Obituary Record

Christian Kent Nelson
Died on 3/8/1992

Christian Nelson, 98

Christian Nelson, 98, who attended Dana in the early part of this century, died March 8, 1992 in Laguna Hills, California. He was born in Denmark and came to the U.S. with his parents as an infant.

In 1920 Nelson taught school and ran a candy store in Onawa, Iowa. It was there he invented the Eskimo Pie, this country’s first chocolate ice cream bar.

According to a story that appeared in the “Omaha World Herald” several years ago, one day an eight-year-old customer in Nelson’s candy store couldn’t decide whether to buy ice cream or chocolate candy. After the boy left with a chocolate candy bar, Nelson asked himself, “Why not combine the two?” and began experimenting.

His first experiments were failures. He started by melting chocolate but usually the ice cream melted when he dipped it into the warm chocolate. And if it didn’t melt, the chocolate wouldn’t stick to the ice cream once it had cooled.

He finally achieved success by adding coconut oil to the melted chocolate. After dipping, he quickly placed the coated ice cream bars in a cold box (there were no freezers then).

Nelson first called his new product “I-Scream-Bar,” but changed the name to “Eskimo Pie” after forming a partnership with candy maker Russell Stover.

Nelson’s new product was an overnight sensation. By late 1921, the World-Herald reports, “90 percent of the ice cream manufacturers in Iowa had franchises to make it. And by the spring of 1922, sales were averaging a million pies a day.

The partners sold the company in 1924, but Nelson remained, inventing frozen treats and developing ways to store and deliver them. He retired in 1961 as the company’s vice president.

~~~ Obituary courtesy of the Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file in the Blair Public Library at Blair, Nebraska.~~~

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