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The Ice Trade in the 19th Century
Sometimes, I link to posts from this blog in my monthly newsletter. And sometimes, I take blurbs from the newsletter and expand them into a full post. This is one of the latter. In my July 1 newsletter, I described the beginnings of refrigeration in the 1870s. Prior to the 1870s, most people could only keep their food cold by storing it in an underground cellar or in an ice box. Cellars didn’t…
Imagine a time when the Ice Man delivered cool relief on hot days, carrying massive 25 lb blocks of ice through the streets of Houston, Texa
Iceman and helper with Jamaica Pond Ice Co. wagon, Boston, Massachusetts (1890's)
ICE Trade Capture SDK is Now Certified with Latest Generation OnixS .NET Core FIX Engine
In the mid-19th century, across the Northeast of the United States, workers would cut ice from frozen ponds, haul it to port and ice houses, put it on a ship and send it around the world as part of the ice trade for refrigeration.
The ice was cleared off snow and debris then the surface was scored with horse driven ice plows to create a grid of squares. Giant handsaws and ice pikes were then used to break up the squares of ice.
More here and here
Ice-harvesting in Kansas following the end of the commercial trade, c.1935
So, as I am writing an outline for my research, this is what the interwebz spit back at me. Thought it was worth sharing.
Moving along.
This may have been the most hectic weekend of my life as I volunteered to participate in the Fall Workshop. Great experience overall, considering that I got to play with ridiculously awesome (read: Expansive) DSLR equipment and received pointers from some incredible people (NPR, Washington Post), but my research has hit a bit of a lull as a consequence.
I just got out of our database research session which was quite helpful, but as far as the actual research done, I am where I was the first week of October. Naturally as any researcher would, I'm beginning to worry that my topic might be lacking in primary sources. Well actually let me rephrase that, I'm sure that these sources are out there, but it is just a matter of finding them. This is where I need to start playing the game of "Outsmart Your Search Engine."
Let me elaborate. Since Syracuse is so wonderful and has all this money, we as students get access to all the prime research databases we could think of. Everything from JSTOR to WorldCat at our fingertips. But the thing about these databases is that, unlike Amazon or Facebook that outsmart you into knowing what you want before you even have a chance to think about it, they require a lot more thought and specification. The thing about specification, is that unlike in google, with research databases you can't just search a sentence and get the exact answer that you were looking for. And yes I know, to most of you this seems like a redundant and stupid clarification, but hear me out, cause its not all that easy.
When researching it is a good idea to have a list of keywords that directly and tangentially relate to what you are looking for. Now being that I am focusing on a commodity i.e. ice, it is a good idea for me to find out all the different ways that they used to refer to ice in the good old days. --> fast forward to the future.
So after a bit of brain storming, the list I have going is as follows: Frozen Water, ice harvesting, ice houses, ice cream, Massachusetts (cause that is our prime location) and ice in literature. (I'll explain this one some other time.)
So once you have your key terms all laid out, it is about going through the database and plugging them all in to see what goodies you can find. Most likely, being that I'm looking into the ice trade, Ben and Jerry's anthology will be your my first hit. This is where outsmarting the technology comes in. Make sure you know your database, most likely than not, if it is a good database, you will be able to narrow down your search according to some parameters, like excluding all results that have anything to do with ice cream/Ben and Jerry's. You can also narrow the search down to selecting archive material, then going even further you can narrow it down by date.
Primary sources are the trickiest thing to nail down. It is all about looking at something that seems mundane to you and teasing out the details behind the objects, ideas and statements. This is where I leave you now. Assignment for me to have ready by next week: PRIMARY SOURCES.
