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| Augustus Jackson | |||||||||||||||||
| Augustus Jackson was the most successful confectioner in Philadelphia between 1832 and 1860 and became one of the wealthiest Black men in Philadelphia. He did not however apply for any patents for his recipes or manufacturing process. Although he is often spoken of as having invented ice cream itself. | |||||||||||||||||
| No one person can be credited with inventing ice cream. It evolved over thousands of years with the earliest mention in the 4th century BCE. Exploration and trade were responsible for the migration of the early form of this dessert from Asia to Europe. By the 16th century the dessert we now know as ice cream was being served in Italy. Ice cream production matured in the 17th century with the use of salt and ice to cool the machine allowing a product to be created on demand. | |||||||||||||||||
| A Frenchman, Emanuel Segur, is said to be the person who taught Americans how to make ice cream after the Revolutionary War. Confectioners, often of French heritage, were responsible for popularizing ice cream among the elite. Until the end of the 18th century, ice cream was generally an aristocratic dessert. The American elite included presidents Washington and Adams and their families. | |||||||||||||||||
| Thomas Jefferson was also a lover of ice cream and was said to have written an American envoy in Paris for 50 vanilla beans to make his favorite flavor. This was in 1791 while he was Secretary of State and France was in the midst of a Revolution. | |||||||||||||||||
| Ice cream became available to the working classes when pleasure gardens were created. These were large establishments modeled after the18th century English venues that provided affordable entertainment and food and were considered respectable places for women to socialize outside of the home. People of all classes spent time and were introduced to such treats as ice cream. | |||||||||||||||||
| The first successful ice cream maker of African descent may have been a Monsieur Collot. In 1795, he took out ads in Philadelphia papers announcing that he had moved his business and would continue to make ice cream "in all the perfection of the true Italian mode." The reason for moving his business was probably the slave rebellion on Santo Domingo causing many wealthy French businessmen to flee. If it is true that Collot was a creole and the son of the former president of the High Council then he was the first in a long line of men of African descent making and selling ice cream. | |||||||||||||||||
| One of the best known of these confectioners was Augustus Jackson. Jackson had been a chef in the White House and left to start his own catering business in Philadelphia in the late 1820's. While he did not invent ice cream as some legends claim, he did create several innovative recipes and invented an improved method of manufacturing the frozen custard dessert around 1832. He made ice cream for his own customers and ice cream parlor and for several others as well. One of his innovations was to package the most popular of the new flavors into tin cans which could be distributed to even more businesses around town. In addition to the ice cream parlors, these tins could be used by street vendors who could go to outdoor events crying the praise of their ice cream and selling directly to the people. If they discounted prices late in the day or for children sampling their wares, their profits were still acceptable. | |||||||||||||||||
| As his career ended, so did the success of African American confectioners in general. While there had been rapid growth in these businesses, as noted in a series of studies done in 1838, 1846 and 1857, the once plentiful confectioners and caterers of African Descent were disappearing. The notes to the study cite prejudice against African Americans as the major reason for these skilled tradesmen's businesses to fail. | |||||||||||||||||
| For more information on Filling in the Gaps in American History (F.I.G.A.H), biographies or research on people of African Descent who don't usually appear in textbooks, contact us at email | |||||||||||||||||