Which Philadelphia Gets the Credit for Cream Cheese?

Cream cheese has a mysterious origin

Here’s how to impress your friends with your vast storehouse of knowledge. 
Ask why it’s called “Philadelphia” brand cream cheese.
 
They’ll probably answer that its origins are either in the city or near Philadelphia.
This is where you smirk and loudly declare “wrong!”
 
Start by telling them there are 17 towns in the United States named “Philadelphia.”

One of those Philadelphias is in upstate New York and it was in this area that cream cheese was developed and eventually became famous.

For decades the people in Philadelphia, N.Y., (population 2,000) felt slighted and angry because most people believed wrongly that the brand was named for the Quaker City.

Years ago Kraft put out an information sheet crediting the upstate New York village for the name. When the village clerk was contacted by the Daily News a few years back, she was miffed that Philadelphia, New York, didn’t get credit.

However, very recently, research placed the dairy that first used the name Philadelphia Cream Cheese in Chester, N.Y. This small town is quite a distance from Philadelphia, New York. It’s more-or-less in the Catskills.

The owner of the Chester dairy has been dead for decades, so we will never know for sure why he used the name Philadelphia for his product.