I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!
Provided by Biltmore Company
Biltmore Dairy ice cream also played a leading role at estate gatherings — Cornelia’s birthday celebrations, Christmas parties, May Day festivities, and picnics. In fact, virtually every oral history interview or questionnaire containing childhood memories of Biltmore Estate contains a reference to ice cream. One of the most amusing stories comes from Artus Moser, who recalled an orchestra from New York being brought in for one of the Christmas parties at which ice cream was being served. Artus said of Mr. Vanderbilt: “Oh, he was reserved. He did not feel inclined to indulge in the ice cream with us.”1
Even after the turn of the century, ice cream would have been a treat for mountain children. Forester Cyrus Rankin’s children recalled having ice cream and ladyfingers at the Christmas parties.2 Ceil Cypher Jonas remembered “Santa Claus ice cream molds that [she] never seen before.”3 Sarah Lanning tasted her first ice cream at the age of seventeen at the 1910 May Day celebration. She recalled that the Maypole “was way up and it had lots of streamers…each one of us would get it and run around and make it stripey.”4 May Day was an annual spring celebration held on the green in Biltmore Village for the children of estate workers, and often included refreshments or an “open air dinner.”5 In 1905, Edith served 35 gallons of ice cream and 25 dozen macaroons.6
Once when an airplane landed on the estate in 1918, everyone had ice cream afterwards.7 In 1920, Edith hosted a square dance and ice cream party for all of the farm and dairy workers and families following an orchestral concert on the front lawn of the Biltmore House.8 The Old Asheville Gazette reported that, in conjunction with celebrations for Cornelia’s 25th birthday, dairy employees presented her with “one of the largest cakes ever made by Biltmore Dairy” measuring four feet high and two feet square at the base consisting of 26 gallons of ice cream with alternating layers of chocolate parfait, Lady Ashe ice cream, all covered with vanilla mousse and studded with roses and lilies, inscribed “May your joys be as many as the sands of the sea.”9
Many descendants of estate workers recall Sunday summer drives to the Dairy for ice cream. Arthur McKinley Taylor had three brothers and sisters who “consumed an awful lot of Biltmore ice cream” every Sunday afternoon, when there was free ice cream for workers’ families.10 Mildred Buchanan recalled, “My oldest brother made ice cream, a friend of mine come home from school, they had a little place you could go up and see what they were doing, and I would look at him real pitiful and in a few minutes he would bring me some butter pecan.”11
Bill Justice worked at the Dairy for four summers, first in the Creamery shipping department packing ice cream and later delivering milk and ice cream to the Servants’ Courtyard at Biltmore House. His favorite memory is:
…the superb ice cream that was made a Biltmore Dairy. It was rated as the richest, highest butterfat content on the market at that time. (This would not be considered good today). However, I averaged eating about one gallon per day and I have not suffered an complication from it.… This was my first job and I remember how well all the employees were treated at that time. We were like a family, even those who worked in the summer only. I have never had a job I enjoyed as much as those summers in Biltmore.12
