The Ice Trade

The Ice Trade. DeBary Hall Historic Site. , The industry that brought ice to DeBary Hall was an amazing venture. Wealthy Americans had long taken ice from their own ponds and streams, but in the early 1800s entrepreneur Frederic Tudor began exporting it commercially to southern U.S. cities, the West Indies, and beyond. Contemporaries thought he was crazy. , , Actually, Tudor’s idea worked out. “Natural” ice was initially harvested in the Northeast, sent to staging warehouses, shipped by sea and rail, then handled by carriers including St. Johns River steamboats. One deBary family member recalled ice “in great hogheads” – four-foot-tall – filling the ice house. Packed in sawdust, the ice had come up by mule cart from the boat landing. , , By the 1800s, the deBarys had other options for getting their ice. One plant in Deland offered a product that was cold even if its “artificial” ice tasted like ammonia. Local people hailed the new factory “with delight” and helped doom America’s long-distance ice trade. Yet, at its height, this commercial web had linked people to a wonderful, perishable thing – even in warm, remote places. Without ice, Debary Hall would have been less magic. , , [Captions:] , A crop of ice blocks, about 1900. Usually measuring 24 by 30 inches, they were harvested and handled with special tools including ice saws, grapples, and tongs. Detail from the steroview by Charles A. Zimmerman (St. Paul, Minn.), courtesy of Tim Baskett, Jr. , , Ice harvesting on Maine’s Kennebec River, around 1900. Workers first marked off the blocks, or “cakes,” before sawing and loading them. Postcard courtesy of Tom Baskett, Jr. , , Steamers at Enterprise, the main river port for DeBary Hall. Shipping freight was at least as important as carrying passengers on the St. Johns, and for a time the varied cargoes included ice. Photo courtesy of the West Volusia Historical Society. , , Deland’s Kingsbury ice plant in 1884. Before electric appliances prevailed, “artificial” ice was the standard in refrigeration. Several towns not far from DeBary Hall had ice plants, and even Jacksonville-made ice might have been available to the estate if shipping were in place. Photo courtesy of the West Volusia Historical Society.