FARLEY: The ice house on the canal

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May 20, 2008

By Doug Farley The Journal-Register Tue May 20, 2008, 10:15 PM EDT

The history of the Erie Canal is filled with information that doesn’t seem to fit into a typical category. One such item was gleaned from the life of Paul Murphy, born in Hartland in 1892. He lived and worked along the Erie Canal, and had contributed stories from his life to the Buffalo Courier Express. Mr. Murphy related information about “harvesting” ice from the canal. Murphy’s father was a civil war veteran and the family owned a farm on the Hartland Road and later on the Settlement Road, and finally onto the Mountain Road. His schooling took him through the required 8th grade at Gasport Elementary and high school. Murphy worked for George Pearson, who owned an icehouse on the canal. Pearson would typically hire a large contingent of men and boys to help cut ice from the canal.

Ice was often cut from the Erie Canal during the 1800s and early 1900s. To those who feel the canal water was polluted, it would probably seem rather repulsive. It was said that the canal water remained fairly muddy in the summer, due to all of the activity of the boats, but the water itself was reported as safe to drink. Families that lived along the canal would fill buckets from the canal and would let them sit overnight. In the morning, the silt would have settled to the bottom of the pail, and the water itself would be crystal clear.

When navigation ended for the winter, and a sufficient layer of ice had formed on the un-emptied sections of the canal, it would be time to fill the icehouse located on the canal bank. Ice needed to be about 4 to 5 inches deep to support the weight of the horses, but a foot or more was needed for good-sized blocks of ice. To start, a horse pulling a “scriber” would be taken out onto the ice. A scriber resembled a plow, and it would score straight lines in the ice at a proper distance apart that would make a nice block of ice. Then, two or three other men would chip holes in the ice and would start to work with one-man saws. The first channel cut would serve as the runway into the icehouse. The long blocks of ice would be broken into smaller sizes and then dragged up by horse onto the “skidway” into the icehouse. The ice blocks were laid in a layer of sawdust. After that, successive rows were scored and broken off with heavy bar-chisels, and then floated into the first channel and up to the shore.

Once a single layer of ice filled the entire icehouse, the ice would be covered with another layer of sawdust. Special effort was made to fill the cracks between the blocks and the outside edges of the building with sawdust, to act as insulation. Additional layers of ice and sawdust would continue to be added in jigsaw fashion, until the house was full.

When spring arrived, and people needed ice for their iceboxes, the icehouse would be opened and the blocks would be pulled out and washed off and sold until the next winter season. Murphy remembers helping Pearson deliver the blocks of ice to his regular customers for their iceboxes and to the railroad at Gasport, to be used in their “refrigerator cars.” Ice was delivered out of a horse-drawn wagon with side panels that said “ICE” and carried into the homes with large ice-tongs. The iceman made daily trips up the street and customers would put signs in their windows showing how many pounds of ice they needed on any given day.

Iceboxes in the home began to be common after about 1830, and became a typical fixture until the early 1900s when General Electric invented the first “mechanical ice-box.” In the 1930s one would start to see the advent of the “electric ice-box,” as it replaced the original icebox in “modern” kitchens. Most iceboxes were insulated with mineral wool, charcoal, cork or flax straw fiber. The inside of the icebox was usually lined with galvanized metal, zinc, slate, porcelain, or wood. The outside was finished in oak, pine, ash or metal. The average home icebox would hold a 25 or 50 pound block of ice. The price of a 25-pound block of ice was about 15 cents in the early 1900s. The ice block would last from one to two days during the hot summer months. A small drain built into the icebox would direct the melted ice water into a pan underneath the icebox. The pan had to be emptied frequently to avoid getting water all over the kitchen floor.

Doug Farley is director of the Erie Canal Discovery Center. Contact him at (716) 434-7433. The Discovery Center is open for the season.

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