Source: The News-Journal, Feb 17, 1936

POPSICKLES ORIGINATED AT LIBERTY MILLS

While A.F. Parker does not claim to be one of the old, old timers yet his memory does take him back to 1878 when the popsicle idea originated. It was back in the good old days when Liberty Mills boasted a saloon. One cold winter morning of a winter about like this winter, Parker started to the business section and met several men, who were sucking pieces of ice and apparently enjoying it. It was so cold the watered whiskey, for which it is said Liberty Mills was famous, had frozen and the saloon keeper was selling the liquor in frozen chunks. That went on for four days, to the great mystification of the women who could not understand the sudden fondness of the men for ice.

It was years before anyone conceived the idea of freezing pretty colored flavored water and selling it under the name of popsicles or frozen all day suckers. But who can deny that the idea originated in the good old days of Liberty Mills.