Kent Ice Harvest

Today ice has moved to indoor rinks for modern sport but from colonial times through the first half of the 20th century—before refrigeration was finally generated electrically—ice was a commodity, cut from rivers or ponds, stored in icehouses and sold in blocks to keep food cold year-round.

In this picture taken some time in the first decades of the 20th century, men are shown harvesting ice somewhere in Kent. The ice does not appear to be very thick, and the ground is soft where it has been rutted by a 1918 Fordson tractor, perhaps indicating it was late in the winter.

One point where ice was harvested was Hatch Pond in South Kent. There was an icehouse there at the end of the old creamery building. It had double walls insulated with sawdust to preserve the ice for the creamery’s operation.

There were also two icehouses built alongside the railroad tracks and men were brought up from Bridgeport when the ice was thick enough to be cut. There was a bunk house behind the icehouses where the men stayed.

Mildred “Tillie” Boyd, whose husband Robert operated a grocery store in South Kent, recorded that the men usually came with little in the way of warm clothing and were allowed to buy what they needed. Sprague Ice & Coal Company in Bridgeport would guarantee payment for the clothing if the men did not pay for it.

In summer the ice was loaded on rail cars and shipped to Bridgeport where it was sold. That ice harvesting was a dangerous business is demonstrated by a 1910 story in the Bridgeport Farmer which tells of 35-year-old Michael Baker being crushed by “a pile of ice cakes that toppled over on him as he helped unload the (rail) car in the rear of a refrigerating plant.”

When the South Kent Road was straightened, the icehouses were torn down.