Tudor was the third son of
William Tudor, a wealthy Boston lawyer, and Delia Jarvis Tudor. Although his older brother
William Tudor (1779–1830) would become one of Boston's leading literary figures, Tudor spurned the chance to be educated at Harvard and from the age of 13 occupied himself with business. After a visit to the
Caribbean, he decided he could make a fortune exporting ice from the ponds of
Massachusetts. In 1806 (age 23), Tudor bought his first
brig,
Favorite, to carry ice cut from his father's farm in
Saugus from
Charlestown to
Martinique. It left dock on February 10, 1806, to the following report in the
Boston Gazette: "No joke. A vessel has cleared at the Custom House for
Martinique with a cargo of ice. We hope this will not prove a slippery speculation." While he secured a cargo of ice, a vessel in which to ship it, and formulated his plan of operation, he sent his brother William and his cousin,
James Savage, ahead to obtain a monopoly from the various governments of the islands: "We wish you to procure from the gov' of
Cuba a grant exclusive in which we offer you either to take a conces' of half or procure the privilege for us & we engage to pay you one thousand dollars with reasonable charges, in obtaining it you, however, to determine which you will do & write to that effect as early as possible." Although much of the ice melted during the three-week journey south, he did manage to sell much of what remained on board for a loss of $4,500 overall. However, in the subsequent year, Tudor realized severe financial losses on three shipments to Havana in the brig
Trident. the ice house in Madras was sold and remodeled to become the
Vivekanandar Illam. In the early 1830s, Tudor had also begun to speculate in coffee futures with his ice business as collateral. Initially, coffee prices did rise, and Tudor made millions of dollars, but in 1834, Tudor fell more than a quarter-million dollars in debt, forcing him to refocus on the ice trade. By the end of the year, Tudor wrote that 1834 had been unsatisfactory in all but one aspect – that of his marriage to a girl 30 years his junior. In the summer of 1833, at the age of 50, Frederic had turned his attentions to 19-year-old Euphemia Fenno, who met him while she was visiting Boston from Mount Upton, New York. He began writing to her regularly, with the result that Frederic and Euphemia were married on January 2, 1834. The couple went on to have six children. By then the ice business had expanded from New York up through Maine. The horse-drawn
Charlestown Branch Railroad expanded to connect the
Fresh Pond ice houses of Tudor, Addison Gage, and Nathaniel J. Wyeth with several wharves in
Charlestown. Tudor Wharf is so named because it is where his ships departed. With the first ice shipment in December 1841, it made the process of transporting ice to ships considerably more efficient. By the 1840s, ice was being shipped all over the world; in 1845, an ice house was opened in Hong Kong, although it only remained open until 1850. Although Tudor was now just a small part of the trade, his profits allowed him to pay off his debts and resume living a comfortable existence. == Tudor family and Nahant ==