By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager
One of the first things that may pop into someone’s mind when they hear the phrase “dog days of summer” is ice cream. At least it is in my mind.
Ice cream has been a social commodity for many Americans for the past 100+ years. While today, hundreds of new combinations have been created for our taste buds, even the “boring” traditional Neapolitan flavors had people flocking together from its very beginning.
And not only did they flock, this flocking together like birds of a feather was done in person, not on any social media. Ice cream socials were sometimes the main social event of the season. The very hot, miserable season. The season where people looked forward to that first cooling, delicious bite of something sweet because air conditioning and swimming pools would not exist for decades.
.For our post-Victorian ancestors, (you’ll find out the reason for the “post” in a bit) ice cream could serve as an encouragement to form a fundraiser or birthday party (something that has since stuck hardfast—not melted away--in our culture), or simply be used as an excuse to chill together as a group.
Sometimes they were even called “ice cream socials,” as in the case of the Old Presbyterian Church. Tables and chairs were brought out onto its lawn and ice was served for 25 cents per person, alongside refreshing lemonade.
A family in Omar, Ohio enjoys some homemade ice cream on their lawn in the summertime.
An ice cream supper (who hasn’t had ice cream for supper at least once in their life? Be honest!) was held on August 1, 1909 at the Bowen’s residence—more specifically, the front yard. Ten gallons of ice cream provided a profit of $27.25 for the local church’s Sunday School program.
St. John’s United Church of Christ wanted to honor this pastime and hosted an “old-fashioned” ice cream social for the Sesquicentennial. It may have been based off an earlier ice cream social it hosted. Tiffin resident Martha Gibson wrote in her “Reminiscenes of the Early Days of Tiffin” recollected that her very first memory as a child was sitting on her mother’s lap and eating “spoonfulls of ice cream” at an ice cream social on the lawn of the old brick St. John’s Church on Jefferson Street.
The fact that so many churches held ice cream socials outside of their services (a more somber social gathering) is hugely ironic. Why? Because the people of this era were rebelling against their strict parents and grandparents who, in the late 1800s, had declared eating ice cream sodas on Sunday as “sinful.”
Tiffin Dairy Interior in the 1950s.
Besides the fact that so many (SO many) things in Victorian times were quite arbitrary, one GOOD thing to come of this prude idea was ice cream itself. At the time, it was common for ice cream to be consumed with soda (Root beer floats—mmm), so merchants got clever. They simply replaced (or “disguised”) the soda with syrup and called the new dish, “Sundaes.” Touche and kudos if I say so myself.
Martha Gibson goes on to describe how people got smart after they realized ice cream wasn’t so bad after all, and turned to using ice cream socials during the Temperance movement to draw people in for temperance speeches and campaigns. (“This just gets curiouser and curiouser,” said Alice).
Tiffin and surrounding towns all had their share of ice cream parlors. A.R. Ayers in Attica owned an ice cream parlor/confectionary (but wait, there’s more! It sold cigars!) Perry Montgomery in Green Springs owned an ice cream emporium, purchasing local milk and cream for his homemade ice cream.
In Tiffin, some of the most widely known parlors were Stock’s Candy Kitchen and Kahler’s Candy Kitchen, which later became Marinis Candy Store across from the courthouse on Washington Street, right on the streetcar line.
Now, one must not forget that Victorians were stuffy (and picky), so once they are their kind embraced ice cream (because it’s too resistable), it of course had to be high quality, as these businesses claimed their versions were. In the late 18th century ice cream was a delicacy and only the socially elite could afford it. In Europe, it was very posh to serve ice cream in manicured gardens, for example. No wonder wanna-be Victorians turned their nose up at it (they secretly desired it!)
Zender Creamery in New Riegel, Ohio, where New Riegel Café is now. At one time, It was common for many small towns to have at least one creamery.
At one time, cheese making and dairy operations were “the chief occupations of whole neighborhoods,” especially in the Midwest where conditions were favorable for dairy cattle. Tiffin’s 75th Anniversary Souvenir marks 150,000 gallons of milk sold by and astonishing 72 local dairies in the 1800s.
It took time and effort of local farmers to milk the cows and gather the cream to be shipped. This process on a small local scale could take days. “A pound of butter could buy a pound of nails; two pounds of butter would buy a shilling hat,” to provide you with a comparison of value.
The cost of ice cream was dependent on many factors. Until ice houses and sawdusted ice blocks were available, ice cream was very delicate.
By 1901/1902, an old carriage manufacturer’s building was turned into a makeshift creamery called Anchor Brand for bottled milk and butter. Yellow horsedrawn wagons delivered the local milk. Another small operation, Springdale Creamery or Buskirk and Sons (operated by Albert Van Buskirk, a Dutch native) manufactured butter and “fine” ice cream. “Quality” ice cream was sold by the Pure Milk & Dairy Company on Monroe Street.
The Republic Creamery in Republic, Ohio, burned in 1914 and was guessed to have been arson not for insurance (because there was no existing insurance on the property) but for the butter, as the padlock on the fridge door had been sawed off.
Meadow Gold Dairy Milk & Ice Cream on Morgan Avenue once employed 23 men and two women. It eventually dropped to 13 men and one female. In 1919, after the aforementioned Temperance Movement was successful, plans soon materialized to turn the old Hubach Brewery into an ice cream manufacturing plant (wow, do things come full circle!)
There was even a dairy plant in unincorporated Caroline, Ohio called Tellings-Belle Vernon Milk Plant, whose refrigeration (in its early days of use) was able to cool 40,000 pounds of milk daily before being sent to Cleveland.
In 2008, less than 6 percent of farms in Ohio have milk cows, a number that had been steadily decreasing with time. However, Ohio still ranks within the top ten states in the nation for dairy operations. It’s no wonder we love ice cream here!
Works cited:
75th Anniversary Souvenir. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22962/rec/2
Athletic Association of of the Tiffin High School. “Historical Sketches of the Churches and Schools of Tiffin, Ohio.” 1903. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22326/rec/2
Columbian Blue and Gold 1921.
“The Evolution of Ice Cream.” International Dairy Foods Assocation. https://www.idfa.org/the-history-of-ice-cream
Fort Ball Gazette, April 1981.
Gibson, Martha. Reminiscenes of Early Days of Tiffin. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12997
Green Springs Centennial Committee. Green Springs Centennial. 1972. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29439
“Ice Cream Parlors.” Restaurant-ing Through History. Aug. 19, 2012. https://restaurant-ingthroughhistory.com/2012/08/19/ice-cream-parlors/
Lands in Lodi. West Lodi Historical Society, 2007. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/44538/rec/2
Clark, Jill. “Ohio’s Dairy Industry”. September 2008. The Ohio State University, Department of Human and Community Resource Development. https://aede.osu.edu/sites/aede/files/!import/imce/SRIReport2008.pdf
The Old Presbyterian Church A Short History. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/35757/rec/2
Scipio-Republic History Society. History of Republic. 1989. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33668
Tiffin Area Chamber of Commerce. Directory of Industries and Utilities, Tiffin, Ohio. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/36321
Tiffin Historic Trust. Tiffin Historic Homes Tour 1978. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/36349
Tiffin Know Your City. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/27712
Tiffin-Seneca Sesquicentennial 1817-1967. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/25130/rec/1
Tiffin Street Cars and Utilities. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22390
Your Community in Review. 1944. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/42310