By Emma Battaglia
Bedford Historical Society Intern ~ Summer 2019
J. B. Prescott Dairy Company, founded in 1880, is the longest surviving business in Bedford, though the business has changed hands and names multiple times. Josiah Bartlett Prescott, the founder of the business, acquired a plot of land on North Road in 1879. The next year he founded his dairy company, which he ran from his home for the next twenty-five years.
In 1905, J. B. Prescott acquired the adjacent lot (where Holi and Bedford Farms stand now) and built a dairy plant and a large stable for his horses. According to Williston Farrington in An Awesome Century, after morning milking, local farmers would put their shipping cans in well houses, little buildings that would keep the milk cold (think along the line of an old-fashioned refrigerator). J. B. Prescott dairy would pick the milk up from the farms, pasteurize the milk, then ship them to Bedford residents.
When J. B. Prescott died, he left the business to his son Horace, who continued to run the company until his death in 1929.
Amos L. Taylor acquired the business and renamed it Bedford Farms Dairy. In the 1950s, Bedford Farms Dairy began to produce and sell ice cream.
Dairy operations ceased in the late 1960s, but Glenn Simm Jr. acquired and continued to operate the ice cream business. Current owner Joe Venuti acquired the business in 1984.
From its humble beginning as a dairy company operated out of Josiah Bartlett Prescott’s home, to a popular ice cream shop with two locations, Bedford Farms is the oldest business in Bedford and remains a popular place for Bedford residents enjoy a cold ice cream on a hot summer day.
Editor’s Note: With a National Weather Service Excessive Heat Watch in effect for Bedford through the weekend ~ and National Ice Cream Day on Sunday, July 21 ~ expect crowds!
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