Over the years many customers have asked “Where does the name Ashery come from?” or “Hello, Mr. Ashery”. 🙂 In the late 1800s and early 1900s there were asheries scattered across the country. Small communities built these facilities where they would burn wood and use the lye from the ashes to make homemade soaps by mixing it with animal fats. From the ashes they would also produce black salts and pearl ash. These by-products were then sold for glass making. One of these asheries was located just across the road from the Ashery Country Store. As a kid I remember playing in the woods around the remaining foundation of the ashery that once stood there. In the 1930s a man by the name of Alex Pauli started a cheese factory attached to the front of the home at the Ashery Country Store. He named his business the Ashery Cheese Co because of the Ashery across the road where the pond is now. The cheese factory was torn down in 1977 but the name Ashery just stuck to the little corner in Holmes County where 5 roads come together. Many locals knew this corner because it was where neighbors brought wood to be burned at the ashery and later where neighbors brought milk from their freshly milked cows to be made into cheese at the Ashery Cheese Co. This same corner is where the Ashery Country Store now sits.
