By Laura Fitzgerald

In the 1800s and early 1900s, Port Huron was home to a booming ice industry. Dozens of ice houses lined the Black River. Teams of horse-drawn plows and men wielding pickaxes and other tools descended on Blue Water Area waterways each winter to carve huge blocks of ice. This ice was distributed locally and around the country as one of the largest industries of its time.

Mickey and Agnes Knowlton preserved that history for future generations to enjoy through an extensive collection of artifacts from their own ice company and the ice industry before modern refrigeration.

This story provides a better idea of what the process was and what tools were used to actually harvest ice and which tools are part of the Knowlton Ice Museum collection.

An Ice Harvester’s Toolbox

To harvest the ice, workers first measured out blocks, or “cakes”. Then, workers cut the ice using manual, horse-drawn, or later motorized plows. The cakes were pulled apart using long-handled picks, pry bars and chisels, said Knowlton Museum Inventory Project Co-Lead Shelly David.

The ice harvester had many specialized tools in his toolbox, including saws, pike poles, measuring rods, ice hooks and ice augers. Workers and horses wore special shoes with spikes on the bottom – the human version of the shoe was called a creeper – to gain traction on the ice.

Once the ice was cut, pike poles or wagons guided cakes to a harvesting area and then to the insulated ice house. From there, the cakes were broken down into smaller blocks to be delivered to households via delivery wagons and vehicles.

A variety of tongs were used to deliver ice, including double-handled, single-handled and market style. Small serving tongs were used at home and ice companies used handheld ice pics were used for promotional items.

Delivery men knew how much ice to deliver to each house using ice delivery cards, which homeowners placed in their windows. The Knowlton collection includes, nearly 600 handheld ice picks, a large collection of ice delivery cards and more than 300 tongs in a variety of styles, David said.

Technological Advances Revolutionize the Ice Harvesting and Delivery Processes

In the early 1900s, motorized plows replaced plows that were operated manually or by horses. The Knowlton collection contains 44 ice plows, ranging from the manual single- and double-handed plows to the more advanced motorized plows.

Wagons were also replaced with gas-powered trucks for ice delivery. Originally ice was delivered and stored in ice boxes – the collection has more than 40 – until electric refrigerators replaced them.

The Knowlton collection contains an estimated 10,000 ice, dairy and Blue Water Area historical artifacts, more than 5,000 of which are related to the ice industry. These artifacts range from 1875 to the Knowlton’s Party Time Ice Co. and modern artificial ice manufacturing, David said.

More about Mickey and Agnes Knowlton

Mickey Knowlton, a Port Huron-area lifelong resident with his wife, Agnes Knowlton, first launched a successful dairy delivery business following WWII and into the 1950s. He turned to a new business venture once large supermarkets started taking over the dairy delivery business and founded Party Time Ice Co. in 1987.

He manufactured and hand-scooped ice into small paper bags using the machines in his garage that once held milk.

With the help of the Knowlton’s son, Chuck, Party Time grew to become the largest manufacturer and distributor of ice in the state, producing thousands of tons of ice per day. The company was sold to Arctic Glacier in 2004, when Mickey was 85 years old.

Mickey and Agnes passed away at the ages of 94 and 93, respectively, in July 2014. They enjoyed 72 years of marriage before their deaths only 16 days apart.

Preserving the Knowlton’s Legacy

Throughout his career, Mickey collected a vast trove of artifacts. His collection moved from his office to a property near the Party Time plant on Yeager Street, where he opened the first Knowlton Ice Museum of North America in 1987, said Knowlton Museum Inventory Project Co-Lead Emily Reitzel.

The Knowlton Museum moved to their current location in downtown Port Huron in 2000, continuing to purchase artifacts online to add to their already impressive collection that filled nearly 10,000 square feet of exhibit space. 

The Community Foundation is proud to help the Knowlton family preserve these treasures and periodically bring them out for the public to enjoy as much as Mickey and Agnes did at the Knowlton Museum. While the collection is currently in storage, we look forward to bringing you another story about unique collection items you’ll see come out again.

Reitzel and David received master’s degrees in Library and Information Science from Wayne State University. This is where they learned how to describe, research and preserve historical objects, papers, and photographs for display in museums and libraries. They led the inventory of the entire Knowlton Museum collection.

Learn more about the Knowlton Museum here.