The 19th-Century Origins of Ice Cream Socials

There’s nothing quite like a scoop of ice cream on a hot summer’s day. Starting in the mid-19th century, groups began organizing “ice cream socials” throughout the country. With ties to the Civil War, temperance and the Fourth of July, ice cream socials were more than fundraisers or church picnics—they were community-building events. 

The idea of the ice cream social emerged in the late-18th and early-19th centuries from the trend of upper-class people serving the frozen dessert at their dinner parties, says Sarah Wassberg Johnson, a food historian. Ice cream was more than a food at these social gatherings: it was a spectacle. The frozen treats were served to guests in an array of fanciful shapes—from vegetables and stockings to elephants and historical figures—created in metal molds. At that time, ice itself was a commodity, only available to those who could afford it: “wealthy individuals in northern climates who were able to harvest and store ice for the summer,” Johnson explains.

In the mid-19th century ice cream gardens—also known as “pleasure gardens”—offered ice cream to the public. The precursor to ice cream parlors, ice cream gardens were particularly popular among women, as they provided a place for them to gather socially, since they weren’t welcome in bars and taverns, generally considered men’s spaces. At first, ice cream gardens were only open to upper-class patrons, but this changed over time and they became less exclusive. There were also ice cream gardens in New York City and Philadelphia owned and operated by Black entrepreneurs for Black patrons who were excluded from white-run establishments. 

By the mid-19th century, ice cream had become more widely available in the United States, says Amanda Clark, a public historian at the Missouri Historical Society. This was due in large part to advancements in ice cream-making technology, like the first hand-crank ice cream maker that Nancy M. Johnson of Philadelphia patented in 1843. Prior to that, people were making ice cream the old-fashioned way: putting a container in a bucket of salted ice and stirring it, Johnson explains.

“Then, thanks to industrialization and advances like steel production, more complicated machines became available,” she notes. While commercial ice cream was available, fresh homemade ice cream was typically served at ice cream socials, Johnson says.

Now that making ice cream in larger quantities was easier, it became more accessible to anyone with cream, sugar and ice. Despite its wider availability, it wasn’t something people ate on a regular basis, Johnson says. Instead, the treat became the centerpiece of “ice cream socials.” According to Johnson, the community events likely began in the 1840s and were definitely happening by the end of the Civil War. The term “ice cream social” was printed in the newspaper for the first time in the early 1860s in a small town in Ohio, Clark says. “Within a couple of years you see more, then they're mentioned as if they are very common things,” she notes.

This was a time when ice was a commodity. “If you were in a small town in the northeast, in the wintertime you would have taken the ice out of the local lake or local pond,” Clark says. “Sometimes those ponds were cultivated specifically for ice.” The ice was then cut into blocks, harvested and stored in ice houses, where it was packed in sawdust or hay for later use, or shipped to other places in the United States and other parts of the world. 

According to Johnson, community celebrations involving food started to take off in the early 19th century, with gatherings held on the Fourth of July and Election Day for example. Ice cream was also served at gatherings for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, Washington’s Birthday and Decoration Day—”the chief festivals of the year,” according to journalist Cornelius Weygandt, as well as “civic events, fairs, exhibitions and other festive occasions,” Geraldine Quinzio writes in Of Sugar and Snow: A History of Ice Cream Making. 

Arguably, the “social” part of an ice cream social was even more important than the frozen dessert served at the events. “The ice cream social has its origins more so in big cultural shifts than it does in ice cream itself,” Clark says.

As ice cream socials became more popular in the 1860s, the trend coincided with the rise of the women's club movement, Clark says. “This comes out of the Civil War, because [women] realize we can hang out outside of the home,” she explains. “We don't have to just be at church or at home; we can start making book clubs and sewing clubs and use those as ways to change society and raise money and further different causes.” At the time, these clubs were virtually the only acceptable way for women to be involved with shaping public life, allowing them to become active in political activism, civic reform and community involvement.

Ice cream socials were also a crucial component of the temperance movement, providing a place and purpose for people to get together without alcohol. Like the suffrage movement, temperance was a women-led movement with direct connections to the post-Civil War club movement, Clark says. 

The temperance movement—including organizations like the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union—also had direct ties to Christianity. “A lot of Protestant churches throughout the 19th century, but especially post-Civil War, were strong in the temperance movement,” Johnson explains. In a similar vein, ice cream socials played a role in “proper” Christian courtship: a place where two young people could spend time together in an innocent—and supervised—way. 

“Ice cream socials were seen as this wholesome Christian way for young people to socialize,” Johnson says, “like church picnics.”