Tudor Company records

Established in Boston by Frederic Tudor, the Tudor Ice Company, later known as the Tudor Company engaged in exporting ice and other merchandise, and importing tea, camphor, goat and sheepskins, jute, indigo, coffee, and buffalo hides. The company owned ice houses in Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Galle, Singapore, Jamaica, Havana, New Orleans, and Charleston. It was with these ports that most of the trade was conducted. The last shipment of ice was made by the company in 1886.

Frederic Tudor, son of William and Delia (Jarvis) Tudor, was born September 4, 1783 in Boston, Massachusetts. Son of a prominent merchant and scholar, Frederic entered business at age thirteen. At age twenty-one, Frederic and his brother, William, devised a way to send ice to Martinique. Confident that he could prosper financially by selling ice to warmer climes, Frederic spent the next fifteen years perfecting a way to ship ice without loss with the help of his assistant, Nathaniel J. Wyeth. Tudor suffered indebtedness and failure for many years, but eventually The Tudor Ice Company became very successful. . The Tudor family accumulated the land which made up the Rockwood estate, located in Lynn [now Nahant], Massachusetts, over a period of twenty-five years purchasing adjoining property when available. In August 1787, William Tudor bought six acres of farmland plus thirty-one acres of woodland. In May 1788, father John Tudor purchased three acres of land upon which stood a dwelling house, barn and outbuildings as well as six acres of salt marsh in May 1788. The house and about twelve acres of land stood on the east side of the road from Chelsea to Reading. The barn and remainder of land were on the westerly side of the road. William Tudor purchased two acres of salt marsh in 1790, sixteen acres of farmland in 1793, eight acres of pine grove in 1799 and three more acres in 1801. William transferred the entire parcel via a quitclaim deed to his second son, Frederic, in 1812. Continuing the family’s practice of improving their property, Frederic invested large sums of money in plants, trees and flowers and converted a barren hill into a showplace. In 1825, he built a rustic stone cottage where he resided in the summer. The property is now used as the Nahant Country Club Frederic married Euphemia Fenno on January 2, 1834; the couple had six children: (1) Euphemia, b. February 18, 1837; (2) Frederic, b. February 11, 1845; (3) Delia Jarvis, b. March 20, 1847; (4) William, b. September 27, 1848; (5) Eleonora Elizabeth, b. July 1, 1850; and (6) Henry, b. January 21, 1854. Frederic Tudor died in Boston on February 6, 1864.