The Milwaukee Cement Company was organized in November, 1875 as a result of the discovery of limestone rock suitable for cement manufacture in the Milwaukee River (about the site of the present Esterbrook Park) by Joseph R. Berthelet a year or two previously. The Company produced cement successfully, although during their early period of financial struggle for existence, aid was received from Alexander Mitchell and the Milwaukee Marine and Fire Insurance Bank. By about 1880 the factory was producing approximately 150,000 barrels of cement a year, valued at about 125,000 dollars. From 75 to 100 men were full-time employees. Because there is in the manuscript collection an historical account of the Company, written by William T. Berthelet in 1942, the story of the building of the mills, competition with a rival company, establishment of a branch railroad line of the Milwaukee (operated by a subsidiary of the Cement Company, the Milwaukee Cement Railway Company), needs not be repeated. The Company manufactured natural cement until 1912, when the discovery of methods of making Portland cement made it impossible for Milwaukee natural cement to continue in competition with the better product. For a time the Company became distributors of Portland cement and other building materials. Ceasing this, the firm began to dispose of its real estate holdings, a process which by 1948 was almost completed.
Among the founders and officers of the Milwaukee Cement Company, members of the Berthelet family have been most important, and warrant brief biographical notice. Joseph R. Berthelet was born in Detroit, son of Joseph Reuben Berthelet. In the spring of 1832, young Joseph went to the Choctaw Nation as clerk to a sutler near Doakesville. Three years later he went to Sandwich, Canada to marry Eliza Parent, and then returned to the Choctaw Nation in 1836, where he was in partnership with a half-breed Indian by name of Jones. About 1850 he moved to St. Louis, and in 1861 to Milwaukee, where he later discovered the cement quarry. In 1869 he was joined in his business of making sewer pipe of imported Louisville cement by his brother, Henry Berthelet (1823-1908), who later became the first president of the Milwaukee Cement Company. He sold his interest in the Company in 1901, and returned to his birthplace, Detroit, to live. (A third brother, Louis Benjamin Berthelet (1804-1850) was mentioned in the Wisconsin Historical Collections as a resident of Green Bay in 1825. He married Lucy Peltier (born about 1810) in Detroit in 1827, and moved to Indiana where he died near Peru.) Joseph R. Berthelet, Jr. served as superintendent of manufacture and also as president of the Company at times. William T. Berthelet, grandson of Joseph R., Sr. and donor of the records to the Society, joined the firm in 1886, and since 1909 has been secretary and manager of the organization. Among other prominent Milwaukee citizens connected with the management of the Company at one time or another were Samuel Marshall, George H. Paul, William W. Plankinton, Howard Greene, and Horace A. J. Upham.
