Ice cream lovers in Gloucester, Mathews and surrounding counties had their choice of locally-made chocolate, vanilla and strawberry—up ’til 60 years ago.

Brothers Eugene Foster and Elliott Foster owned Mathews Dairies in 1949 when these photographs were made. Eugene had purchased the principal interest in 1945, with Elliott and Hilton Green, owner of the adjacent Mathews Ice Company, as associates, according to Gazette-Journal records.

It had been established in 1927 as the Chesapeake Creamery Products Co., was destroyed by fire in 1944, and apparently limped along until the Fosters and Green reorganized, rebuilt and modernized the concern. The idea all along was to give a market to dairy farmers and jobs for people who made the creamery’s products.

Spencer Hodges Jr. of Mathews, whose father worked at the company “as far back as I can remember,” spent many leisure hours of his boyhood around the plant. He said the ice cream it produced was very good, &...