Bavaria eventually settling in Cincinnati, Ohio. While just
a teenager, Louis Charles Graeter began making ice cream
in a market at the base of Sycamore Hill. In the age before
mechanized freezers, ice cream was a rare treat, and had to
be made in very small batches using rock salt and ice to
freeze the cream.
After years of youthful adventures, Charlie finally settled
down, marrying Regina Berger, the daughter of a prominent
local businessman. With his new wife, Charlie took the city’s
Main Street incline line up the hillside to 967 East McMillan Street in Walnut
Hills where they made ice cream and chocolate confections in the back room,
sold them out front and lived upstairs. The Graeter family enjoyed many years of
success until Charlie’s life was cut short by a tragic streetcar accident in 1919.
But where Charlie’s colorful story ends, Regina’s remarkable one begins.
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