Diehl Incorporated records

Collection

Identifier: MS-1057

Staff Only

Collection Overview

Abstract

Records of a family-owned business in Defiance, Ohio, including corporate registers, photographs, blueprints, reports, certificates, and statements. Company started as a brewery and diversified into evaporated milk, dried coffee creamer and other non-dairy products.

Dates

Creation: 1922-2006

Extent

2.2 Cubic Feet (2 archive boxes, 2 oversized boxes)

Creator

Diehl, Incorporated (Defiance, Ohio) (Organization)

Scope and Contents

The records of Diehl, Inc. of Defiance, Ohio encompass the production and shift in corporate emphasis over the years covered by the collection, ranging from just before Prohibition through to the beginning of the 21st Century.

Of particular note, related to the Christian Diehl Brewing Company, there are blueprints of the Defiance, Ohio plant layout and equipment as well as balance sheet information that gives profit and loss figures, including production, raw materials, selling, delivery, and administration. Other items that deal with the brewery aspect of the operation include the scrapbooks that trace the repeal of Prohibition as the company tried to pick up that aspect of its product line.

More material in the collection deals with the diversified aspect of the Diehl operation as they moved into the milk products industry, first with the condensory and the line of evaporated milk under the Jerzee label, and later into other powdered milk and non-dairy creamer products. The process involved is illustrated in the Defiance Milk Products Co. booklets, and more informally in many of the photographs and slides in the collection.

Information related to the Diehl family and company employees is more limited, but some material can be found scattered through the scrapbooks, which include obituaries and news articles covering Diehl family members, in the photographs, where some employees pictured are identified, and in such diverse records as the insurance papers, where a few employees are listed due to the need to have them bonded.

Biographical / Historical

The Diehl Family has operated a business in Defiance, Ohio since 1870 when Christian Diehl, Sr. bought into a brewing company on the banks of the Maumee River in 1870. Originally known as Karst and Diehl, Christian bought out his partners and eventually operated on his own starting in about 1885, continuing as a family business including succeeding generations as the Christian Diehl Brewing Company. With the advent of Prohibition, the focus of the business shifted to include an evaporated milk condensory, operating as Defiance Dairy Products Company beginning in 1922. A segment of the former brewing component shifted to bottling of alternate products such as soft drinks, including such flavors as ginger ale, root beer, and a local malted chocolate milk product known as Chocolate Baby. In 1930 the condensory part of the operation was sold to a New York company, but their business failed and later the Diehl's bought it back. Brewing operations resumed in 1933 with the end of Prohibition, but the milk products line continued as well. During World War II Diehl filled government contracts for milk for use by the armed forces. During this period as well, the company's biotechnical lab also was engaged in production of penicillin.

Changes in the beer industry starting in the 1950s spelled the end of that aspect of the Diehl business as large national corporations ate away at the market, with the company finally closing down the brewing operation in 1955 and turning some of the space into cold storage which was used by other area companies such as Dinner Bell Meats and Campbell Soup Company.

In the following decades the company continued to diversify, moving more into production of evaporated milk, and with the addition of drying equipment, into the area of dried coffee creamer and other non-dairy products, for which Diehl is a major supplier of private-label products.

History adapted from Everett, Horace H. Diehl: A Corporate Family History. 1990

Conditions Governing Access

No known access restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Researchers using this collection assume full responsibility for conforming to the laws of libel, privacy, and copyright, and are responsible for securing permissions necessary for publication or reproduction.

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Immediate Source of Acquisition

The donation and transfer of these records to the Center for Archival Collections was arranged on March 8, 2007 through the cooperation of the Diehl Family Foundation and William A. Diehl.