Sometime between 1800 and the 1840s, the ice industry began in New England (Rees, 2013, p. 11). The first icebox patent was issued in 1803, but ice was not widely used for refrigerating foods in the U.S. before 1830 because ice was hard to obtain and expensive. After 1827 the ice cutter and a new icehouse design, which reduced melting, helped lower the cost of ice (Strasser, 1983, p. 8, 19). By the 1830s, well-packed New England ice was regularly shipped all the way to India and other parts of the world (Rees, 2013, p. 5).
In Walden, Henry David Thoreau (1854) described the work of ice harvesters in the late 1840s at Walden Pond in Massachusetts. By the 1850s, ice harvesters around the world used the same methods as New Englanders. Workers marked out a grid on the ice to guide the saws, and a horse-driven plow cut furrows. Then, workers used ice chips to prevent the grooves between partially cut blocks from filling with water and freezing shut. They used a long ice saw or bar chisel to break off blocks of ice. Ice would remain in icehouses near the shore until shipment (Rees, 2013, pp. 11-30). Hotels, taverns, and hospitals used ice on a limited basis. An 1844 advice manual for housekeepers advised women to pack meat in snow to keep it frozen. Another manual from 1846 described how to convert a barrel into an icebox. In 1869, refrigerators were still rare but, with innovations, the number of homes with iceboxes increased in the 1870s and 1880s (Strasser, 1983, p. 20). From 1860 to 1890, refrigerators were generally ice chests. In these iceboxes, a piece of ice was put on the top shelf to cool the lower shelves (Rubin, 1998, p. 48). Thomas Moore patented an oval cedar tub with an inner sheet metal butter-container that could be surrounded on four sides by ice. A rabbit skin lined cloth was used as an insulated cover. He also developed an insulated box with a 6-cubic foot storage space and an ice container on the lid (Anderson, 1953, p. 8). The note shown at the bottom of this page, dated June 21, 1802, is from Thomas Moore to President Thomas Jefferson, describing the design of the "refrigeratory." Later, the Davis refrigerator, patented in 1868, was an insulated, zinc lined box with a receptacle for ice at one side; Davis designed refrigeration for train cars. The Cold-Blast refrigerator, patented in 1881, used air circulation (Anderson, 1953, p. 44).
Photos on this page show ice harvesting in Minnesota in the 1800s and are from the The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. Minnesota ice harvest. Retrieved on June 22, 2017 from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-90e4-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
Thomas Moore to Thomas Jefferson (1802, June 21). Letter. Thomas Jefferson Papers 1606-1827. Library of Congress. Retrieved on June 23, 2017 from http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mtj/mtj1/026/0600/0646.jpg