New Canaan There & Then: Norman Dairy
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‘New Canaan There & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Bettina Hegel, Joanne Santulli, Dawn Sterner and Pam Stutz. Norman Dairy was the largest dairy business in New Canaan.
In 1914, Meyer Norman, who was born in Vilno, Russia in 1854 and emigrated to Stamford in 1884, founded the business on Old Stamford Road (the site of the current Elise Nursery.) Although it did not have cows, it purchased rich, high-quality milk from farmers in New York, which it then sold to residents in New Canaan, Norwalk, Darien, Stamford, and Greenwich. The business evolved from a distribution network of horses and wagons, to a fleet of trucks delivering milk, cream, cottage cheese, and eggs. And each driver carried a rule book with 32 Rules and Regulations governing his conduct.
It was also part of one of the biggest labor strikes in New Canaan history.