Sharon Oliver
Contributing Writer
BOSTON – Nowadays, there are many things being taken for granted because they are easy to obtain. Ice is one of them. Imagine living during a time when it was somewhat of a hot commodity, refrigeration was not a thought and being an ice cutter was a cash crop for men looking for work.
Early skepticism
The most prominent trailblazer of the ice trade was Boston entrepreneur Frederic “Ice King” Tudor. When Tudor was a teen in the 1790s, ice was exclusively reserved for the wealthy who would hire locals to cut ice from lakes with saws and axes. Afterwards, ice would get stored in covered wells and served to chill cocktails and other refreshments during the summer.
Frederic “Ice King” Tudor was a Boston businessman who made a fortune selling ice not just in the United States but around the world during the 19th century.
Since the state had many lakes and ponds that froze during winter months, Tudor decided to sell ice to residential and commercial customers across the country and even in the Caribbean where there was need of ice to preserve fish and meat.
At age 23 and with the purchase of his first vessel, Tudor undertook his first export of ice from Charlestown to Martinique in 1806. A skeptical public thought he was crazy, and the Boston Gazette mocked his unusual business: “No joke. A vessel has cleared at the Custom House for Martinique with a cargo of ice. We hope this will not prove a slippery speculation.” Although around half of his 80 tons of ice melted before reaching Martinique, Tudor was able to sell the remaining ice, earning a profit of $4500 (over $85,000 in today’s dollars).
A lucrative business
New England’s cold weather made ice a lucrative business in the 19th-century. A year-round staple, lots of families would rather sacrifice food before giving up ice, particularly in the summer. Besides cooling off with a tall glass of lemonade, ice was also used to protect foods from spoiling and preserve bodies before burial.
A once sought-after job, ice cutters would clear any snow from the surface with a wooden scraper that was dragged by a horse. A second scraper with steel blades was used to scrape away the ice’s porous upper layer and then another horse would drag a plow across the ice to cut grooves across its surface. Ice blooks were then stored in ice houses and ice wagons were typically used to distribute the product.
Frederic Tudor founded his business in Boston in 1805, but he did not find real success until 1825 after one of his ice suppliers, Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth, who managed the Fresh Pond ice fields invented the two-bladed, horse-drawn ice cutter that produced standardized blocks. In 1833, he shipped 180 tons of ice from Boston to India. The ice trade expanded in the United States after the development of the railroad network, and eventually ice boxes became common in most homes.
World-wide export
By the mid-1850s, ships were leaving the port of Boston filled with ice shipments to 43 countries around the world. Tudor expanded his business to Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, Havana, Jamaica, Mobile, Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Sri Lanka and Singapore.
Between 1844 and the early 1850s, pure ice from Wenham Lake was considered a luxury among the British aristocracy. Top London hotels placed signs advertising Wenham ice, and the arrival of the ice always caused a sensation including inspiring the popularity of cocktails like sherry cobblers and mint juleps. Queen Victoria even insisted on it for her fancy dinner parties.
By the late 1880s, ice was the second largest export in the United States, right behind cotton. Frederic Tudor died in 1864, leaving a fortune which amounted to $200 million in today’s dollars.
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