Annie Dodge Gray, born in 1860, sold ice cream from the back window of the Herbert Almy House at Tiverton Four Corners from 1923 to 1937. At first, local dairy farms in town provided cream to Fall River ice cream makers who made the ice cream and then trucked it back to Tiverton. The ice cream was so popular that Annie built an addition onto her house, which allowed her to make the ice cream, including her famous coffee ice cream, onsite. In 1937, Andrew Chase, contractor, and Herbert Cavaca, helper, built a new ice cream parlor on the spot where Gray’s Ice Cream now stands. When Annie passed away in 1939, her daughter, Florence “Flossie” Gray Brow, took over the business. She increased the number of flavors to about twelve, with rum raisin and frozen pudding being the most popular new additions. During that time, a small cone of ice cream sold for five cents and a large cone for 10 cents. Florence reinvested all of her profit back into the business and eventually sold it to two of her employees, David Sylvia and Gilbert Pontes, who ran the business until 1979. Marilyn Bettencourt took over in 1981 and made sweeping renovations to the building, but the ice cream, over 40 flavors now, is still processed in small batches on the premises and Flossie’s recipes are safely locked up.
Biography provided by Tiverton Historical Society
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