I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream

Summertime and the living is easy. One of the simplest joys on a hot summer day is a dish or scoop of ice cream.

In Eric Wittenberg’s latest book, The Johnson-Gilmore Cavalry Raid Around Baltimore, July 10-14, 1864, the noted cavalry historian writes about an unique experience for the Confederate cavalry passing by Ownings’ Mill, Maryland.

The town of Owings Mill is located northeast of Baltimore. In Revolutionary War days, Samuel Owing Jr. owned three mills in Baltimore County and built a family manor named Ulm, around which the town of Owings Mill developed. He eventually sold Ulm and a mill to Milton Painter.[i]

Milton Painter, besides his mill, was known for making ice cream. He had been taught this mass production process from Jacob Fussell, a milkman originally from Seven Valley, Pennsylvania, who moved to Baltimore in 1854 and operated the first mechanized ice cream factory. Baltimore is considered the birthplace of American ice cream and Fussell the father of American Ice Cream Industry. Fussell was very generous with his knowledge and shared the process with many, including Milton Painter.[ii]

In mid-July, 1864, Brig. Gen. Bradley T. Johnson, a native Marylander, was sent by Maj. Gen. Jubal Early to liberate the 15,000 Confederate prisoners incarcerated at Point Lookout prison at the southernmost tip of the confluence of the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. His cavalry column of 1500 men had been marching east through the heat and dust under the July sun when they approached Painter’s ice cream factory. Painter’s workers were loading a train car with the frozen treat to be shipped to Baltimore.

“As rations were scare and issued with great irregularity, the ice cream was confiscated and issued to the troops,” recalled Johnson.[iii]

Johnson’s adjutant, Capt. George W. Booth, was amazed at the sight and remembered:

“It was a most ludicrous sight to see the ice cream dished out into all conceivable receptacles, and the whole brigade engaged in feasting on this, to many, a novel luxury as the column moved along. The men carried it in hats, rubber blankets, in buckets and old tin cans – in fact, anything that would hold the cream was utilized. No spoons were at hand, but as fingers and hands were made before spoons, the natural and primary organs were brought into play. A number of the men from southwest Virginia were not familiar with this delicious food, but were not slow in becoming acquainted with its enticing properties and expressing themselves as being very much satisfied with the “frozen vittles” as they termed it.”[iv]

One cavalryman and his friends took a ten-gallon freezer of ice cream and were seen sharing an ice cream breakfast. Other soldiers called the ice cream “frozen mush.” Others found the confection too cold and put it in their canteens to melt. As Eric Wittenberg mused: “One can only imagine the expressions on the faces of these cavalrymen as they experienced ‘brain freeze’ for the first time.”[v]

There must have been many smiling faces in Johnson’s Confederate ranks as the horsemen left the Painter ice cream factory and resumed their dusty march east on that hot July day in 1864.

[i]https://www.baltimoremagazine.com/section/homegarden/revisionist-history/  Revisionist History – Baltimore Magazine

[ii] https://preservationmaryland.org/history-of-ice-cream-in-baltimore-maryland/#:~:text=Some%20of%20that%20ice%20cream,of%20the%20Ice%20Cream%20Industry.  Historic Foodways: Making Ice Cream in Maryland – Preservation Maryland  ww.icecreamhistory.net

[iii] Wittenberg, Eric J., The Johnson-Gilmore Cavalry Raid Around Baltimore, July 10-13, 1864, El Dorado Hills, California, Savas Beatie, 2025, pp. 74-75. Johnson, Bradley T., “My Ride Around Baltimore in Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Four,” Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 30, Richmond, Va., Southern Historical Society, 1902, pp. 220.

[iv] Wittenberg, Johnson-Gilmore Cavalry Raid, p. 74. Booth, George W., Personal Reminiscences of a Maryland Soldier in the War Between the States, 1861-1865, Baltimore, Md., Fleet. McGinley & Co., 1898, p.124

[v] Wittenberg, Johnson-Gilmore Cavalry Raid, p. 74.

Note from the author: Ice cream or a similar frozen treat can be traced as far back as ancient Persia, Rome and China. The French and Italians in the 17^th century had recipes for ice cream. Due to intense personal labor and lack of modern refrigeration, ice cream for years was a treat for the elite. It was enjoyed by such American luminaries as Benjamin Franklin and George Washington who spent $200 on ice cream ($3000 in today’s prices) and had in his kitchen 10 ice cream pots, Thomas Jefferson had his own recipe for his favorite flavor ice cream – vanilla – and Dolly Madison served ice cream at her husband’s, James Madison’s, presidential inauguration.  https:// www.icecreamhistory.net .  “The History of Ice Cream” the International Dairy Foods Association https://www.idfa.org.