This photograph of refrigerator-cars appeared in The Packers, the Private Car Lines, and the People by J. Ogden Armour, a key figure in the meat-packing industry.
“The wholesale and retail ice business of the City is also very large, there being two firms in this business, each having immense ice houses, and they ship large quantities to the fisheries of North Carolina, as well as to other points south of Norfolk.”
Cary W. Jones. Norfolk As A Business Center: Its Principal Industries and Trades. (Norfolk: C.H. Windsor, 1882) 115
“Rawlins, Whitehurst & Co., Ice Dealers. Partners, Wm. Rawlins, C.H. Whitehurst, J.M. Haynes, H.A. DeWitt, and Ira D. Sturgis. In 1869 the firm of Rawlins, Baum, & Co. was organized, the present firm succeeding to the business in 1874. The three last mentioned partners look after the firm’s business in Maine. They handle between 8,000 and 10,000 tons of Ice per season and ship as far south as Cuba. Their city trade requires the use of 6 wagons, and they make a specialty of furnishing the fisheries in this State and North Carolina. Situated on Biggs’ wharf, Nivison Street, conveniently to the different water and land transportation lines their shipping facilities are unsurpassed.” (See display ad)
See a brief description and display ad for the second firm Nottingham & Wrenn.
1st U.S. Colored Cavalry 
Herring were a big business in my area although most were salted and even the salt probably was shipped from Norfolk. In my younger years there was an ice-making business. From an abandoned 1880-era Winton Triangle store I collected about one hundred distributors’ bills, mostly from Norfolk. Oh, my village of Cofield used to have a train station and the train still runs through a rear corner of our farm.
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