As we make our way through the oppressive heat of July, we’ve been examining the old ice dealers of Cecil County. As a result of our earlier posts on this subject, a reader asked about how Howard’s Pond on East Main Street at the Big Elk Creek got its name.
Here’s a little more information on this.
Jacob A. Howard decided to build an ice pond on his meadow at the east end of town in 1867 and the project was completed that December. While the principal purpose was to provide an annual supply of ice, the pond also made a fine skating park, providing a “long-needed place of amusement for the young folks in winter,” the Whig reported.
Over the next few months, he filled his ice house so that when the season of “annual scarcity arrived,” Elkton was well supplied with the sought-after commodity. When the harvest wasn’t underway, it could be used for skating. “The juveniles have been looking over the banks of the new park with wistful eyes on the broadsheet of glassy ice and hope Mr. Howard gets that ice house filled when the embargo on their skating upon it would be removed,“ the paper observed that winter.
At the time of Jacob’s death in February 1901, the Whig noted: “Mr. Howard was extensively engaged in the ice business in Elkton and only five days before his death had finished filling his large ice house at the east end of town.”
After he passed, Harry George and Andrew Rambo purchased the ice business from his widow, the Whig reported on Nov. 8, 1902. In 1911, it was reported that Andrew Rambo sold his ice supply business to Henry H. Mitchell (Cecil Whig, Jan 28, 1911)
Much later in the 20th century, the Town of Elkton acquired Howard’s Pond. Then in the decades after World War II, it was used for ice skating in the winter.
(Source: photo Rodney Frazer Collection at the Historial Society of Cecil County)