Library of Congress – c1907 PENNSYLVANIA–CONNEAUT LAKE
Gov. Carringer describes event that happened in Graham County NC late 1800s – written and documented by Fred O. Scroggs – Brasstown 1925.
“Two men, staunch members of a Baptist Church on Yellow Creek, made a trip to Maryville, Tenn. to market their produce butter, eggs, herbs, chestnuts, chinquapins, deer hams, etc.
On their return they were telling something of the sights of the city, one of which they claimed they saw them making ice in August. This was repeated a few times around the country store and elsewhere until the Deacons decided something had to be done about this matter. So, they brought charges in the church against these two worthy members, charging them with lying.
On being brought to trial in the church, they did not deny their story, but made the church a proposition, that if they would select two more of their most reliable members to go with them to Maryville; they themselves to pay all expenses, and on return if these two faithful brethren did not report true facts etc., then the church could “church them.”
The four went to Maryville and later reported to the Deacons that they certainly were making ice in August. Whereupon a meeting of the members was called. The report was heard and by a unanimous vote all four were turned out of the church for lying.”
I recently read a fascinating article about the history of ice harvesting in Grit Magazine. I had no idea the use of ice for preserving foods went back so far in time.
This story, recorded by Fred O. long ago here in Brasstown, makes me smile for many reasons.
While the church members seem downright silly today, if you’d never seen a piece of ice other than during the wintertime, it really would be hard to believe you could buy it over the mountain in TN during the month of August.
—August 2017
I still love the story from Robbinsville. I’ve often wondered what Papaw Wade would say about our modern technologies. It would have been hard for him to believe that there would be a day when folks would carry their phone around with them all the time—actually that would have been hard for me to believe when I was a girl 🙂
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
Great story!
Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein wrote of a future personal communication device. From the time I was a boy reading those nooks, I looked forward to such a marvel. I thought it would be great to have such an instrument. Now, not so much!
My grandparents were born in 1890 and 1891, and died at 102 and 98. They saw many remarkable changes in technology in their lifetimes, but I’m sure they would be totally amazed at the little item we carry around called a cellphone. Besides being a phone, it’s a camera, movie camera, tv, clock, flashlight, encyclopedia, calculator, library, and computer.
We had an ice house one town over from us. I remember them selling it in blocks and I thought that was the neatest thing. If you tell kids now about an ice house they immediately think it’s a place to ice skate or play hockey. I also remember hearing a long time ago about a man in a church being “turned out” for selling moonshine. He wasn’t selling it at the church, it was his “side job” as some would call it. Looks like he needed church as much as anyone. What times folks had back then!!
It is a shame for that kind of control to be in a church, but I am sure they probably had very good people in those churches. From what I gathered that was the primary type of church found in rural West Virginia. Many of my ancestors attended faithfully, and one dear one was kicked out for preaching something the church disagreed with. This caused an offshoot, as they would merely leave with parishioners of like mind and establish another church. I could be wrong, but also think these churches were referred at one time as Hard Shell Baptist, Primitive Baptist, or Ole Time Baptist. There was a time where there was no instrumental music allowed in the church, and singing was all done acapella. I always found all history so interesting, and I have in my possession an old book with founders and members in my area of the original Old regular Baptist church in the early part of the 20th century.
My grandmother had an icebox and had deliveries made to refill with ice. She also had a milkman! I grew up with an icebox but it made it’s own ice in trays. My husband was a milkman as was his father, uncle and cousins. Grandfather was a dairy farmer! Seems so strange today to think about ice and milk deliveries along with the newspaper. Our town currently uses the old ice house for hanging deer and hogs shot by hunters. My SIL’s daddy built it back in the day and I used to pick up the steer we had killed for the freezer when the icehouse began ‘hanging’ the meat and cutting it for locals. Great butchers and always so cool inside no matter what the temp was outside in FL. Now we get meat by drive-thru at Walmart when ordered on-line. Strange to someone that got meat by walking in the woods!
I remember the home ice delivery system in the pre-WW II years. Housewives had a sign that hung on the porch to give the deliveryman a visual to know how much ice to bring into the house that day. The cardboard sign was printed with four weights. The number on top was the block size needed. Every home had one of those square signs which, like “the ice man”, disappeared soon after home “frigidaires” became available. In those days all refrigerators were “frigidaires” and all cameras were “kodaks.”
My older brother has the window card that my mother used for the iceman. I have only a very faint recollection of the ice man, probably during WWII. He had a horse-drawn wagon and wore an apron that covered his front an back to protect against the cold water when he carried his blocks of ice on his shoulder. I remember the smell of the old lead-lined ice chest. I remember, too, getting chips of ice out of the back of his wagon. Our milkman also had ice in his truck, if I recall correctly. I think we got our first refrigerator – a round top Norge – about the time WWII ended. We sold it in ’65 and then only because it wasn’t big enough for groceries by then.
Raleigh had 2 ice houses; Capital City Coal and Ice Co. and Home Ice and Coal. Both sold coal and kerosene. In the ’50s and ’60s I used to stop by every day on the way home for dinner and get a 25# bag of crushed ice. We didn’t call it lunch in our house. That bag would handle dinner and supper needs for iced tea. A 25# bag was also the perfect size for making ice cream in a hand-cranked freezer on the back porch. Peach was Mama’s favorite.
My Pa was born in 1894 in Swain County, only 3 years after Alex Stewart. He went into the orphanage at age 4. He said that all the streets and roads were dirt in those days before Henry Ford put most families in automobiles. Most trips were taken by train. He worked as a printer’s devil when he was quite young, later becoming a journeyman printer. He used to tell a story of the newspaper getting a wire feed about the Wright brothers flying at Kitty Hawk. The publisher/editor thought it was not true. He only devoted 2 column inches to the story and buried it on the inside pages.
In his lifetime, Pa saw the automobile, wireless radio (for Western Union messages, not entertainment), the airplane, commercial radio, television, the jet airplane, the earliest days of the computer before he died in 1964. Two years later I was operating a large scale – for the times – computer for Wachovia bank and went on to make a career out of running them, writing programs for them, designing whole systems of programs, implementing the first shared ATM network in NC (called Relay) and managing all IT for a statewide bank in Texas. Pa was a bit of a visionary and would have believed in the cell phone and notebook computers as a possibility, but I doubt he would have believed how rapidly they evolved and became widespread. His mother, born in 1861, 4 days before the Civil War started would have thought them the work of the devil. She died in ’46 after seeing all 17 of her grandsons who went to war return home alive.
There was an ice house in the town near my homeplace in Mississippi. I remember it was the last stop we made on Saturday when we went to town. We had an ice box which looks similar to a refrigerator but no electric hook up. The great block of ice brought out to the truck by the man who worked there using huge tongs would last several days. A nice memory.
I’ve been in an ice plant somewhere in NC around Fayetteville. Randy describes perfectly what I recall and that had to be in 1986-89 era. My granny Neese told me ice was gathered in the winter and placed in the creek over what she called a house where butter, milk, meats were placed during the summer. BTW the water runs cold outa the mountains all year round and swimming in a creek in August will give you chills here in WV…. give me the old days any day. I thought we would be like the Jetsons not jet setter into some wired paradigm reality we find ourselves. It’s a dystopian nightmare.
That is so interesting ❣️
I remember in the Early 80’s a man can in our Tn Hollow and had a Portable phone and we were in awe. I said, “That will never go over “
During the first half of the 1800’s wealthy plantation owners along the SC coast had shipping docks on their large tracts of land, 5,000 acres or more, to export their cotton, lumber, etc. The trade ships would also pull large, floating chunks of glaciers from up north down to sell to the plantations who had ice houses built to keep ice covered in straw until the next ship arrived. Botany Bay Plantation, now owned by the state, on Edisto Island is the one I have visited.
When I was growing up, my family attended the Old Regular Baptist Church. As far as I remember, you had to be quite a saint to be a member. Mom talked about women being ‘turned out’ for wearing jewelry, cutting or coloring their hair, or even polishing their nails. Some call it getting churched or turned out, I call it silly. I doubt if the Lord cares what we wear when we come to worship Him.
Good story. A shame the men were branded liars. Glad to be living today.
The Graham County story bothers me. Those deacons and troublesome pastor should have gone on the trip too. Back then in those remote areas, being unchurched meant more than losing friendships. It quite often meant that the individuals and their families were left without help in times of trouble. In the remote areas of the mountains (which Graham County was pretty remote in those days), church communities were the EMS, the Red Cross, Social Security, and Medicare/Medicaid all rolled into one. It sometimes took days to find a proper doctor.
If many of the past generations could come and see what is happening today there probably would be a lot of empty churches! This story reminds me of my dad, a farmer who rarely left his holler except to drive about 4 miles to town for animal feed, riding on a quick trip from Tn to Pa and back about 50 years ago. He was fascinated by the automatic hand dryers in the restrooms. He had never seen them before. I doubt he would believe they now automatically come on when you put your hands under them. Those were the days of push-buttons. I can’t imagine where we will be in another 50 yrs!
In the Bible, Noah spent 120 yrs building an ark for the flood that was coming. Watching the animals enter gave the people pause. When Noah & his family entered, it didn’t take long for the scoffing to begin again.
“It’s never rained & never will. It must really smell in there!”
If all the ‘good people’ had been true believes, they should have erred on the side of mercy for the ones that saw ‘ice being made’!
One of my favorite quotes from Mark Twain was/is “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness…”
Thank you for sharing this story.
I was probably in my thirties before I realized that there once was a business (still is in the bags) of making ice in towns where the weather didn’t create it to be cut from nature. Then I was like “Of course!” Electricity – and thus refrigerators – didn’t get out into rural areas until into the 1940’s. I still remember when I was a kid people talking about the R E A (the Rural Electrification Administration). I wonder if it ever phased out.
Wish I understood the whole process of ice making. I’m sure it involved the same idea of a hand crank ice cream freezer; that is pulling the heat out of the water by it moving into surrounding ice brine in an effort to melt it. Guess they would have needed some “starter” ice ?
Just another example of us taking for granted what has always been in our lifetimes. But then so did those folks. It’s human nature.
Ron , I was born in 1954 and remember the electric company being called R E A . Now the same company is named Laurens Electric CoOp located in Laurens SC. In Pickens, SC it is named Blue Ridge Electric. If you joined as a member you will get a check once a year. I guess it is sorta like profit sharing. I have had it amount to anywhere from a few dollars to over a hundred. The ones that signed on in the 40’s were guaranteed a bill of no more than $4 a month for life. I knew someone that was still paying this amount in the late 1990’s for each of the old mobile homes he owned at his boat landing that he had built in the 40’s at Lake Greenwood, SC. I know of at least one time when this was took to court by the electric company and the court ruled they had to honor the original contract. The catch to this was the power lines and poles were not upgraded for the more modern homes that would require more amperage. The owner of this landing has died and his children tore it down and done away with everything, so any of this no longer applies.
There were car phones in the early fifty’s – but they were radio car phones. ; )
That is a good story. I wonder how many of today’s younger generation would know what an ice plant or house was. I think almost every town had one. It was a place where ice was made and you could either buy it in blocks or have it crushed. A big block of ice would be dragged out on the porch with ice tongs and they would take an ice pick and chip off the amount of ice you wanted. They would usually be small pieces of ice laying around and the the children and adults too would pick up these pieces and suck on them. All of the ones I knew about also sold coal and fuel oil. In the last days before going out of business, the one in Honea Path, SC begin to sell beer that was kept in the room with the blocks of ice. I have heard it said that he had the coldest beer in town. Modern technology put these places out of business. Do any of you every think how in 50 years today’s technology will be so outdated. I often think of the changes I have seen in my life time.
I have never of anyone being churched in my lifetime but from what I heard older church members say it was common to do.this. I always thought church was where someone needed to be if they had done something bad to eat thrower out.
I sure messed up my last sentence, I meant to say bad enough to get threw out.
So, what about the ice ?
Martha-Do you mean did they really see it? They did 🙂
Good Morning,
Tipper, thank you for sharing this beautiful post with us this morning. I would love to go back there for a month, just to see what it was like. To experience the life that they lived. I too could not have imagined that we would be carrying our phone with us like we do. I really long for a simpler time, like it used to be!! Have a great day!!
willard
Good. Grief. And that brand of ‘let’s control-everyone’ attitude wasn’t that long ago …
Modern technology seems to be moving faster and faster but perhaps that’s just seems that way because I am older now. Sometimes I wonder what future holds when I can’t even keep up with the present. What could be more dramatic than the computerization of the world. It was born in my lifetime and has grown exponentially every year since.
Another Great story