Tri-Counties Genealogy & History by Joyce M. Tice Historic Businesses of the Tri-Counties Local Business History Section Bradford County PA Chemung County NY Tioga County PA Home Guide Disclaimer Copyright Business Page Joyce New & Search

Joyce's Search Tip - January 2008 Do You Know that you can search just the Business pages of the site  by using the Business button in the Partitioned search engine at the bottom of the Current What's New Page? You will also find extensive business information in the Directory section.

Ice House on Porter Road in Troy

Photo No. 75 was of the ice house on the Porter Road, a half mile west of Route 6 & 14, on the left side on the way to Sylvania. It stands today and is owned by Robert and Marcia Storch. They use it for the storage of farm machinery, fertilizer, etc.

Through the years it may have been owned by Spaulding Lumber Yard and later, F. P. Case and Sons. The water to the left of the photo was dammed up and known as "Crystal Lake", the clearest ice available. Some of the dam foundation is still visible today.

In the early days, before electric refrigerators, families had ice chests first and then ice refrigerators. The ice for these were cut up from the lake in the winter and stored with sawdust as insulation until hot summer days came. The iceman would deliver ice to a patron who had given up the cool cellar to keep perishables and had an ice chest or refrigerator.

The framework on the left of the building was presumably the chute to hoist the cakes of ice from the lake to the ice house. (Photo Courtesy of Edward Ballard) [Note to Ed from Joyce : If you have the original, I'd like to scan from that - Thanks, It will be better than from the newspaper print]

From Troy-Gazette Register 1980
Troy Township & Borough Page

Ice was cut from ponds in earlier days. The blocks of ice were packed in sawdust and storied in Ice Houses such as the one in the above photo essay. Don Stanton sent these photos in. Another set of photos that I scanned from Sue ROOT "Beyea" show the ingenious ice cutting machine built by C. Bernice Dann of Sylvania. It is below Don's set and includes captions by Mr. Dann himself.
 

Bernice Dann was a tinkerer, inventor and all round clever fellow of Sylvania. The ice cutting machine below was just one of his hand designed - hand made inventions. He lived on the Bailey Hill road out of Sylvania. I scanned these photos from his granddaughter Sue in 2004. They are not good quality, but Bernice labeled them himself on the back. Hooray for him!!!

A motor ice saw that I built and myself on my pond.  The white spray is saw dust.	Cutting ice on my pond
A close up of the ice rig I built with a Ford model T engine it will cut 12 cakes 18 X 22 inches in a minute both ways just going over it once.  They had been over this ice with an ice plow but it thawed and then froze again.	Me and the ice machine on Gladding's Pond.  I cut 6000 cakes of ice on this pond one winter.

Joyce Tip Box -- December 2007 - If you are not navigating this Tri-Counties Site via the left and right sidebars of the Current What's New page you are doing yourself a disservice. You can get to any place on the site easily by making yourself familiar with these subject and place topics. Try them all to be as familiar with the site's 16,000 plus pages as you can. Stop groping in the dark and take the lighted path. That's also the only way you'll find the search engines for the site or have access to the necessary messages I may leave for you. Make it easy on yourself.

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You are the  visitor since the counter was installed on 07 SEP 2003 Published On Tri-Counties Site On 09/07/2003 By Joyce M. Tice  Email: Joyce M. Tice