Seasonal Ice Cream Shop coming to historic site in Mount Elgin

Irv Prouse. (Contributed Photo)

Debbie Kasman, Tillsonburg Post Correspondent

In February, South-West Oxford Council approved a request from Prouse Transport Limited to “add an eating establishment as a permitted use” to the existing property.

Matt and Katie Prouse, owners of Prouse Transport, will be opening a seasonal ice cream shop called Irv’s Ice Cream Shop on their property located on the northwest corner of Highway 19 and Mount Elgin Road. The shop will serve locally-made Shaw’s ice cream (rotating through 20 of Shaw’s flavours) and will be accessed through a walk-up window.

Matt’s great-grandfather and founder of Prouse Transport, Irvin Prouse, sold ice cream at the Shell Gas Station formerly on the property. Customers would visit the “Booth,” which also sold chips, pop and Silverwood’s ice cream in three flavours: chocolate, vanilla and strawberry.

Irv’s Ice Cream Shop will complement Sara’s Sausage Express, a food truck already located there.

Historical connection to Mount Elgin

The Prouse property was originally owned by Ira Harris (1802 – 1859), a native of New York State, and one of the early settlers of Mount Elgin. Harris bought several hundred acres of land in Mount Elgin after the post office opened in 1851 and following completion of the Plank and Gravel Road, a toll road formed by the Ingersoll and Port Burwell Road Company, which eventually became Highway #19 and is now also called Plank Line.

Harris erected Mount Elgin’s first hotel on the property with frontage on both the Plank and Gravel Road and Mount Elgin Road (called Norwich Street at the time). The January 1852 census recorded Ira Harris as Innkeeper.

Donald Murray was the proprietor of the Mount Elgin Hotel from 1867 to 1871 while Charles F. Huntley was the proprietor of the Mount Elgin Hotel and Stage House from 1870 to 1871. In 1881, Mrs. Anna Huntley was shown as the proprietor of Mount Elgin House. In 1990, F. Gray was shown as the proprietor of a hotel in Mount Elgin.

An advertisement for the Mount Elgin Hotel and Stage House in 1870 shows Charles F. Huntley as the Proprietor. Huntley declared “the best brands of wines, liquors and cigars” were “always on hand,” with “first-class stabling and attentive hostlers,” and “daily stages to Ingersoll and Port Burwell.” Huntley’s advertisement also declared, “Every attention will be given to the comfort of those calling at this House.”

Since old-time political meetings were held in small hotels, community halls and schools during these years with audiences consisting of electors, not just the speaker’s partisans, it’s possible Ebenezer Vining Bodwell (1827 – 1889), an Ontario businessman and political figure from Mount Elgin, attended the hotel along with his neighbours for political meetings.

Bodwell was elected in 1867 and represented Oxford South in the House of Commons of Canada as a Liberal member in the first Canadian parliament alongside Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald (who was a Conservative member). So it’s also possible that Bodwell attended the hotel when Donald Murray was the proprietor to speak to his neighbours in an attempt to garner their vote.

According to Alma Peters, a long-time resident who wrote a local history of Mount Elgin called “Forgotten Footsteps,” the hotel was known during her time as the Mount Elgin House.

Mount Elgin House was later remodelled and turned into a residence in which Dr. S. Morris (1900-1938) resided. Irvin Prouse, Sr. (1938-1967) bought the house from Dr. Morris, the local doctor, in the 1930s.

According to John Prouse (1933 – 2023), Irvin’s son, the house had a woodshed on the north end, which served as a place to store wood to be used for heat. They heated the house with a kitchen stove and a Quebec heater in the front room. The kitchen, dining, and living rooms were along the front of the house and there were four rooms that served as bedrooms at the rear of the house. A small centre room contained a bathtub and the water was heated in a high copper vessel on the kitchen stove. Baths were taken twice a week.

When Irvin C. Prouse and Sons began to grow, the garage to the north of the house was bought from Henry Greason and was used to service and store the growing Prouse truck fleet. The garage was a two-story building with two apartments upstairs.

The original hotel/home was torn down in 1980 and the family discovered that it had been constructed of red clay with straw for binding, which is called “cob” construction.

English cob was traditionally made by mixing the clay-based subsoil with sand, straw and water using oxen to trample it.

The present Prouse’s garage, where the new ice cream shop will be located, was built in 1946, on the site of the old hotel.

Prouse as prominent name

Prouse is a prominent name in Mount Elgin’s history. It first appears in the Dereham Census in 1871. According to family history, as the number of descendants increased throughout the decades, there was a proliferation of Prouse sons and daughters purchasing farm property throughout Dereham, West Oxford and Dorchester Townships and place names such as Prouse’s Corners and Prouse Road began to spring up in Dereham Township.

In addition to selling ice cream and operating a trucking company (the modern day Prouses), the original Prouse family were farmers in the cheese-making business. In 1896, one of the Prouse Cheese Factories was located on the sixth Concession in Dereham Township. It was located west of the Plank and Gravel Road on the south side of the sixth Concession on what is now known as Prouse Road, just west of the railroad tracks on the way to Dereham Centre.

Ellen Vivian Bodwell Prouse (1897 – 1981), a relative of Ebenezer Vining Bodwell, married Cecil Prouse (1899 – 1990) in 1924. Cecil and Vivian owned Elgin Hall from 1947 to 1965 where Vivian’s ancestor, Ebenezer Vining Bodwell, lived before he was elected to Canada’s first parliament. Elgin Hall was demolished in 2023 to make room for the subdivision expansion. The Elgin Hall property on Mount Elgin Road is the site of the proposed new township office.

Irv’s Ice Cream Shop will open on the May long week-end from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. and will extend into daytime hours throughout July and August. Matt and Katie also have plans for pop up days with longer hours on specific holidays throughout the summer.

* Thank you to Dr. George Emery, professor emeritus, Western University, for his historical contributions for the article. Photos provided by Katie Prouse and Lyle Rooke.