Ice Cream industry begins

1851

Categories: American Innovation, Other
Tags: 1817 – 1860, Baltimore City

C. Jacob Fussell (1819-1912), looking for ways to sell the extra cream in his growing dairy business, starts producing ice cream in Pennsylvania. A born entrepreneur, by 1852 he grows his business by selling ice cream in Baltimore.

Before and during the Civil War, Fussell opens branches in Washington, DC, Boston and New York City, selling ice cream to hotels for a dollar a gallon. Upon his death in 1912, the Fussell ice cream empire is producing 30 million gallons of ice cream a year.

Jacob Fussell is also a Quaker and a committed abolitionist, participating in the Underground Railroad and attending the first Republican Convention in Philadelphia as secretary in 1856.

In 1951, Governor Theodore McKeldin celebrates the centennial of Jacob Fussell’s creation of the ice cream industry and proclaims June 15 National Ice Cream Day.

For More Information

Baltimore Museum of Industry

View Other Mosaic Pieces

Enoch Pratt Free Library opens

In 1886 the Pratt Library is the first public library to open for all “without distinction of race or color”. The Pratt inspires the nationwide Carnegie Library system.

Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison begins his career in Baltimore

William Lloyd Garrison begins his abolitionist career, writing and coediting the newspaper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore in 1829. He is the most famous white American to devote his life to freeing the slaves. Photo shows Garrison (center) with two other abolitionists, Wendell Phillips and Englishman George Thompson.

First use of genetic genealogy at Catoctin Furnace

The first use of DNA links 27 Black workers buried in the local cemetery of the Catoctin Furnace (c1800) and reveals links to nearly 42,000 living relatives, and traces the enslaved back to their African origins.