Jell-O

Press release:

As this week comes to a close in Le Roy, folks are still talking about all the fun things that happened during Le Roy’s first celebration of National Jell-O Week.

Plans for the event were a last minute idea of Lynne Belluscio, director of the Le Roy Historical Society and Village Historian, who also serves as the director of the world’s one and only Jell-O Museum.

For those people who aren’t acquainted with Jell-O history, Jell-O was introduced in LeRoy in 1897 by a carpenter, Pearle Bixby Wait. Belluscio is quick to point out, that Jell-O wasn’t really invented in Le Roy.

Dishing Up the Right Name

For hundreds of years, people had been making flavored gelatins, which were called “jellies” but in the 1800s, several gelatin products were developed and sold in stores. The names of these jellies weren’t too appetizing. Who would want to eat "Bromongelon," or "Tryphosa." Wait bought powdered gelatin, sugar, flavoring and coloring. Mixed it together and. according to the Wait family history, his wife, May, came up with the name: J E L L hyphen O – and it has to have the hyphen.

Wait didn’t patent his new product. He trademarked the name. For two years he tried to find interested customers to buy Jell-O but was discouraged.

In 1899, he sold the rights to Jell-O to a businessman in Le Roy, Orator Woodward for $450. By 1907, a year after Woodward died, Jell-O was a million dollar a year industry in Le Roy. And the rest is Jell-O history, which is on display, of course, at the Jell-O Gallery.

The history of National Jell-O Week began in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2001 when the students of Brigham Young University petitioned the state legislature to declare Jell-O the state food. The state legislature agreed and Jell-O became the official Utah State Snack. This is because the people of Utah consume more Jell-O than another other state, and for a curious reason, they also eat more lime Jell-O than any other state. (Iowans give them a run for their money though.*)

Celebration Time -- the Second Week in February

It seems that the students at Brigham Young decided that National Jell-O Week would be the second full week in February (and one declared nationwide was in 2009**). which in 2021 would be from Feb. 14 through the 21.

This year, the second week in Februaryt runs from the 14th to the 21st. As Belluscio explained, that posed a problem in Le Roy, because the plans included Jell-O week at the school, and school would be closed for Presidents’ Holiday, so she decided that Le Roy would jump the gun and start the celebration a week early.

Le Roy’s Jell-O Week included activities in the fourth-grade classes. Virtual tours of the Jell-O Gallery were organized by the Mrs. Bertrand, the technology coach at the school.

These tours were followed up with new Hands-On-History booklets written and printed by the Historical Society and given to each student in the fourth grade. All the teachers sported new Jell-O t-shirts for the week, and students performed several Jell-O science experiments.

Probably the most surprising experiment took place on Monday when student attempted to build structures that would survive an earthquake. The structures were built on a large plate of Jell-O and the “earthquake” would occur when the Jell-O was shaken. Much to their surprise, early the next morning, a 2.2 earthquake occurred just north of Le Roy in Byron!

Students at the high school participated in Jell-O box stacking and a variety of other challenges. 

In the meantime, Jell-O Days were declared at the Le Roy Village Green nursing home.

On Thursday, Ruth Harvie, a former employee at the Jell-O Gallery, and a recent resident at the Village Green, was recognized for her dedication to America’s Most Famous Dessert, and was crowned the “Jell-O Queen” in a special coronation ceremony. Special Jell-O displays were installed at the nursing home and at the Woodward Memorial Library. 

The D & R Depot had a special Jell-O dessert on the menu this week (and today's the last day to get it, according to restaurant co-owner Sean Valdes. It's a dark and delicious Mandarine orange treat***).

Vote for Your Favorite Flavor

Belluscio also initiated a “Vote for Your Favorite Flavor” campaign. Usually, several thousand visitors would come to the Jell-O Gallery and vote for their favorite flavor, but the museum has been closed most of the year because of the pandemic, so the Gallery is accepting votes through a variety of facebook sites.

Hundreds of votes have been cast, and the polls will remain open through Feb. 21, the last day of National Jell-O Week.

At this time, Belluscio reports that lime has a slight lead over cherry, followed by raspberry. The Gallery is also asking that people share their zip code, as if they had visited the Gallery. Each year, until 2020, the Gallery would record votes from almost all of the 50 states. This year, votes have been received from 40 of the 50 states -- including Hawaii.  

The last part of Le Roy’s 2021 celebration has been the construction of the largest paper Jell-O Jigglers barn quilt. A 4 x 4 barn quilt, in a colorful pattern named Jell-O Jigglers, has been on display at the entrance of the Jell-O Gallery since 2011.

This unique pattern, was duplicated on the back page of the Le Roy Pennysaver this past week, and folks are instructed to color in the appropriate pieces and to drop off their quilt squares at the Le Roy House. All of the squares will be assembled into a large quilt and put on display at the Jell-O Gallery this year.

Belluscio also mentioned that a large 8-foot wooden barn quilt was painted last year, and when the weather allows, it will be placed on the Le Roy Town Highway garage on Asbury Road.

Plans for Le Roy’s National Jell-O Week in 2022 are already underway.

* / ** / ***(Editor's notes) (Plus here's a link to 36 old-school Jell-O recipes.)

There's no better way to celebrate National JELL-O Week than by visiting the JELL-O Gallery in Le Roy! “America’s Most Famous Dessert” was invented in Le Roy in 1897. Visit the Museum dedicated to all things JELL-O, and pick up unique JELL-O-themed souvenirs in their gift shop. 

The gallery is open Monday - Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with extended hours beginning in the Spring.

JELL-O Gallery, 23 E. Main St., Le Roy, NY; 585-768-7433.

Visit www.VisitGeneseeNY.com to learn more about Genesee County's unique attractions.

The family of a man who died following an accident at the Jell-O Museum in Le Roy has filed a lawsuit in federal court.

Frank P. LaMont Jr., reportedly died after his wheel chair fell through the back of the handicap access lift at the museum. The fall was three feet, but his head hit the concrete.

Named in the suit are the United States of America, the Le Roy Historical Society, The Safety and Access Co. Inc. (the company that serviced the lift) and Ikeco Inc. (the company that sold and installed the lift).

LaMont was a resident of Canandaigua Veterans Affairs Medical Center at the time of the accident in October 2010.

Sophia LaMont, his daughter, previously filed a claim for $500,000 with the Department of Veterans Affairs. The claim was denied.

(Source: Democrat & Chronicle)

Jell-O, the jiggly treat that has delighted billions of happy childhood days, is the number one thing that helped put Genesee County on the map, according to historian and Holland Land Office Museum direct Pat Weissand.

Americans love Jell-O. In fact, Americans eat more than 300 million boxes of Jell-O every year and about 160 products are sold under the Jell-O name.   Jell-O is as much a part of Americana as baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet. By proclamation of the state governor, it is the official state snack of Utah. Residents of Utah eat more Jell-O per capita than anyone else.

Jell-O is an American icon. Since the early days of the company, Jell-O has mastered the technique of successful advertising campaigns. They used well-known artists such as Rose O'Neil, Maxfield Parrish, Cole Philips and Norman Rockwell in their print advertising; Jack Benny, Lucille Ball and Kate Smith in radio advertising and Bill Cosby in their television marketing campaigns.

Wikipedia says powered gelatin was patented 40 years before it was dubbed Jell-O in LeRoy, N.Y.

Gelatin has been well known and used for many years. It was popularized in the Victorian era with spectacular and complex "jelly moulds". Gelatin was sold in sheets and had to be purified, which was very time-consuming. It also made gelatin desserts the province of the relatively well-to-do. In 1845, industrialist Peter Cooper (who built the first American steam-powered locomotive, the Tom Thumb), obtained a patent (US Patent 4084) for powdered gelatin.

Forty years later the patent was sold to a LeRoy, New York-based carpenter and cough syrup manufacturer, Pearle B. Wait. He and his wife May added strawberry, raspberry, orange and lemon flavoring to the powder and gave the product its present name in 1897.

Whether invented in LeRoy or LeRoy was merely the launching pad for one of America's most commercially successful food products, Jell-O has contributed much to life and fame for Genesee County.

Tim Rivers disagrees.

Maybe Jell-O is famous, cute and conjures warm fuzzies about childhood (especially when dolloped with whipped cream). But Jell-O hasn't had the same long-lasting local impact as the muckland in Elba and Byron.

The muck is listed No. 21 in things that made Genesee County famous. The 7,000 acres of muck stretches into Orleans County in Barre and Clarendon. The dark, highly organic soil brought hundreds of hard-working immigrants to the community in the 1920s and 1930s.

...

Unlike Jell-O, the muck is still here, still producing crops, still creating jobs, still unleashing human potential. There are 10 farms today working the muck and those farms continue as community cornerstons. Torrey, Bezon, Yunker, Halat, Starowitz, Vigneri, Mortellaro, Panek, Smith and Shuknecht remain, tilling the soil, planting seeds and harvesting crops.

Well, nothing like a little controversy to close out a months-long instructive and entertain journey through Genesee County history. 

Though, Tom left out another key point: The local ball club ain't called the Jell-O Dogs!

If you've never visited the Jell-O Museum, it's worth the time. Here's the museum's Web site.

A few months ago, Philip produced this video:

Here's a little something I put together after a visit to the Jell-O Gallery in Le Roy earlier this week. We only included part of the tour here in the hopes that folks might get interested and go visit the museum to see the rest.

One other quick thing... You may have noticed that the format of the videos have changed somewhat, and in my honest opinion, for the better. We're testing out a new video hosting site called blip.tv. I'm already a big fan. Blip has great video quality, as you can clearly see.You'll also notice that the screen is slightly bigger. If you visit the video on the Blip Web site, the screen is another three times as large as this! Simply visit thebatavian.blip.tv to see our videos in a larger screen format. If all goes well, and we don't have any problems, I'll go ahead and trasnfer our other older videos to Blip.

Enjoy!