Branchville Ice Tool Company

George B. Gruman was born in 1827 to Samuel and Polly Gruman of the Ridgefield, Connecticut area. In his youth George was noted to be a shoemaker, but by the 1860s he owned a grocery business near where Cooper Pond Brook runs into the Norwalk River in what was once noted as Ridgefield Station. In 1872, He was awarded patent #125131 for Improvements in Ice Plows, after which he set in motion a business plan for production of that product and more like it. By 1873 local media noted that Gruman was in the process of erecting a works for the production of ice tools in Branchville (the newer name for Ridgefield Station). The company was referred to as the “Branchville Ice Tool Company” until 1909, at which point it was reincorporated as the “Gruman Ice Tool Company”. It was reestablished with a capital of $50,000, and the noted investors were George B Gruman, President; Irving V. Gruman (George’s son), Secretary; and Elizabeth A. Gruman (George’s wife), Director. An interesting note on this new incorporation should be mentioned: at this point George was 82 years old. 3 years later, on December 19th of 1912, George would pass away, though his family would continue the business until 1934. Papers were filed with the State of Connecticut that year for dissolution, and those papers were completed in 1935.

   The company’s products have been noted as numerous types of ice plows, snow scraping machines, ice cutting machines for harvesting ice from frozen lakes, ice saws, ice tongues, and, of course, ice axes.