Andrew B. Gibbs

A large number of Middleborough residents continued to engage in agriculture well into the twentieth century, including Andrew B. Gibbs (1854-1937) pictured here. Gibbs operated a farm and dairy on Tispaquin Street for many years in the late 1800s and early 1900s and it is from him that Garabed Kayajan purchased his milk business in 1920. The oxen beside Gibbs were a welcome addition to any farm as they were capable of plowing, threshing grain and drawing heavy loads.

Thanksgiving Turkeys, 1876

 

Middleborough was once known for a Thanksgiving day meal staple other than the cranberry. In 1876 the Plymouth Old Colony Memorial reported that "the best turkeys in the county market this year were raised about Middleboro."

Source: Old Colony Memorial, "County and Elsewhere", November 30, 1876, page 4.

Experimental Potatoes & the Preacher Farmer

Though Middleborough might now style itself the "cranberry capital of the world," in the past, the town was noted for other agricultural products as well. One crop for which Middleborough received attention during the early years of this century was potatoes, with North Middleborough being the site of a United States government experimental potato station, known as the Eden Trial Grounds. The origin of the experimental station was the farm of Reverend J. R. Lawrence. Lawrence served as Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Middleborough at the corner of Bedford and Plymouth Streets in North Middleborough between 1903 and 1907.

Lawrence, who was born in Fall River in 1868, began his interest in farming at the time he entered the ministry. Ordained in 1890, Lawrence always occupied rural pastorates, the first three being at South Dartmouth, North Egremont, and Lanesboro. The interest in farming became all-consuming for Lawrence who came to consider himself, first and foremost, a farmer. "There is more room in the world for a farmer who can preach than there is for a minister who has a farm to get a living," Lawrence believed.

In 1896, Lawrence began his work in experimental farming, which he continued after his arrival at North Middleborough. Experiments in cross-pollination were rigorously conducted by Lawrence who argued that "every farmer should engage in experimental work and see what he can learn. I do considerable and have found it very beneficial and profitable."

Lawrence claimed to have under cultivation "probably more varieties than any other private place in the United States." This included 90 varieties of garden peas, 75 varieties of lettuce, 45 varieties of sweet corn, and, ultimately 300 varieties of potatoes.

Previously, potato experimentation had been conducted at the Arlington Trial Grounds, but, in 1904, were transferred to the Lawrence farm. Seed potatoes were planted under the direction of representatives of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, and conditions were carefully noted. Each of the three hundred varieties was planted separately and marked with tagged stakes. Lawrence made weekly reports upon their progress. When the time came to harvest the potatoes, the work had to be done by hand so that each variety could be bagged and labelled for the following season. State and Federal agricultural experts would be present to oversee the work.

Later, Lawrence devoted greater attention to the growing of fruit. In the first years of his Middleborough farm, Lawrence cultivated seedless varieties of watermelons and apples, but he later turned to berry cultivation. As Mrs. Romaine notes in her history of Middleborough, "Lawrence drew wide attention by his experiments in berry growing." The experiments in question related to the possibility of the commercial cultivation of huckleberries, and these experiments were reported in the Boston Globe at the time. Lawrence transplanted a wild huckleberry bush from a nearby swamp to his farm, where it flourished, despite the lack of any special encouragement. It produced berries "almost as large as small cherries and which grew in clusters of 15 to 30."

Despite the scope of Lawrence's experiments and the number of vegetable and fruit varieties grown on his farm, only about four acres of land were cultivated. Specifically in regard to the experimental potato patch, this acreage contrasts greatly with the nearby State Farm at Bridgewater where some 65 acres were devoted solely to the cultivation of potatoes.

Lawrence was generally employed in farm work four or five days a week from 7 a.m. to 5 or 6 p.m., and was assisted in this work by his father, James Lawrence (1835-1910). The remaining days would be utilized by Reverend Lawrence to prepare his Sunday work. "He frankly states that he can use this time to good advantage farming, and does not visit his parishioners when they are well, but when they are sick he is always on hand to offer consolation and assistance."

Lawrence also gave his parishioners practical demonstrations of farming, and shared agricultural advice with them, "and for this reason, if no other, he has come to be one of the most popular pastors of the Baptist Church in the north precinct of the town."

"For myself, I try to keep ahead of my members in all branches of farming, as many of my members are engaged in that pursuit, and then I can always give them points on farming, and by thus assisting them have a better hold upon them. I can teach the spiritual lessons on a broader scale if I have the outdoor training which is incidental to farm life, and many of my best inspirations for sermon topics have come to me while at work in the field," Lawrence believed.

Lawrence left his pastorate, potato patch and experimental farm in 1907.

Illustrations:
"Potatoes", photograph by Eleanor Martin, August 16, 2009.  Used under a Creative Commons license.

Joseph Reynard Lawrence (1868-1925), photograph, c. 1893, Emery, Rutland, Vermont.
Reverend J. R. Lawrence about the time of his wedding in 1893.

Lakeville Town Pound

The following brief article was written by James Creedon and appeared in an editon of the Brockton Enterprise in early January, 1904.  It tells the tell of the remaining town pound which was situated on Highland Road near Shockley Hill and was built probably about the time Lakeville was incorporated as a separate town.

A town pound was once a common sight in the towns about Middleboro, but today few are left.  One of these is located in Lakeville, not a great distance from Shockleys hill.  It was built about 1853.

The pound is by the side of the road and comprises a lot about 25 feet square, surrounded by a stone wall about five feet high.  A wooden gate closes a five-foot opening at the front of the inclosure.

In the early days of the town cattle were allowed to run freely along the roads, and frequently they strolled on another man's land.  If the cattle belonged to a friendly neighbor it was usually all right, but if there happened to be bad feeling between the men, a field driver was summoned, and the animals were taken to the pound.  There they were placed in charge of the poundkeeper, who fed and cared for them.  The owner of the cattle was notified, and when he appeared for them he had to pay 50 cents per head and expenses.

The first pound keeper was Abram Shaw.  He was in charge for several years.  He was followed by John Shaw who continued as keeper as long a the pound was in use.

The oldest field driver now living is John Townsend, who resides near the Bell schoolhouse.

Townsend resided on Lakeside Avenue.

Illustration:
Lakeville Town Pound, Highland Road, Brockton Enterprise, January, 1905

Source:
Brockton Enterprise, January, 1905, clipping in the collection of the Middleborough Publc Library

Charles H. Soule's Valley Farm

Originally I had not intended another post about ducks, but a comment by a reader on the previous post regarding the Sampson duck farm in Lakeville prompted me to consider the history of duck-raising at East Middleborough to which the reader refers.

What the reader describes in his comment are the remains of Valley Farm, the duck farm of Charles H. Soule (1871-1948). In 1963, Soule’s daughter, Alberta N. Soule described the ruins of the farm which even then was returning to forest.

There is a short lane off Cedar street in East Middleborough (between the home of Mrs. William Kelley and that of the late Edwin E. Soule) where there are tumbled down buildings and traces of what at one time was a thriving business. The remains on an incubator cellar would tell one that it was the site of a poultry business perhaps, but it would be difficult for one who didn’t know the history to visualize the large duck farm that was operated on those eight acres of land. It is now all grown up to scrub oak, pine, and maple with a slight clearing through the center part of the acreage.

The duck farm which occupied the site was established in 1899 when Charles H. Soule acquired the former homestead of James Soule on the west side of Cedar Street just north of Soule Street as well as an eight-acre woodlot on the opposite (east) side of the road. Soule had previously engaged in duck-raising at his father Orlando Soule’s home, the distinctive brick house which stands further north on Cedar Street, and it was on the newly-acquired eight-acre woodlot that he chose to establish his own business. To do so, Soule cleared the wood from the lot, and relocated a former blacksmith shop from the James Soule homestead.

[The blacksmith shop] was moved across the street and down the lane to be used for a grain shed and picking house. Later a larger building was added on top of which was a large tank building holding hundreds of gallons of water to be used all through the farm. A windmill arrangement was first used for pumping water, but sometime waster had to be pumped by hand to supplement that amount. Later a gasoline engine and an artesian well were installed.

Water was provided for the ducks through a pipe system laid all through the farm with a faucet arrangement in each pen through which the water was turned on three times each day to fill the troughs. A large horse-drawn low cart was the feeding vehicle. Several hundred pounds of ground grains and meat plus chopped cornstalks or cooked mangle beets were mixed with water and hand-mixed with a shovel and taken in the cart to be shoveled out to each pen three times each day.

Grain was bought by the carload and delivered at the East Middleborough Railroad Station. Grain was also delivered twice a week from local grain merchants in large grain trucks drawn by four horses. Mangle beets were bought by the ton from the Bridgewater State Farm and cooked in a huge iron vat. Field corn, raised on the farm, was cut while young and fed through a corn cutter to cut pieces about an inch long. These two ingredients provided the green in the feed which the ducks needed.

Each summer my father raised and marketed from 12,000 to 15,000 ducks, shipping them by express each day from the East Middleborough Station to Boston. James D. Legg, Thorndike & Gerrish, and Adams & Chapman were some of the markets in Boston with whom he did business.

Three to four pickers were employed all through the picking season. After picking, the ducks were placed in large barrels with plenty of ice, and early the following morning they were packed for market. The poultry arrived in Boston for market the morning after it was dressed.

To perpetuate the stock from year to year, three hundred breeders were kept over through the winter months, from which eggs were hatched in the incubator cellar. At first the hatching was done in small Cyphers machines operated by kerosene. Later two Candee machines were installed, each of ten thousand egg capacity. These were coal operated machines. Custom hatching was done as well as hatching for the farm. [Alberta N. Soule]

Among local farmers for whom custom hatching was done was Horace G. Case of Rock, a farmer who raised turkeys on a small scale for a number of years following 1910. Case reported in 1927: “I hire Charles Soule to hatch the [turkey] eggs for me and this year from 194 eggs he hatched 179 poults. Two years ago he hatched 101 from 105 eggs.” 

The incubator cellar on the Soule farm would have housed the hot water mammoth incubators mentioned by Alberta Soule, although the term "cellar" is somewhat misleading as often incubator cellars were built partially or even wholly above ground.  It is likely that one of the concrete slab foundations mentioned in the reader's comment on the previous post is the incubator cellar foundation, such foundations being typically of poured concrete since great amounts of moisture were employed in incubating the eggs and which would have quickly rotted a wooden floor.  Other buildings on the farm would likely have included brooder houses, fattening houses, a feed storage house or barn, and the picking or killing house previously mentioned where the ducks were prepared for market.  Water, as noted by Alberta Soule, was vital for the farm's operation, required in the incubator cellar and brooder houses for heat, the picking house for processing, and as a water supply for the ducks.

The Soules were the originators of large-scale commercial duck-raising at East Middleborough which grew to be a large enterprise in that area of Middleborough. The Middleboro Gazette in June, 1905 noted the growing business remarking that “Middleboro is coming to the front as a duck farming country, and a profitable business is done by poultrymen in the east part of the town.” At the time, Soule and his father had hatched out some 2,500 ducks while Albert Rolland who occupied the property immediately to the south of Soule had 1,500. “Mr. Whitworth, a recent comer to the eastern village, is another who is starting in the business on a large scale, and he has about 1,000 ducklings out already.” On nearby Fuller Street, Reverend William J. Robinson also was engaged in duck-raising. The ducks most frequently raised were white Pekins “as their flesh is more attractive, and they find a readier sale in consequence.”

The duck-raising business at East Middleborough expanded rapidly. In 1910, “the shipment of dressed poultry from the East Middleboro station .. was about three tons” and was expected to be exceeded the following year. By 1911, Soule was hatching 6,000 ducks per season, and in order to keep pace with his expanding business in 1914 he installed “a mammoth incubator, holding 4,800 eggs.”

The Middleboro Gazette left a record of duck-raising from this era in its pages in 1905 which reinforces the picture provided by Alberta Soule.

The birds are grown to marketable size in about ten weeks, and during that time they are stuffed with a mash made of bran, meal, scraps, and flour. On this they thrive and fatten quickly. To handle the daily sustenance of the quackers is no small task, as may well be imagined when it is stated that at Hall & Ristine’s plant in Lakeville about three tons are fed weekly, and the Messrs. Soule feed nearly that amount to their flocks. The grain trade in these places is cared for by Bryant & Soule, who send heavily loaded teams to the duck farms two or three times a week…. A good future in the duck … business is anticipated, and the men now engaged therein are constantly planning improvements upon their plants. Among those introduced are machines to mix the food for the ducks, while gas or steam engines or windmills are employed to draw the water for the birds. Practically all the hatching is done by incubators.  [Middleboro Gazette, “East Middleboro”, June 9, 1905]

[Charles H. Soule] continued in the duck raising business in a large way until about 1916 or 1917. Around that time prices were not good and the profit was less. He had always raised a few hens, marketed them, and sold eggs for market; he now continued this in a larger way on the farm. He also started experimenting with the raising of turkeys, and he was one of the first to try raising them on wire to avoid the black-head disease which made raising turkey difficult. The turkey raising grew until the early forties when my father retired. He will be remembered by many as supplying the traditional bird for Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities. [Alberta N. Soule]

In 1950, Soule’s daughters, Alberta N. Soule, Marion S. Griffith and Mildred A. Soule sold the former duck farm.

Sources:Middleboro Gazette, “East Middleboro”, June 9, 1905:1; ibid., October 6, 1911:5; ibid., January 30, 1914:1; “Rock Poultry Farm”, November 11, 1927:3
Plymouth County Registry of Deeds 814:293; 2085:241
Soule, Alberta N. “Three Blacksmith Shops, a Brick Yard and Shoemakers’ Shops in Soule Neighborhood”, The Middleborough Antiquarian, 4:3, June, 1962, 6.
Soule, Alberta N., “Valley Farm – Soule Neighborhood”, The Middleborough Antiquarian, 5:3, June, 1963, 4+

Ducks for the Military, 1944

"Quackalackadingdong", photograph by

Erlend Schei, June 22, 2010, republished

under a Creative Commons license.

During the height of World War II in 1944, Merrill Sampson of Lakeville devoted the production of his Main Street duck farm towards producing both ducks and chickens to ease growing food shortages.  Though considered a luxury food and typically not standard military fare, duck produced on Sampson's farm was sold to for use by both the army and the navy in that year.  The operation of the Sampson farm was documented for posterity just seven weeks after the invasion of Europe by a correspondent for the Brockton Enterprise:

With the memory of the mad scramble of Middleboro folks for food the past few months, the activities of N. Merrill Sampson, South Main street, just over the Lakeville line, to help out the food situation are worthy of note.

Sampson is a duck raiser. It was his custom to grow ducks in the spring, fatten them up, put them in cold storage, and then make plans for another year. This year he is hatching throughout the year, as fast as the duck eggs are available. He plans to raise 23,000 birds this year. The demand for them is so great that so far none has been placed in cold storage. The army is taking vast quantities of them, and the navy is getting many more.

The duck farm has been operated for a great many years, and from the start Mr. Sampson has been connected with it. Recently he took it over from Frank H. Conklin, who operated it for some years.

Mr. Sampson also hatched 150,000 chickens during this spring. One incubator handles 21,000 eggs at a setting. He has many smaller one also, but in spite of the tremendous chicken production he still devotes his attention principally to ducks.

Source:Brockton Enterprise, "Ducks Big Food Item", July 26, 1944

College Men Who Raise Ducks

In April, 1902, William W. Hall of Boston acquired 66 acres of the Elbridge Cushman farm on the west side of Main Street south of Stetson Street in Lakeville with the intention of establishing a duck farm.  Hall would operate the farm until 1913, initially in conjunction with his brother, Frank Y. Hall.  The Hall brothers and their duck farm attracted the attention of regional newspapers, largely for the reason that the brothers were both Harvard educated and the local press clearly found the thought of Ivy League farmers intriguing.  In August, 1904, one regional newspaper visited the farm and left the following description of its operation at the time. 

Frank Y. Hall, a graduate of Harvard, class of '98, a former football player and all-around athlete, and his brother, William W. Hall, who was educated at Harvard and Haverford college, a football player, coach and gymnast, have found a field of labor which, though it may be new to college-bred men, offers an exceptional opportunity to unite successfully educational training with practical labor.

Their business is raising ducks for the market, and as it is carried on along up-to-date lines, they have met with success.

This season, which is their second in the business, about 3000 young ducks were hatched out at their place in Middleboro.  Early in the year, and preferably before February, the first settings of eggs are placed in the incubators.  These are hatched out, and the young ducks are put into the long houses, which are heated by steam.

A continuous gentle heat is applied for four weeks, when the ducks are strong enough to live without it.  They are then moved to another house to make room for the new arrivals.

In about from 10 to 12 weeks after hatching the young ducks are big enough to send to market.  Just previous to killing they are fed plentifully and they fatten up.

The process of growing and killing the succeeding broods is kept up till nearly winter, when the last of the season's ducks are reserved for breeders.

These will commence to lay at New Years, and will supply the eggs for the hatch of the next year.

Of the eggs set about three-fourths will hatch and of these about 93 percent reach maturity.

The ducks weigh from five to seven pounds each, and when prepared or market will bring about from 15 to 17 cents a pound.  The feathers, a valuable by-product, now bring about 48 cents per pound.  The revenue from them is sufficient to pay the expenses of putting the grown fowl on the market.

The market for these choice ducks is good and the demand is constantly growing.

To care for ducks is no small task.  They need to be watered about five times daily, and the young ones must be fed four times each day.  As they grow older three times is sufficient.

The amount of food devoured by the hundreds of ducks now growing on the place is surprising.  Each week they consume two tons.  This is served them in quantities in proportion to their age.

Three large houses are now used in housing the ducks, but before next season two more large houses will be added.  They are built on the side of a hill, where the young ducks can get the benefit of the morning sun, as they run about in their yards.

Although the ducks are close beside a chain of lakes, they are not tempted by the water there, and never fly to the pond.  A brook which runs past their coops is in great demand with them, however.

The quacking of the ducks at night has been an annoyance which many duck farmers have sought to overcome, and on this place it has been practically eliminated.  Lanterns are hung out around the yard during the night, and the light has a comforting effect on the ducks, and keeps them quiet.

William W. Hall has been engaged in the duck business for three years.  He first worked a year at Weymouth, and later commenced the business for himself.  He is satisfied that a university education is helpful in his work.

Frank Y. Hall devotes fewer hours daily to the duck farm, his attention being taken up by other duties.  He is a member of the school committee of [Lakeville], besides serving as librarian of the public library.

The Hall farmhouse is one of the prettiest on the road from Middleboro to New Bedford.  It was formerly known as the Elbridge Cushman place.  There are large, well-appointed barns, and a large tract of land.

As noted in the article, Frank Y. Hall served as both a member of the Lakeville School Committee, as well as the town's first librarian.  In October, 1904, he resigned both of these positions in order to pursue newspaper work in Philadelphia for a time.  William W. Hall as also involved with the Lakeville Public Library, serving as a trustee.

William W. Hall continued to expand the duck farming operation, and by 1910 he was raising 10,000 ducks annually.  In 1913, Hall sold the farm to Frank H. Conklin who had previously entered into partnership with Hall and who would own and operate for the next 24 years.  In 1918, Conklin employed Merrill Sampson who would purchase the farm from Conklin in 1937.  The farmhouse with its elegant mansard-style roof still stands on Main Street, "one of the prettiest on the road".

Sources:
Unidentifed newspaper clippings; August 7, 1904; October 21, 1904; November 4, 1904; James H. Creedon Collection, Middleborough Public Library, Middleborough, MA

Plymouth County Registry of Deeds

Middleborough Cider

The great abundance of apples which was produced locally in the 19th and early 20th centuries was not only sold as fresh fruit, but a larger proportion was processed for cider and cider vinegar. Among local cider mills was the Cushman mill at Rock Village. Constructed in 1857 on the west side of Miller Street just south of Cushman Street, the mill was Middleborough’s last remaining cider mill, operating until 1944.

The mill was owned by three generations of Cushmans: Isaac Smith Cushman (b. 1816), son Charles Franklin Cushman (1850-1930) and grandson Harlas Lester Cushman (1875-1955). Both Isaac S. and Charles F. Cushman were originally occupied as foundrymen, though later in life each became increasingly engaged in farming.

The cider mill constructed by Isaac S. Cushman was a natural adjunct to farming at Rock, and the principal product of the early mill appears to have been cider vinegar, produced by allowing the apple cider to ferment.

Jennie Phillips of South Middleborough recorded the cider-making process as originally practiced at the Cushman mill:

The method of making cider then was primitive. Heavy oak rolls, turned by a horse moving in a circle, tread-mill fashion, crushed the apples. This ground-up pumice was then placed in a frame on a platform press and lined generously with rye straw applied in layers over the pumice. The process was repeated, until the press was full.

A header with two wooden screws attached was placed on top of the contents. Two wooden levers, each threaded through a screw eye, were turned by hand power to extract the juice, which ran into a trough below. The liquid, escaping by an outlet to a tank, was then dipped up into barrels or containers to be taken home for use or for market.

It was a laborious task to swing the levers in the crushing process and strong arms were needed by two men who did the work.

While the mill as operated by Isaac Cushman was necessarily a small-scale operation given the primitive process by which cider was produced, under Charles F. Cushman the mill received greater attention and its operations were expanded and modernized. In November, 1907, Cushman refitted the upper story as a cranberry screening room where his berries could be processed. A gasoline engine was installed to power not only the screening machinery, but the cider press as well, thereby boosting the output of cider. While Charles had been previously listed in census and other records as a “farmer”, in 1910 he informed the census taker that he was a “bottler – cider mill”, an indication that the mill had assumed an increased importance as part of Cushman’s farm operation.

Despite the addition of the gas-powered engine in 1907, the process of making vinegar and cider at the Rock mill in the early 1900s remained essentially the same as that practiced 40 years earlier, though the layers of straw which were used were replaced by heavy sheets of canvas. Because the cider mill maintained its 19th century procedures, its output “was necessarily limited, and the chance for Mr. Cushman to keep up with his vinegar orders was slight. In fact he didn’t dare to take orders for the vinegar, as they came faster than he and the horse could make it. Besides the horse was getting old, and couldn’t go around the pace with the speed of former days.”

Consequently, fundamental a change was made in 1911 when Cushman and his son Harlas mechanized the mill. Hydraulic presses powered by electricity were installed and “by the new method it was possible to crush 20 bushels of apples at a time and turn out 80 gallons of cider. On peak days, 1,000 gallons could be produced, or a barrel every 12 to 15 minutes. At one time, in an effort to gauge how quickly cider could be produced, Charles Cushman rushed work and pressed 36 barrels full in half a day, a staggering amount.

The production of cider in the newly mechanized mill began with the receipt of cider apples in the mill yard. These were dumped into a conveyor which lifted them to the second floor where they were pulped by “a 2,300 revolution-a-minute chopper.” The apple pumice was then sent to the ground floor where it was packed in canvas sheets and became known as “cheeses”. “When enough cheese sections, from eight to ten, have been prepared, which takes only about five minutes, they are placed under the power press, operated by a hydraulic ram, and the pulp is squeezed dry enough almost to burn, while they are cutting up and preparing another portion to take its place.” The juice was collected and pumped into a 150 gallon storage container from which it was drawn off into barrels “to be soured and allowed to vinegar off.” By these new means, Cushman could produce over 1,000 barrels of vinegar each season.

The modernization of the mill was reported in the Middleboro Gazette which declared the new press “a wonder of its kind”, but the early operation of the hydraulic press was not without incident. On November 8, a short time following installation of the new machinery an accident occurred, though fortunately no one was injured.

The mill is operated by power, and the crushed apples are confined in heavy cloths to be squeezed. When the pressure was applied the edge of one of these cloths gave away, and the contents shot out, but fortunately no one was struck. It landed in a heavy mass on the opposite wall. Ernest Morgan was working close by but he was just out of the range of the charge.

To supply the mill, Cushman advertised heavily in the local newspapers for apples each fall, frequently paying suppliers in cash. What fruit could not be secured from local growers increasingly came from orchards much further distant. “Carloads of apples were shipped from Maine or New Hampshire to the mill and at times there would be two or three thousand bushels of this out-of-State fruit in the yard during peak business.”

Additionally, the Cushmans had earlier established their own orchard to meet a portion of the mill’s demand. In 1909, Harlas Cushman is recorded as setting out an apple and peach orchard of some 1,300 trees, the apples ultimately being processed for vinegar.

During the 1910s and 1920s, the mill remained a large producer of cider vinegar. In 1911, Charles Cushman purchased two railroad carloads of wooden barrels needed for the process, an amount which reflects the scope of his business. Cushman proposed selling his vinegar “in high class grocery stores”, and this probably prompted him to adopt clear glass containers for distribution, the Cushman mill being the first local mill to introduce such containers. Deliveries were made to locations throughout southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. “Cushman Farm cider became a well-known product within a wide radius.”

Private orders were also processed by the mill for farmers wishing to have their own apples pressed. “When appointments are made those who arrive with apples enough to make a barrel of cider, unload them, and about 20 minutes later they can have the juice from their own apples drawn into a barrel in their team and then they are on their way home. Under the old scheme they had to wait several days for their cider.”

The cider-making process long remained a largely social occasion as “farmers came from miles around and lined up in the mill yard or on either side of [Miller] street to await their turn with patience for their barrel of cider. It was for the most part a jovial group, for each customer knew that hospitality awaited him at the mill, where no one left without sampling the purity of the product.”

The Cushman mill operated until 1944 when the decline in local apple production prompted its closure. New pests, previously unknown, began to take their toll on local orchards. In June 1913, Charles F. Cushman removed five bushels of caterpillars from his own trees, an indication of the growing menace these new pests represented. Subsequent spraying served only to damage the fruit and lower its value, and so was not a highly favored option. A shortage of labor in the early 1940s when available workers were diverted into war-related industries resulted in growers being unable to hire sufficient pickers to harvest the fruit. Additionally, a series of hurricanes in the late 1930s and early 1940s severely damaged local orchards, including Cushman’s where “young trees in the prime of beauty … toppled over.”

In 1944 operations at the Cushman cider mill ceased. The press and other machinery were later removed from the mill, and the “weather-stained” building was demolished in the mid-1950s.

Illustrations:
"Cider" by Paul Goyette, October 27, 2007, republished under a Creative Commons license.

Cushman Cider Mill, Miller Street, Middleborough, MA, newspaper half-tone, New Bedford Standard-Times, mid-1950s
This view of the Cushman cider mill depicts it after it had been neglected for over a decade. The detailed ventilator on the roof ridge, however, hints that the building in its prime was probably well kept with some pretense of architectural stylishness. Following the death of Harlas L. Cushman in 1955, the mill property was sold and the new owners levelled the building.

"Raw Cider" by Trevor Dykstra, republished under a Creative Commons license.

"Cider Apples" by zizzybaloobah, October 9, 2005, republished under a Creative Commons license.

"Conserve Your Cider Apples", advertisement, Middleboro Gazette, October 4, 1918, page 5.
Cushman paid what he advertised as high prices for the cider apples he needed to produce vinegar in the Rock mill, and paid in cash. For those growers not persuaded by these enticements, Cushman appealed to their patriotic instincts with the fact that American servicemen, then in the final months of World War I, "want Vinegar on their Beans".

"We Buy Cider Apples", advertisement, Middleboro Gazette, September 23, 1921, page 4.
Cushman's ads for apples continued to emphasize the high price paid, in this instance 50 cents a bushel.

"Wanted! First Class Cider Apples", advertisement, Middleboro Gazette, August 19, 1927, page 5.
To produce the quality cider vinegar which he wished to sell through higher end grocers, Cushman required quality apples as indicated by this advertisement from 1927.

"Fresh Apples I", photograph by Ben Garney, October 17, 2009, republished under a Creative Commons license.

Sources:
Cushman, Henry Wyles. Historical and Biographical Genealogy of the Cushmans: The Descendants of Robert Cushman, the Puritan, from the Year 1617 to 1855. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1855.

Middleboro Gazette, “Rock”, November 15, 1907:2; ibid., May 21, 1909:5; “Modern Cider Making Plant”, November 3, 1911:5; “Rock”, November 10, 1911:3; ibid., June 6, 1913:4; “Recent Death”, May 2, 1930:1; ibid., May 26, 1955:7

Phillips, Jennie M. “New Owners to Wreck Rock Cider Mill Built in 1957”, New Bedford Standard-Times, undated clipping.

Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910. Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C. Census Place: Middleboro, Plymouth, Massachusetts; Roll T624_612; Page: 4A; Enumeration District: 1229; Image: 595.

Lakeville Apples

In 1902, Lakeville apples were earning a world-wide reputation as noted in the pages of the Brockton Times which reported: "Sidney T. Nelson of Lakeville shipped several barrels of apples to Germany a couple of days ago. It is unusual for local agriculturalists to send their goods so far." Nelson (1845-1919) was a noted local authority on agriculture and among the first of Lakeville's commercial producers. Lakeville apples remained popular through the late 20th century with Ernest Maxim's orchards and those of Ralph Baker on Vaughan Street being the most noted.

Illustration:
"The Apple", photograph by digicla, September 3, 2005, republished under a Creative Commons license

Source:
Brockton Times, "Middleboro", November 4, 1902

Making Hay

Before the cranberry, hay was Middleborough’s most valuable agricultural crop, well suited to the general paucity of the area’s soil. During the 1855 season, the town produced over 3,000 tons of English and swale hay, and had some nearly 3,000 acres devoted to mowing. In 1872 it was “admitted by the wisest and most experienced farmers among us, that a grass farm and the production of hay is about the most profitable branch of agriculture in this State.” Accordingly, agriculturalists encouraged the cultivation of hay: “The two principal crops that the dairy farmer here in Massachusetts should raise are Indian corn and grass, each to be liberally fed, both green and dry” [1884].

While haying is today frequently depicted as having been a bucolic pastime reminiscent of a simpler age, in reality, hay-making in the nineteenth century and earlier was back-breaking work, the most grueling and toilsome of the farmer’s tasks and one which was dictated by the weather. Since hay needed to dry and couldn’t tolerate a substantial wetting without getting moldy or musty, farmers frequently scrambled to get the crop in during the heat of late June and early July in between seasonal storms.

In this regard, the Green and Muttock neighborhoods had a unique resource, however, in Captain Nathaniel Wilder (c. 1744-1825), owner of a farm on Plymouth Street near Nemasket Hill Cemetery. Wilder was well-noted as “a farmer of distinction” and more so for his uncanny ability to accurately predict the weather during hay-making time, a most valued skill in planning the harvest of such a commercially valuable crop.

Frequently, Middleborough farmers might be required to engage in haymaking on Sunday, which some in the community found offensive. “Last Sabbath, a number of persons in this place occupied a considerable portion of the day in haymaking,” reported Namasket Gazette editor Samuel P. Brown in July, 1854. “A few men can be found in almost every place,” Brown continued, “who have no regard for the laws, human or divine. Some people consider it necessary to labor on the Sabbath, whenever they can save an extra dollar by it, but we are thankful to know that the mass of people believe in and practice another way.”

Realizing that the weather often dictated this course of action, however, a respondent simply identified as “Frank” wrote Brown that “you censure those farmers who saw fit to spend some of the hours of last Sabbath in making hay. We had had several days of wet weather and their hay was considerably injured by being wet and remaining so for so long a time, and that, no doubt, was their reason for spending the Sabbath as they did. So far as I noticed, they did their work in a quiet way, not disturbing the whole village, or making any more noise or display than was absolutely necessary to accomplish their objective.”

Brown remained unmoved. “When a person takes his hay from the field upon a wagon, and gets on the top of his load, drives it through the main street, gleefully saluting others by the way, and after weighing his load returns in the same way, it looks to us a great deal like ‘more noise and display than is absolutely necessary’”.

To assist in haymaking, Middleborough farmers engaged agricultural laborers, as it was imperative to get the crop in before summer showers ruined it while it was still in the field. In 1869, Simeon M. Pratt paid $550 in wages and board to his hands, a considerable amount at that time, and a large portion of which was undoubtedly expended during haymaking season. Some farmers, like Jack Morey, engaged these laborers months in advance to ensure that they would be on hand at the appropriate time.

Though Nahum M. Tribou (a progressive farmer and former agricultural implement dealer who owned a farm between Muttock and Warrentown) had acquired a Ketchum mowing machine as early as haymaking time in 1859, and though mechanical mowers were exhibited and demonstrated locally the following year, it would be some years before the use of such machines to cut hay would become widespread. Until that time, great scythes (some with cradles attached) would be utilized and a number of Middleborough merchants such as grocer Ira Tinkham and George Waterman could generally be found advertising such implements in the local newspaper in early June, just before haying time. For example, in June, 1866, Tinkham touted “scythes in great variety, from the most celebrated manufactories in the country.”

Once cut, hay would be left where it lay to dry in the field for the day. The following day, it would be turned, and allowed to dry further. Finally, it would be gathered and brought in to the farmstead to store.

The chore of turning and loading hay was one often carried out by boys and young men who would turn the hay to dry, load it into wagons and transport it to barn lofts and hay mows where summer temperatures could well reach 100 degrees. Often the task had to be performed quickly when thunderheads were spotted on the horizon.

Rain was not the only threat to hay at harvest time. Carelessness, as well, could jeopardize a crop as indicated by the following report from July, 1891: “A Middleboro farmer had eight tons of hay vanish into thin air last week. The hay lay in long windrows ready to load, when the men thought to vary their work by burning out a “yellow tails’” nest. They started a fire and lit out. When they turned to see the hornets flying out of the flames with singed antennæ and smoky eyes, they beheld the hay crop burning briskly. The wind had shifted in a twinkling, and saved the hornets’ nest at the expense of the hay”.

The local production of hay remained a commercially important occupation, throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth when the local dairy industry expanded rapidly. The decline of dairying, however, brought with it an equally rapid decline in hay cultivation, a now increasingly rare summer occupation locally.

Illustration:
Loaded Hay Wagon, cabinet card, late 19th century
This cabinet card is believed to depict an unidentified Middleborough farmer and his load of hay. Typically, hay wagons would be heavily loaded with dry hay which would be taken for weighing at scales at Middleborough Center or brought directly into barns where it would be stored for the season.

The Ice Industry

(A portion of the final section of the post below relating to the manner in which ice was harvested nearly a century ago was written by my late grandfather, Jim Maddigan, who like many residents of the Star Mill neighborhood worked on the Pratt Farm for a period of time).

In the past, in Middleborough and Lakeville, January and February meant the start of the annual ice harvest. During the 19th century, as increasingly fewer houses were equipped with root cellars or springhouses to prevent food spoilage, ice began to be harvested in commercial quantities for use in ice chests.

Yet, the commercial possibilities of the Middleborough and Lakeville ponds initially seem to have gone largely unnoticed within the two communities. In the late 1860s, when a proposed railroad line from Middleborough to New Bedford was surveyed, it was the New Bedford Standard, which first realized the potential for New Bedford becoming the largest ice market in the country, supplied by ice from Middleborough and Lakeville. The railroad was never built, and the wealth from Nemasket's ponds remained unexploited until 1881.

LeBaron Ice Company

In that year, John Baylies LeBaron (1845-1918) organized the John B. LeBaron Ice Company as a wholesale and retail business with his wife's brother Thomas J. Lovell. The two men are said to have realized the potential of the ice industry while fishing on Lake Assawompsett in December, 1880, a realization which prompted them to build Middleborough's first commercial ice house at Lakeside on Lake Assawompsett near the Lovell Farm.

Prior to that time, ice was commercially available in Middleborough typically only through "victuals" dealers like J. Scott Barden, Matthew Cushing and David Tucker who operated meat and fish markets which required ice to preserve their goods. Large quantities of ice were harvested - in 1876 Tucker harvested nearly 600 tons - and the excess was readily sold to the public.

The LeBaron Company tapped into the growing public demand for ice and prospered well enough to build a second ice house at Nevertouch Pond on the west side of Middleborough in 1883. Upon the 1884 death of his father John Burt LeBaron, owner of the LeBaron Foundry Company on Vine Street in Middleborough, LeBaron sold his interest in the ice company to another brother-in-law, Samuel S. Lovell, in order to take charge of the foundry with his own brother, Eugene P. LeBaron. Two years later, however, LeBaron sold his share of the foundry business to his brother, and reentered the ice business by purchasing the interests of Charles C. Thomas who operated at Clark's Springs off what is now Clark Street East.

LeBaron built a profitable business, purchasing smaller competitors throughout town, and by the turn of the century had five ice houses at Clark's Springs. In 1906, according to a report in the Middleboro Gazette, "J.B. Lebaron cut about three tons of ice at Clark's Springs the latter part of last week, making five hundred tons he has housed this winter." The subsequent winter, in 1907, he cut about one thousand tons in one week, an equivalent of a full acre of ice twelve inches thick.

The ice at Clark's Springs was harvested from a pond known as LeBaron's Ice Pond which, besides being the source of LeBaron's ice, was a popular ice skating venue in winter. In later years, the pond was substantially altered by loam removal by the Thomas Brothers Company, and it has since dried up. (A portion of the area is now largely occupied by the ramp for Route 495).

LeBaron ran a profitable business though one which was occasionally hampered by setbacks. The first was the so-called ice famine of 1890 during which local ponds failed to freeze. Finally, in March of that year with no prospects of producing ice locally, LeBaron, in conjunction with Robert H. White of the Brockton and Taunton Ice Companies, took a team of men and a railroad carload of lumber to Winchendon where they erected an ice house, and cut and stored an entire season's worth of ice which was shipped to the Middleborough depot as needed throughout the following summer. (Such "droughts" were a cause for common concern among ice dealers, so dependent were they upon the weather for their crop. In February, 1906, many local ice men were concerned about the prevailing warm weather. Fortunately for them, it broke, and they were able to harvest that winter).

Yet another setback for LeBaron was in August, 1900, when while constructing a new ice house at Clark's Springs, LeBaron and two other workers fell 25 feet when their staging collapsed, leaving LeBaron with "wounds on his arms and body and loosened teeth." Most seriously of all, however, was the disastrous fire of December 31, 1909, in which LeBaron lost all five of his Clark's Springs ice houses. Though the houses were empty at the time - the harvest had yet occurred - the loss was great. Undaunted by this setback, LeBaron rebuilt the business.

Following LeBaron's death in 1918, the business was operated by LeBaron's daughter, Hattie LeBaron, who upgraded the machinery, erected new houses and added the sale of fuel oil to the business in 1932. The company remained one of the two largest firms retailing ice in Middleborough (the other being the Ernest S. Pratt Company), and the quantity harvested by Miss LeBaron in 1930 - 3,000 tons - was an indication of how greatly the market for ice had increased over the preceding half century.

Miscellaneous Ice Companies

One of the means by which John B. LeBaron built his business was through the purchase of smaller ice firms in Middleborough like that of Charles C. Thomas. Several small firms operated at various times in Middleborough, taking advantage of the numerous ponds throughout the vicinity.

Another such dealer was John C. Chace, who in 1893, leased a piece of land and constructed an ice house on the upper pond at the back of the present Pratt Farm Conservation area on land then owned by the Weston family. The Chace business was sold successively to William Hayward of Halifax and then to LeBaron.

My grandfather Jim Maddigan later recalled the remnants of the Chace operation where “on the south side of the larger pond [at the Pratt Farm Conservation Area] there was an ice house, possibly erected and used in conjunction with the ice business of John C. Chace, a carpenter and builder, who leased the pond…. I can remember fishing in these ponds in the 1920s and at that time the ice house was old and weather-beaten to a point where it was unsafe to enter. Eventually it was blown down in a windstorm.” Likewise, Lyman Butler wrote in 1978 this same ice pond was used by Alcide and Edward Dubois who operated Dubois Brothers as a retail ice dealer for a short period from 1907 through 1920, probably having acquired it from LeBaron. In 1920, the pond and surrounding land was purchased by Ernest S. Pratt as it served as the headwaters of his own ice pond.

John McNally was another small ice dealer who sold ice at the turn of the last century. McNally in 1899 constructed an ice house at Clear Pond in Lakeville and harvested his ice there. Like many small-time ice dealers, McNally also retailed loam and gravel, and performed teaming work.

Later, in the 1920s, A. R. Salley and Scudder Brothers Coal Company also established short-lived ice operations.

Many local residents and businesses, however, saw no need of purchasing ice from these retail dealers as many were able to harvest enough of their own ice to supply their needs throughout the subsequent summer. Clifford R. Weld, W. F. Leland and Henry A. Wyman, owners of estates along Marion and Long Point Roads, had ice harvested for their own personal use and housed in private ice houses, while businesses such as the King Philip Tavern at Lakeville and Kinsman Brothers in Middleborough likewise secured their own supplies.

Ernest S. Pratt Company

Another noted Middleborough dealer in ice was Ernest S. Pratt (1885-1964). In December of 1908, the Ernest S. Pratt Company was formed to harvest and sell ice with Luther B. Pratt, Ernest S. Pratt and Henry E. Standish (Ernest Pratt’s father-in-law) as partners, and inauguration of the business was announced in the local newspaper the following month: “There is to be a new ice man in town next summer. Ernest S. Pratt is building an ice house near the Pratt homestead on East Main street, and will fill it with ice this winter.” In just a short period of time, the Pratt Company would become the leading competitor to the LeBaron Company in Middleborough.

To create an ice pond for the company, a concrete dam was constructed across Pratt’s Brook on the Pratt Farm and a sizable expanse of water impounded behind it on what had formerly been pasture. The springs which also fed this original ice pond were channeled by Ernest S. Pratt through subterranean clay pipes to ensure an unimpeded flow of pure spring water into the ice pond. The pipes used on the Pratt Farm, nearly an inch thick and measuring about a foot in diameter, were manufactured from vitrified clay with a salt glazing on both the interior and exterior to help protect the purity of the spring. Such pipes were favored in order not to contaminate water, as noted in 1881: “The use of earthen, glazed stone-ware pipe for aqueducts … is an excellent method to preserve the purity of the water.”

A large ice house was constructed on the edge of the pond in 1909 in order to house each winter’s harvest, and in 1911 when Arthur R. Coffin joined the company, an additional ice house was erected to facilitate the growth of the business. Paul Carter, a one-time employee of Pratt, later described the construction of the original 1909 ice house and the subsequent ones built near it. According to Carter, cedar posts were simply inserted upright into holes in the ground forming the perimeter of the ice house. Boards were then hung horizontally on opposite sides of the posts, forming an 18 inch deep hollow wall which was later filled with saw dust as insulation. “Then of course … a plate was put on top and the roof was put on… Rafters [were] put up and purlins every three feet… We used to use cedar shakes on the roof” which were produced on the farm. “It was a very simple structure,” concluded Carter. These ice houses were abandoned when a new ice house was constructed on Stony Brook, and were blown down during the 1944 hurricane.

A short time after 1911 the firm expanded by temporarily acquiring the ice harvesting privileges at Tispaquin Pond in Middleborough which were later held by A. R. Salley. Modern harvesting equipment including escalators, or conveyors, to haul the ice into the ice houses was also acquired. With the withdrawal of Coffin in April, 1915, and the deaths of Standish in 1926 and the elder Pratt in 1930, Ernest S. Pratt became the sole proprietor of the company.

Ice harvesting was a seasonal occupation, very much dependent upon the vagaries of nature. The harvest of 1928 was one example, with little ice being harvested prior to February. On St. Valentine’s Day, Pratt “secured some seven inches thick at Tispaquin Pond. It thawed so fast however that work was abandoned early in the afternoon, and the heavy rain [that] night put an end to operations for the present.” The local newspaper remained hopeful: “A March crop of ice is unusual but not impossible.”

The maintenance of pure water in the ice pond was critical to Pratt for the production of pure, clean ice, and one of the less savory tasks associated with maintaining pure clean ice was the trapping of animals, primarily muskrats, which might compromise the purity of each season’s harvest. Another issue, as related by Bob Hopkins, Paul Carter’s brother-in-law and also a former employee on the Pratt Farm, was the use of horses during the harvest, which might chose to relieve themselves on the ice. This reputedly irked Pratt who required his employees prevent the horses from heeding the call of nature. They remained at a loss as how to do so, and so did little, undoubtedly much to the annoyance of Pratt.

Despite these challenges, ice from the Pratt Farm was noted for its cleanliness and clarity, the Pratt Company’s advertising touting the fact that it was spring water ice, “harvested and delivered by modern and sanitary methods.” (The LeBaron Company, in 1930, was similarly advertising "safe ice").

In the 1930s, the growth of the Pratt Ice Company’s business as well as the physical deterioration of the existing ice houses on the farm warranted the creation of a new ice pond and the construction of a new ice house. The site chosen was located on Stony Brook on land adjoining the Pratt Farm which was acquired for the purpose in 1928. The entrance to these ice houses was about a quarter of a mile north of the Pratt House and barn, on the south side of East Main Street, though they could also be reached from the farm. The buildings were a little smaller than those at the farm, but the filling of the new ones was similar to the methods used at the older houses.

The first operation in preparing the Stony Brook site for the new pond and ice house was the clearing of the trees and brush from an area of about three acres around the confluence of Stony and Morey Brooks which formed the water source for the new pond. The location selected was ideal as it was surrounded by high ground on three sides, and a narrow space between the hills where the Stony Brook had its outlet, making a choice spot to build the dam. There was an opening left in the dam where planks could be lowered to control the level of the pond. The surrounding hills would also prove beneficial in limiting the exposure of the pond to the elements, thereby encouraging the quicker formation of ice upon the pond.

At the time, the so-called “large ice house” which measured 80 by 32 feet and stood on the bluff overlooking the ice pond below, with doors opening to the pond and Stony Brook Road, was constructed. A wall divided the house in half lengthwise, creating two large spaces. Because of this arrangement, it is frequently stated that Pratt had two houses here though in fact it was one large house. A wooden conveyor resting upon concrete footings ran perpendicular to the house and lifted the cakes of ice from the pond below into the house.

The late Lyman Butler recalled working in these new ice houses following World War II when he would occasionally help with the ice harvest, along with Arthur Wright.

Arthur and I were asked to work in the house, packing the cakes in neat lines, keeping a space between each row for air to circulate. Art and another man would most often be the pivot men and when the cake came off the chute they would take a pike and shove the cake to whoever the stacker was. I got the job more often as I was not quite as rugged. The ice cake would be sent sliding over the rows to the spot where it was to be placed. Then I would spin it with my pike to where it belonged. A pinch bar would be used to perfectly place the cake so the rows would be so as to look down through the bottom.

We would swap off jobs once in a while to give one another a break. Ralph Creamer was one of our gang nearly all the time we helped out there. We would get a bit behind at times and have to call out to stop the cakes coming in to us. Generally, two houses would be used at a time so operations would not be stopped.

This was real rugged work and we slept well after a day’s work. Inside the house it was quite a bit warmer than outside and we worked in our shirt sleeves much of the time. Ralph would sometimes bring in a bottle of wine in the afternoon and we would have a little nip which warmed us up inside. One day Ralph took a bit too much and got kind of unsure of his footing so when he was not looking we, I won’t say I, got the bottle and hid it until after work as we did not want him to slip and break a leg or something. He knew someone hid it and every minute he had a chance he looked everywhere but didn’t find it. After work we gave it back to him. We knew Ernest would not approve of anyone imbibing even a little wine while at work. I guess that some of the workmen on the pond had a nip now and again to fight off the cold.

Though some had creepers on the ice there was one fellow had a bottle in his hip pocket and he slipped and sat down on it. Needless to say the bottle broke but no blood ran, just the contents of the bottle. One man slipped and went in the water one day I was there and he went up to my house to dry out. I got him some dry clothes and he left his to dry. There were many such incidents happened over the time we worked for Ernest and the nearest thing to swearing he said was, “Gol dum it.”

Bob Hopkins also worked during these years harvesting ice for Pratt, recalling ice harvests that occupied about a dozen men, the process taking a couple of months for the houses to fill. Hopkins enjoyed the ice harvest, and like Butler recalled incidences of workers falling into the pond. Hopkins remembered “Pop” Gates falling in, going home to change his clothes and returning undaunted to resume work on the ice.

As electric and gas refrigerators gained in popularity, they were added to Pratt's stock, including so-called “coolerators.” Eventually, the New England winters began to get milder and it was difficult to harvest any appreciable quantity of ice. As early as 1931, harvests became noticeably smaller and the harvests of 1931-32 and 1932-33 were relatively dismal, prompting enthusiasm for the subsequent year’s crop.

For the past two days [January 3 and 4, 1934] the ice ponds of Ernest S. Pratt on East Main street have been the scene of bustling activities in the harvest of the first real good ice in three years and Mr. Pratt has employed 50 men in cutting and storing some fine clear nine and ten inch ice. The gang was in full swing Thursday when 1100 tons of this summer commodity were stored with a total of 1900 tons up to this morning. The men employed were taken from the unemployment list so that in addition to Mr. Pratt being able to get a very fine harvest he has made it possible to employ these men and put so much more money in circulation in town.
With a depreciable decline in the amount of ice able to be harvested annually and the increasing prevalence of electric refrigerators, Pratt’s business began to taper off during the early 1940s. Additionally, mechanically-produced ice began to replace natural ice during this period.

Though Pratt gave up ice harvesting in 1949, with Pratt supplying customers with ice purchased from a freezer plant at Taunton and stored in the ice houses here, as well as the small building near the farm office. Ultimately, Pratt retired from the ice business in 1954.

Shortly after the ice business was discontinued in 1954, the large ice house (or the “new ice house”, as it was commonly called) located on Pratt’s Brook burned to the ground September 12, 1954. “Sawdust insulation in the walls of the building fed the flames which soared upward and lit up the night with a bright orange radiance.” No attempt was made to save the building as the fire had progressed too far, and efforts were devoted, instead, to containing the flames. Wrote Lyman Butler: “… at the time the fire bug was so active in town, one night the ice houses down back of my house were torched and I was warned by telephone that there was a big fire nearby. There sure was and the two houses made a spectacular blaze and firemen kept engines nearby to keep embers from the fire from starting a fire on the dwellings nearby.”

The Ice Harvest

Like LeBaron, Pratt initially harvested his ice with a team of horses which plowed, scraped, and marked the ice, before a seasonal gang of men cut it with large handsaws.

The object of each year's ice harvest was clear, thick ice. Once frozen, the ice would be checked for thickness by boring holes with two inch augers. As it was necessary for the ice to be able to support the weight of the horses required in the harvest, the ice would not be cut until it reached, on avereage, a thickness of fifteen inches. There were occasions, though very rare, when horse, man and marker fell through the ice when the driver became careless and entered a section with underlying springs that kept the ice thin in that area.

If there were snow on the ice pond, the first operation was to clear the area about the ice houses and conveyors. Next came the main ice pond. The ice would be plowed by wide wooden-bladed horse-drawn scrapers, and the accumulated snow dumped by the side of the pond. Holes might also be drilled through the ice to allows water to rise through and absorb any remaining snow. “This would be considered ‘snow ice’”, Rose Standish Pratt later explained. “It was just as cold but did not look so clear.”

Next came the marking of the ice in order to provide uniformly sized sections measuring 22 by 44 inches. The pond was "lined," whereby a line was established between two points and the pond marked with grooves running both parallel and perpendicular to this sited line. Horses drew the guides and markers which created a cross-hatch of two-inch deep grooves.
This was later accomplished with the use of a saw rig powered by a small gasoline engine and drawn by a horse.

During extremely cold weather, these grooves would be filled with ice chips in order to prevent water from channelling into them and refreezing.

A horse-drawn snow-ice plane would scrape away any residual porous snow before the men cut along the established grooves with great one-handled large-toothed saws. The long handled saws, similar to the one-man cross-cut saws used in the woods, cut through the remaining four or five inches left after marking. In time, these handsaws were replaced with power equipment, Pratt introducing a gasoline-powered field saw during the 1922-23 season, which “greatly facilitated the harvesting of the crop.”

The ice would be cut into rafts generally consisting of several cakes each weighing approximately 200 pounds. These cut sections were pulled along on the open water created by the previous cutting by men with long pikes, and maneuvered to the bottom of the conveyor. At the conveyor, a workman on a suspended platform, many times with cold feet, used what was called a needle bar or ice chisel to break apart the cakes of ice along the score marks. These smaller cakes were then fed one by one onto the conveyor and started on their way up the long ramp to chutes that carried them into the ice houses. The conveyor consisted on an endless chain with wooden cross bars spaced about four feet apart and was powered by a gasoline motor through a network of reduction gears.

The coldest of any job was this role as switcher as the man generally stood in one location all day with very little exercise except directing the blocks of ice into each house.

There were three to four levels in the ice houses at which the cakes could be deposited from the conveyor onto slides that ran the entire length of the houses, each house containing smaller sections of slide which could be joined together by hand and used to carry the ice to different areas inside. A heavy curved steel diverter on the outside rails could be dropped into place at each of the ice houses at each level. As the ice came down the runways, sometimes quite rapidly, especially on the steeper sections of the chute, the cakes would be hooked with a long-handled pike and swung into position. This was a tricky operation and required the wearing of spiked shoes to prevent workmen from being dragged along behind the ice. An entire layer of ice was laid down before the second layer or floor was commenced.

When the first house was filled to the level of the lower exterior rails, the second level interior rails were set in place at the second exterior level and the filling and storing operation repeated. This procedure was followed for each house.

The top four layers of each stack would be placed in the opposite direction as the piles underneath in order to “bind” the stack. The stack was then covered with marsh hay as insulation. Following warm weather, the marsh grass and top layer of hay would become a sodden semi-frozen mess and it frequently was necessary to chip it away to access the blocks of ice below. The walls and roof of the ice house would be insulated with sawdust from local sawmills, as well as hay. Once filled, the ice house would be boarded and sealed until summer. The ice kept throughout the season, with shrinkage seldomly exceeding one foot throughout the course of the year.

Illustrations:

East Grove Street Pumping Station and LeBaron Ice Houses, photograph, c. 1900

While the subject of this photograph was intended to be the East Grove Street Pumping Station of the Middlbeough waterworks, the LeBaron icehouses at Clark's Springs are clearly visible on the far side of the Nemasket River just behind the utility pole at the center of the photograph.

John C. Chace advertisement, from Resident and Business Directory of Middleboro and Lakeville, Mass. for 1895 (Needham, MA: A. E. Foss & Co., 1895), p. 6.

John McNally advertisement, from Resident and Business Directory of Middleboro and Lakeville, Mass. 1904-5. (Boston, MA: Edward A. Jones, 1905), p. 22.

Ernest S. Pratt Company Ice House, East Main Street, Middleborough, MA, photograph by Rose Standish Pratt, c. 1914

Built in 1909, the large ice house and a second which was constructed in 1911 served the Pratt Company through the late 1920s when they were superseded by a new icehouse on Stony Brook. This icehouse blew down during a hurricane in 1944.

Ernest S. Pratt Company advertisement from Middleboro and Carver, Massachusetts Directory 1934 (North Hampton, NH: Crosby Publishing Co., Inc., 1934), p. 6.

Marking the Ice, Pratt Farm, East Main Street, Middleborough, MA, photograph by Rose Standish Pratt, early 20th century

The horse, protected against the cold with its woolen blanket, draws the narrow steel marker which lines the ice preparatory to cutting. The resulting evenly-spaced grid is apparent in the foreground.

Ernest S. Pratt with Power Saw, Pratt Farm, East Main Street, Middleborough, MA, photograph by Rose Standish Pratt, 1923
In 1923, Pratt added this gasoline-powered saw to his ice-harvesting eqipment which drastically reduced the effort needed to cut the ice, a task previously performed by hand.

Harvesting Ice, Pratt Farm, East Main Street, Middleborough, photograph by Rose Standish Pratt, early 20th century

The workman at the left is responsible for directing the cakes of ice into the conveyor. In the foreground is the debris left from clearing the ice at the base of the conveyor, as well as undersized and broken cakes.

Conveyor, Pratt Farm Icehouse, East Main Street, Middleborough, photograph by Rose Standish Pratt, early 20th century

Sources:

James F. Maddigan, Jr., notes

Middleboro Gazette

Old Colony Memorial

Hill Top Farm

In June, 1901, the original Cape-style farmhouse at Hill Top Farm on Highland Road in Lakeville was burned down as reported by the Plymouth Old Colony Memorial at the time:

Morgan Rotch's country seat at Lakeville, "Hilltop," was burned early one morning recently. A Portuguese farm hand who slept in the barn discovered fire in that building and had barely time to get himself and the horses out, getting burned somewhat while doing so. A little of the furniture was saved from the house. Mr. Rotch is abroad.

Following the fire, a new large house (pictured above in the process of construction) was erected at the bottom of the hill near the shore of Long Pond.

The History of Hill Top Farm in the Words of Lydia Rotch, a new booklet in the historical series published by Preserve Our Lakeville Landmarks, is a continuation of the story of this house, its surrounding property and the family which occupied it as as told by Rotch's grand-daughter Lydia (1910-2005).

Owned since 1889 by the Rotch family of New Bedford which had been instrumental in that city's economic and political growth, Hill Top Farm was the family's summer retreat and was established during the era when the regions surrounding the Middleborough and Lakeville ponds were developed as summer estates by regionally prominent individuals. Occupying the crest of what was once known as Shockley Hill, and sloping eastwards down to the shore of Long Pond, Hill Top Farm was originally operated as a stock farm by Morgan Rotch where dairy cattle and trotting horses were raised. In 1910, the property was inherited by Miss Rotch's father, Boston landscape architect Arthur Grinnell Rotch, who made numerous improvements about the property and continued to spend summers for the remainder of his life there.

Miss Rotch recounts the evolution of the property from 1889 through 2005 and considers its role as both a working farm and a summer retreat for the family. Throughout, the history is illustrated with snapshots from her private collection, depicting both the family at play as well as the buildings and grounds.

In 2006, the 90 acre property was left to the Trustees of Reservations through the generosity of Miss Rotch.

The History of Hill Top Farm in the Words of Lydia Rotch is published by Preserve Our Lakeville Landmarks and is available at the Lakeville Town Clerk's office for $5. P. O. L. L.'s earlier booklets (listed in the right sidebar here) are also available for purchase.

Illustration:
"A Summer Cottage Being Built on the Shore of Long Pond in Lakeville by Morgan Rotch 1902", photograph by George Dorr of Middleborough, 1902

Sources:
Lydia Rotch. The Lakeville Historical Tour Committee Presents the History of Hill Top Farm in the Words of Lydia Rotch. Lakeville, MA: Preserve Our Lakeville Landmarks, 2009.

Old Colony Memorial, "News Notes", June 29, 1901, page 3.

Nemasket's Largest Cornfield, 1878

The biggest cornfield in Plymouth County is on the old Camp Joe Hooker field, at Lakeville, known as the Basset farm. It comprises thirty-seven acres, and the yield promises to be an exceptionally large one.

The fields on the farm stretched from Main Street nearly all the way to Lake Assawompsett along what is now Staples Shore Road.

Illustration:
"Corn - Early Golden", Aggeler & Musser Seed Company, Los Angeles, California, seed packet, early 20th century.

Source:
Old Colony Memorial, "County and Elsewhere", August 22, 1878, p. 5.