The following is a guest post by Kate Phillips, Reference Librarian, Prints & Photographs Division.
Last week, as we melted amidst a record-breaking heatwave, we brought you a sampling of ice cream cones to whet your palate and cool you down. This week, we continue on the theme of frozen treats beginning in an unlikely place—this portrait:
Ice cream history can come to us in unexpected places, including an album of cartes de visite (small nineteenth-century photographs—usually portraits—mounted on card stock) once owned by abolitionist and educator Emily Howland. Here we see Nancy Maria Donaldson Johnson of Philadelphia, who, on September 9, 1843, was awarded the nation’s first patent for a hand-cranked ice cream maker. Like Howland, Johnson was also an abolitionist and teacher of formerly enslaved people.
After Johnson introduced the idea of the hand-cranked freezer to an American market, variations on the machine proliferated. The 1889 example below comes from the Library’s collection of trademark registrations.
These small machines allowed families to enjoy the pleasure of ice cream at home. Below, the trademark registration for Shepard’s Lightning Freezer boasts the easiest path to the smoothest, lightest frozen cream, promising users that “fingers cannot be caught or pinched.” Even the family dog will delight in this freezer’s products.
These New Mexican farmers are preparing for an ice cream party—quite a to-do in a desert town without readily available ice.
Below, they serve themselves and their wives ice cream from the barrel of the machine.
Finally, a community member enjoys a quiet moment to herself eating ice cream straight from the dasher, the center piece of the machine which is turned by the crank.
Personally, I utilize a handy attachment to my electric stand mixer to make ice cream at home from time to time—perhaps less satisfying than a hand crank, but certainly easier. Have you tried making ice cream at home? What technique do you use? Let us know in the comments!
Learn more:
- Missed last week’s ice cream post? Read One Scoop or Two? Ice Cream Cones for Summer Relief.
- Read more about Nancy Maria Donaldson Johnson and view her patent in this post from the Inside Adams: Science, Technology & Business blog.