keeping things cold
For over 100 years, from the 1820’s onward, an important Hallowell industry was cutting ice blocks from the area lakes and river. The blocks were stored in huge warehouses, packed in sawdust and then shipped by schooners down the coast and as far as the Caribbean and Cuba.
At the peak over 9000 people and 300 horses were employed in the cutting and storing ice. One account tells of 1000 schooners being on the river shipping ice to southern climes over just one ice cutting season.
Arthur Moore, Jr., a Hallowell resident who died in 2018 at 94, remembered cutting ice in the 1930’s for storage in the huge Moore ice house on Summer Street. His great-grandfather had started the Moore ice business in 1867.
description of ice cutting
Excerpt from Historic Hallowell on Maine Memory Network.
“The ice was cut by hand. After the snow was scraped from the area, the ice was plowed out. The ice plow was a weighted, horse-drawn machine with a row of sharp teeth which cut a narrow furrow six or seven inches deep. A marker scratched a line for the next cut. The plow was run one way over an area and then over the other at right angles, plowing out a checkerboard pattern.
The common size of the ice cakes were twenty two inches by twelve inches and weighed about a hundred pounds. Sometimes the cakes were broken apart.
Men would guide blocks of ice towards the conveyor belt that lifted the ice into the ice houses for shipping later. The workers used splitting forks and pick poles to line up the blocks that were lifted by the steam hoist. Byron Weston’s ox team (picture shown below) was first used to haul blocks of ice from Cascade Pond to the Arthur Moore ice house between Middle and Summer Street. Later, gasoline powered trucks were used until the ice harvesting operation closed down around 1950.”
a life on the river
Arthur Moore Jr. a lifelong Hallowell resident who died in 2018 at age 94 was a direct descendant of the midwife, healer Martha Moore Ballard, as well as, Deacon Pease Clark, the first settler of Hallowell, in 1762.
Moore began working at the family ice cutting business in the 1930’s His great-grandfather William Moore II had started the ice company in 1867.
Moore attended the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at King’s Point, Long Island, N.Y., graduating in February, 1944. During WWII he served on various merchant ships as a Deck Cadet, Third Officer and Second Officer in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea and South Pacific war zones. Following the war, he worked on various freighters and tankers.
excerpt from obituary on legacy.com
I find it fitting that the last person to pilot a real ship up the Kennebec to Hallowell was Captain Moore, who was a direct descendant of the first settlers who arrived by the same river route.
artist, Chris Cart
Kennebec pilot
Capt. Moore held an Unlimited Master of Ocean’s License issued by the U.S. Coast Guard in Boston, and later added 42 First Class Pilotage Endorsements for various harbors and rivers between the Kennebec River and Washington D.C. He was most proud of his license for the Kennebec River from its entrance to Augusta, which he obtained in November, 1949.
In 1954, he took over the Kennebec River pilotage operating tankers, tugs and barges delivering oil, grain and coal to Hallowell, Farmingdale and South Gardiner. Capt. Moore piloted the last tanker up the Kennebec River to Hallowell in May, 1966.
excerpt from obituary on legacy.com
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