Iceman’s family name lives on
Waterman Sweet’s descendants carry on in new antiques shop
By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, 9-24-05
Two descendants of the proprietors of the Sweet Ice Company in Amsterdam have revived the name of the old family business and attached it to an antiques store at 270 Division Street.
Waterman Sweet, Senior started Dealers In Ice in Fort Johnson in 1919 and originally may have cut ice from the river, according to his great granddaughter, Debra Baranello, who operates today’s antiques store with her sister, Karin Hetrik. Their mother was a Sweet.
Dealers In Ice became West End Ice when Waterman Sweet, Jr.—the son of the founder--went into partnership with Victor and Peter Martin in 1927. By the 1930s, the business had moved to a garage in the rear of 270 Division in Amsterdam. In 1936, the name was changed to the W. Sweet Ice Company.
Regular contributor Peter Betz recalled that years ago a Sweet deliveryman would park his truck overnight at the deliveryman’s home on Market Hill. Neighborhood youths would pry open a door on the truck on hot summer nights to scrape off some ice.
Baranello’s grandfather, John Sweet, took over the business in 1950 after his brother Waterman died. John Sweet died in 1966 and there was nobody to take over the company.
“I remember in the 1960s that people would come here to get ice on the way to the lake,” Baranello said. “And we would have to go out and help. And they’d tell you if they wanted 25 pounds or 50 pounds and you would have to chop it. My grandfather would be in the garage with the machine that cut the ice cubes. But he was never home much because he was out delivering ice.”
A picture of Baranello as a little girl shows her with two snowmen in front of a Sweet ice truck. One man remembered that her grandfather would back his ice truck down the narrow driveway while standing on the running board. He said he could see better that way.
Sweet delivered to the Mohican Market, the A & P and to restaurants and bars. In the summer, Sweet stopped three times a day at the Mohican to keep Peter Duchessi’s homemade ricotta cheese from melting.
The original Sweet Ice Company occupied what today would be regarded as a small garage behind 270 Division, with the truck parked on one side of the garage and an ice-making machine on the other side.
The Sweet Ice Company antiques store, which opened this month, occupies a small building at the front of the property that was Thayer’s and then Green’s confectionery years ago. Baranello’s grandfather built the store.
Baranello still lives next door and has always collected things, as has her sister. Plus Baranello bakes cakes. After much renovation to the old confectionery store, the 2005 version of Sweet Ice Company opened this month to sell antiques, collectibles and fresh cakes.
ICEMAN SHOT
Then there was the day in 1917 when an Amsterdam police detective shot the iceman.
“My mother said how my great uncle Waterman was shot, but he didn’t do anything wrong,” Baranello said.
A check of Recorder headlines on a local history web site (www.mohawkvalleyweb.com) reveals that two years before the first Sweet-owned ice business began, Daniel Waterman Sweet was shot by police detective Joseph Genova in an Amsterdam news store on East Main Street. Sweet was badly wounded but recovered from the shooting reported on October 6. Baranello said her mother recalled the shooting was in the train station.
Ten days later, a newspaper headline reported that Detective Genova was released on $2,000 bail and there the trail ends, inconclusively for now.
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