comes from one of our favorite contributors, Clay Jenkinson.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
While a wise ruler, a priest, a four foot block
of cheese, and or giant loaf of bread baked by
the navy may sound like the makings of a fairy tale,
it's actually a true story about our third President, Thomas Jefferson.
Here's Clay Jenkinson to tell us more about it.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Really, he regarded his election as the second American Revolution,
and he meant it that we'd had a revolution in
seventeen seventy six, and then we'd created and installed a government,
but that government moved in the wrong direction, towards monarchy
and aristocracy and a strong central government, and we needed
to restore the principles of seventeen seventy six. So he
(01:09):
reluctantly stood for the presidency in eighteen hundred, and there
was such anger against Jefferson in federalist circles. People thought
that he was a dangerous man. He spent too much
time in France, he had been infected by the radical
principles of the French Revolution, that he was unreliable and
that he might destroy the country. The great majority of
(01:31):
the American people wanted a restoration of the more democratic
principles of seventeen seventy six. One of the places where
Jefferson was weak was in Massachusetts and Connecticut and New
England basically. And so in eighteen oh one, after his
(01:54):
installation as president, a minister up in the Cheshire Hills
decided that he would do make a great tribute to
Thomas Jefferson by way of creating the world's largest cheese.
And so the Reverend Leland decided that he would pay
(02:15):
tribute to Jefferson by getting the people of his district
to milk their cows and present all of that milk
to create this cheese. And they did it. They claimed
that they only milked Republican cows, never Federalist cows, and
most of this was collected in a single day. But
the resulting cheese was four feet in diameter fifteen inches thick,
(02:41):
and it weighed over twelve hundred pounds. It weighed twelve
hundred and thirty five pounds, and so the Reverend Leland
had two interests in supporting Jefferson. One was to show
the country in Jefferson that New England was not one
hundred percent federalist, and the second was in praise of
Jefferson's principles of separation of church and state. So Jefferson
(03:07):
wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty. It was passed
into law in seventeen eighty six. At that time it
was the boldest statement in human history of the need
to separate church and state and to protect religious sensibilities
from any coercion by the larger public and certainly by
the state or national government. And Leland was a Baptist
(03:30):
in a state that was largely Presbyterian, and he would
have been he and his sect would have been seen
as upstarts, nonstandard, possibly heretical, and deserving of state persecution,
certainly of social shunning in this era. And so these
Baptists really counted on Jefferson as their champion because they
(03:54):
would not have had a chance to establish their own
market share in the world of Christianity had it not
been for the tolerance that was being shown in the
protection they were getting from people like Jefferson and also
James Madison. So now they've built the world's largest cheese,
or what they think is the world's largest cheese. But
(04:16):
they have to get it to President Jefferson, and there
was no FedEx or UPS or adequate postal system at
the time to send the cheese, so John Leland decided
to deliver it himself. This was actually something of a
logistical nightmare. First, he had to take it on a
(04:37):
sleigh to get it to the Hudson River. Once he
got it to the Hudson, they went down in a
sloop to New York City and on to Baltimore, and
there they transferred this twelve hundred and thirty five pound
cheese to a wagon and they hauled it into Washington,
d c. Into the New District of Columbia to the
White House in time for one of Jefferson's two annual
(05:02):
White House receptions. Jefferson only opened the White House to
the public twice per year, once on the first of
January and once on the fourth of July. Jefferson didn't
quite know what to make of all of this.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Well, thankful for their gift, Jefferson wanted to make sure
that everyone knew this was not a bride. What a
bride that would have been.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
So he actually gave a check of two hundred dollars
to the congregation that Leland represented, so that he would
have paid for this cheese and not simply accepted it
as a gift from friendly constituents. And then he served
some of that cheese at his New Year's reception in
(05:44):
eighteen oh one. Be hard to eat that much cheese,
and so we don't know exactly how long this cheese survived.
Accounts vary, but certainly he served it again the next
year's reception on New Year's Day eighteen oh three, so
it lasted for more than a year. And there are
accounts from contemporary letters and diaries guests coming to the
(06:09):
White House to eat at Jefferson's famous White House dinner parties,
and when Jefferson wasn't in the room, asking one of
the serving staff, could I see the could I see
the cheese? Would you show me the cheese? And some
people were allowed then to go and look at this monster.
It wasn't refrigerated. Washington is a very hot place, especially
(06:32):
in the summer months, and the cheese therefore deteriorated him.
And we have accounts of their having to carve out
chunks of it from the middle that had molded or
gotten runny. But the sense we get from such historical
records as still exist is that the cheese lasted a
couple of years and was served on at least two
(06:53):
New Year's receptions and maybe on other occasions, and that
it was sort of wheeled out on a lazy Susan
and made available on those occasions because lifting a thousand
pounds or thirteen hundred pound cheese would be almost impossible,
so they had to find a way to move it,
and they didn't want to leave it simply in one place.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
The term mammoth cheese came from a Federalist newspaper referencing
one of Jefferson's strange fascinations.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Everyone knew that Jefferson had a special interest in the
wooly mammoth and the mastodon, and that his friend Charles
Wilson Peel was digging up mastodon bones up in New
England and displaying them at his museum in Philadelphia. So
it soon became known that this was the mammoth cheese,
which was a sort of playful, somewhat ironic, slightly irreverent
(07:45):
tribute to Jefferson's scientific interests, and Leland became known as
the Mammoth Priest for this stunt, and he took a
lot of ribbing all along the route from Massachusetts to Washington,
DC and back, but it made him sort of famous.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
If giant cheese weren't enough, Jefferson would then receive a
similarly odd gift from the Navy.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Well, then the US Navy decided to create the world's
largest loaf of bread, and they used a whole barrel
of flour to make a prodigy of a loaf of bread.
The thing about bread, as opposed to cheese is that
bread doesn't stand up very well over time. You can't
preserve bread for a couple of receptions. You have to
(08:31):
serve it. Jefferson was not famous for his interest in
the Navy. He actually created the Navy. But Jefferson starved
the Navy of funds and not only made the War
of Aching twelve inevitable, but made us nearly lose it
once it came. The Navy in producing the world's largest
(08:51):
loaf of bread, or this mammoth loaf of bread, may
have had more strategic interests in mind.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
During a Senate sponsored party to rally support for a
naval war in the Mediterranean. A navy baker, just around
noon wheeled in the mammoth loaf, said to be twelve
feet in length, two feet in breadth, and of suitable height.
Along with the loaf, they brought out the remnants of
the mammoth cheese, an enormous side of roast beef, and
quite a bit of alcohol. President Jefferson stepped up, pulled
(09:19):
out his pocket knife, and cut the first slice of bread.
From there, all we really know is that the party
quickly devolved into a noisy, drunken affair.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Probably if you'd said to Thomas Jefferson at home, if
he and Madison were were sitting in Jefferson's library and
having a glass of Bordeaux, and Madison had said what
about the cheese, Jefferson probably would have rolled his eyes
and said, this is the sort of thing that happens
in a democratic culture. You know. P. T. Barnum was right.
(09:51):
You know, the American people love stuff like this. They
love carnival, they love freaks, they love prodigies, they love fairs.
And to this day, Hey, you go to the state
Fair in Iowa and you'll see a giant butter sculpture
of Elvis Presley. We have the world's largest Holstein cow
in North Dakota, and Minnesota has the world's largest prairie chicken,
and the world's largest pelican in the world's largest walleye,
(10:14):
and so on. This is just some zany part of
the American spirit.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
Indeed, and you've been listening to Clay Jenkinson tell the
story of the mammoth Cheese and the mammoth Loaf, and
great job as always to Robbie. Clay Jenkinson is the
director of the Dakota Institute and co host of Public
Radio's Thomas Jefferson Our So we know its a little
bit about this subject, the story of the mammoth Cheese
and the mammoth Loaf. Here on our American story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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