Processing the Educational Cookery Collection, Part 3

As promised, this week we’re at the end of processing the Educational Cookery Collection (yay)! And, I remembered to take pictures while I was working on the collection this week, so there are plenty of visuals below!

After all that alphabetical sorting last week, I ended up with a stack of 16 folders that look, well, like this:

Each folder has the collection number and title on the left side, the folder title in the center, and the box-folder number on the right side. Given the final decision to sort the collection by creator name, there are 15 folders for letters of the alphabet and one for materials without clear creators. They sat in a stack on my desk as I worked through creating bibliographies for each folder, at which point I was shifting in their new home–an acid-free box:

In the end, they don’t take up the whole box, but that’s okay. I used the lid as a temporary spacer to keep folders from slumping or falling over, which can damage the contents over time (that’s also why, in the picture above, I turned the box on its side as I started added the first few folders to it). Before I put the box on the shelf, I made a more permanent spacer from some left over cardboard. (We keep many different kinds of scraps around here that come in handy for reuse: cardboard, old boxes, mylar, matboard…Plenty of archivists like to reuse and creatively “upcycle” where they can!) Also, this means we have space to add more items later!

The other part of processing, of course, is the intellectual description and processing. We use software called ArchivesSpace, which lets us keep track of new accessions, digital objects (scans), subjects, and creators, and helps us create the finding aids we put in Virginia Heritage. If you’re curious what it looks like, this is a screenshot with the list of folders for this collection. The navigation links in the lower left help us jump around the rest of the record below, since more complex collections can have a lot of content.

As I finished writing up the notes in the collection, I also grabbed a screenshot of those. The software consolidates sections with a lot of content (like the Subjects, in this case) and when you are viewing a section (like the Notes), shows you shortened versions, which you can expand and edit. I promise, it can save a fair bit of scrolling if you’re trying to get a specific section. The sidebar on the left shows you, at a glance, connections between this and other records or how many elements there are in a given section. In this collection, for example, there’s a link between this and one existing accession record, a single “date” component, and 9 notes.

Looking at that screenshot reminded me I missed something. That left side navigation can also help with that. If you’re expecting a number next to a part of the record and it’s not there, it’s a good reminder you might need to fix that! Anyway, this resource record, as it’s called, is what we can export from ArchivesSpace, tweak a little bit, and put into Virginia Heritage for researchers everywhere to discover. I finished up the finding aid on Thursday morning, along with my final checklist of items for collections. (Seriously, I have a spreadsheet checklist for collections I process–it helps me keep track of what gets processed, as well as all the little administrative and practical steps that going along with making it discoverable!)

As I mentioned last week, every collection is a little different and I wouldn’t be surprised if we talk about processing again in the future. I hope it gives some insight into what goes on behind-the-scenes so researchers can find our materials to use. And a little bit about what those of us who work behind-the-scenes do! The finding aid for the Educational Cookery Collection (Ms2017-032) is now available online and the collection is in its home on the shelf:

So, we encourage you to come by and take a look when you have a chance! I expect this collection will grow in the future (much like some of our ephemera-based collections), and I’m looking forward to finding out what we add next!

Processing the Educational Cookery Collection, Part 2

I know I missed a week, but I didn’t get to work on the Education Cookery Collection too much last week. My major work on it during the last two weeks was making sure all the books were on the inventory, getting cataloging slips into all those items, and finding space for them on a cart temporarily. There are 80+ publications to be cataloged. Here’s one shelf’s worth (of about 1 1/2 shelves):

In addition,  I worked on creating a list of publications in the record for the soon-to-be manuscript collection. Since it’s not done, it’s not public yet, but here’s what part of the list looks like for me (it’ll be much nicer-looking in the finished finding aid!):

Next up, there’s a stack of manuscript materials. At the moment, those items are organized into four folders, which match up to my thought process when I started looking at them, but in reality, don’t represent the final arrangement.

Folders: the archivist’s best organizational friend!

I wanted to look at what items in this collection align with/are similar to ephemeral items in other culinary collections. So, my post-it notes read things like “Adds to Ms2012-040” [the State/Regional Home and Agricultural Publications] or “Acc2017-083 Make into new collection?” The more I’ve considered it, though, I’m not going to break up the collection into three existing ones, plus one new one. The fact of the matter is, we usually organize collections by creator or collector, and this is one combined group of materials relating to aspects of educational cookery. It should stay together.

Sometimes, figuring out how to organize a collection is a case of “two steps forward, one step back.” I thought I knew what would make sense for this collection, but I then I started to waffle. I’ll have to back up a little bit, undo a few things, and move forward again. Rather than taking some items out and arranging what’s left, this collection now has a couple of possibilities: breaking out materials based on the type of creator (an individual, a cooking school, a corporation, a state or national government agency), thinking about them in terms of formats (corporate pamphlets, government publications, advertisements/trade items, cooking school catalogs, printed notes and information sheets, recipes, etc.), or sorting them by subject area (nutrition education, cooking instruction, fundraising, etc.). I went around and around a bit, confused myself, then I did the smart thing: I got a colleague’s opinion and he helped me get out of the weeds (thanks, John!). We looked at what we had, what we thought we could see happening with the collection in the future, and agreed that the simplest option was to rely on the alphabet and arrange materials in folders by creator name. (Asking a friend is always good advice and colleagues make great sounding boards!)

Alphabetical sorting–an invaluable, if boring, skill for archivists!

Anyway, I think I’ll finish up this post for this week and get back to my sorting. I expect to wrap up this series next week, when I get the materials foldered, boxed, and a finding aid completed to share. Hopefully this series is providing some insight into how things can work around here (and not just my sometimes-convoluted process). One of our favorite sayings in the archives field is “it depends” and for me, it’s something I say all the time when processing manuscripts. Every collection is a different and each one requires different attention. This is turning out to be a prime example!

Processing the Educational Cookery Collection, Part 1

Over the last few years, we’ve talked about and around the idea of education when it comes to cookery. We’ve profiled women who started, trained, and/or taught at cookery schools; talked about the more community-based networks and community-learned skills; and shared PLENTY of recipes and advice for household management. We received a collection this week that brings all of that together and while it’s still in the early stages of processing, there’s also plenty to share. (I’m thinking we might follow this collection over the next week or two as it gets ready for the public use.)

Regrettably, the the idea to follow the collection hit me after I unpacked the boxes and started sorting, so no photos for the early stages. Suffice to say, we received 4 nicely packed boxes of books, pamphlets, and ephemera in binders. Over the last two days, I’ve taken the boxes apart and sorted materials. There are items to be cataloged, some manuscript materials that could be added to existing collections, and some manuscript materials that are going to result in a new manuscript collection. I’m contemplating the options, but I suspect the latter two kinds of items will be combined into a new “educational cookery” manuscript collection of some sort.

Anyway, here’s how things look now:

(I was trying to keep a little table space in my office open!)

(So, I *may* have stacked a few things upside down…)

The stacks of books will need cataloging slips and will go to the library’s Collections and Technical Services Department, then return to our shelves. These items will all have a note in their catalog records indicating they are associated with the soon-to-be-created manuscript collection. What kind of books? There are textbooks for public and normal schools, as well as textbooks from well-known cooking schools like the Boston School of Cookery, Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery, and the British National Training School of Cookery. In addition, there are community cookbooks to benefit educational institutions, study books and career guides for home economics, and what we might call “DIY” study or instruction for profit or for personal use (candy-making, running tea rooms, cake decorating, etc.). These materials fit in well with our existing holdings and will result in us gaining new publications by authors we’ve talked about before like Maria Parloa, Mrs. D. A. Lincoln, and Fannie Farmer.

There are MANY pieces of ephemera which we can look at in future posts. But for now, here are a few examples of some lecture announcements, basic cookery lessons, and and course catalogs from cooking schools.

By next week, I hope to have the books all organized and on a cart. And in the meantime, I’ll be working on some ideas for organizing the ephemera and manuscript items. Stay tuned for more pictures, a bit about how we figure out organizational structures for collections, and an update on progress so far in next week’s post!

---

On a side note, we also recently acquired a collection of materials relating to military and wartime cookery (which I am equally excited about!). Part of that, along with other items in Special Collections, formed the basis of our current exhibit. If you’re in Blacksburg, feel free to drop by in the next month or so and check out “Substitution, Self-Sufficiency, and Sharing: America’s World War I Food Policies and Practices.”

Photo of center display case from “Substitution, Self-Sufficiency, and Sharing: America’s World War I Food Policies and Practices”

 

Serial Domestication: Mrs. Winslow’s Domestic Receipt Book

Note: I scheduled this post to go out on September 1, but discovered this morning that never happened! So, here is it is (and apologies for the gap in posts)!

---

Among the history of food and drink materials, you’ll find quite a bit to say on the intertwined topics of cookery, household management, and domestic economy (later what we would call “home economics”). On the surface, that’s what Mrs. Winslow’s Domestic Receipt Book sounds like. It was a small serial publication that began in 1860 and ran until at least 1878 or so. Here in Special Collections, we have three different years: 1868, 1875, and 1877. This week, we’re looking at the volume from 1868.

It does, in fact, contain a lot of recipes for food and a short miscellany of household recipes and cleaners. And I love that the cover also states, “This book will be issued annually, with entirely new Receipts. By preserving them, and sewing them together, you will have in a few years the best collection of Receipts in the country.” It’s like an art project to build your own cookbook. It’s true if you compare editions, there are different receipts in them. But there’s something else going on in Mrs. Winslow’s Domestic Receipt Book, too.

ADVERTISING! It shouldn’t be surprising–we’ve seen that again and again in the collection–but it did sneak up on me in this case. As it turns out, Mrs. Winslow was a name used to sell a patent medicine (“Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup”), and was tangentially attached to two other products, produced by the same companies. There are small testimonials tucked in between recipes, as well as some full page ads for the three featured products.

It’s worth noting that Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup was available starting in 1845, some 15 years before the receipt book first appeared in publication, and it was sold well into the 20th century. There’s a short history of it online (and yes, there was an actual Mrs. Winslow!). 1868 was still decades from the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 that would require labeling on medicines, so consumers weren’t likely to know that the main ingredients in the bottle were alcohol and some form of opioid (usually morphine). It certainly would help calm a child’s teething–and knock them out in the process.

The serial comes out of Boston, but the recipes included are fairly generic. They feature ingredients that would have been available east of the Mississippi, at least, and you’ll find corn breads, pies, pickled items galore, “a Ham better than a Westphalia,” and some uses for some less attractive cuts of meat. The recipe for “Pine-Apple Marmalade” stuck out, since pineapples weren’t really common yet and pineapple recipes in cookbooks remained a rarity through the end of the 19th century. They were hard to acquire and therefore, expensive. (And yes, I’ve stumbled down a rabbit hole of pineapple history I need to explore further!) Pineapples aside, it’s a collection of approachable and fairly basic recipes, which is good, since, like most cookbooks of the the time, they don’t include much in the way of directions.

It may seem we’ve gone a bit far a-field in this post (from patent medicines to pineapples), but it serves as a good reminder that cookery-related resources are rarely as straight-forward as we may expect or want them to be. Rather, they have a great deal to tell us about ingredients, techniques, and times–and they are well-worth a look.

Saving, Sharing, and Propaganda: Advice for Children from the U. S. Food Administration

Just this week, I finished working my way through a new collection of materials we received relating to military and wartime food and cookery. The majority of the collection is published items that will be cataloged, but it also included a selection of ephemera in the form of menus, corporate sponsored pamphlets, two handwritten recipes, two ration books, and a rather interesting photograph album of the Yokota Air Base Commissary from the 1960s. On the whole, materials in the collection date from the 1880s (Civil War reunion event menus) to the 1960s. The published items date from the 1890s to the 1990s. The manuscript materials are primarily World War II-era, but I’ve been thinking about World War I lately. There have been a number of projects and efforts on campus to document VPI involvement in WWI (and some more to come), which led me to WWI food and cookery. Either later this fall or sometime next year, I’m already concocting ideas for a small WWI-food themed exhibit in our display cases.

In the meantime: Food Saving and Sharing: Telling How the Older Children of America May Help Save from Famine Their Comrades in Allied Lands Across the Sea,  prepared under the direction of the United States Food Administration in coöperation with the United States Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Education, published in 1918.

This book was basically the result of a call for the United States Food Administration (USFA, so I don’t have to type that every time!) to create book for public school use “which will promote the program of food conservation.” Food Saving and Sharing is sometimes referred to as a text book and it certainly has the education element to it. In addition, it includes, photographs, illustrations, and a fair number of little rhymes and sayings to reinforce its ideas.

Shortly after the title page, there’s a brief introduction from Herbert Hoover:

To the Girls and Boys of America:

Now that the terrible war is over, you must be glad that you helped to win it by saving food for our soldiers and our unhappy friends across the sea. But our work of feeding hungry people is not to be greater than it has ever been…To save the world from famine will be a greater task than any of us can imagine, but we can do it if each of us does all he can. I am counting on you…

Later, in World War II, we will see the theme and motto of “Victory!” It was used as a motivation for home gardens, increased self-sufficiency, rationing, and a variety of other food and domestic practices. While World War I didn’t have so clean or simple a motto, this book is a great example of the kind of propaganda (a word that shouldn’t necessarily have a negative context here) that was common during this time, especially from government agencies like the USFA. About two-thirds of the book is spent educating readers on food and nutrition. The last third is about efforts during the war, why they need to continue, and what else young people can do to help. There are a couple of pages on the Garden City movement and the School Garden Army (both of which I’ve come across recently and need to read up on!), organizations designed to promote involvement by school-age children in war efforts and to give them a way to affect change.

Cornell’s Albert R. Mann Library has a nice short overview of the Food Administration that includes the following:

“Food Will Win the War” became the slogan and the Food Administration’s widely disseminated posters, articles, workshops and educational material resulted in a 15% reduction in domestic food consumption without rationing. This meant that in a 12-month period of 1918-1919, this country furnished 18,500,000 tons of food to the Allies.

I can certainly see the appeal of such a book at the end of 1918 and we know that the U.S. did continue its efforts well into 1919 to great success. Efforts like those of the USFA would also be extremely influential in another twenty years when World War II began.

The full version of this book is available online.

I know I didn’t actually talk about or feature the new Military & Wartime Cookery Collection (Ms2017-029), but we will come back to it. For now, you can see the finding aid online (the guide includes a list of the related publications).

From the Crust to the Filling: More About Sandwiches

I don’t know why summer always has me thinking and blogging about sandwiches. Apparently, it’s also a time we acquire materials on sandwiches (we’ll have plenty more bread-and-filling-based publications to share down the road). Today, I found one from 1924, Mrs. Scott’s Sandwich Book: Selected Recipes for Pleasing Appetizing Meals and Light Summer Lunches. Fitting, right? This publication is actually a supplement to a newspaper, The North American.

The short introduction states the following:

They [sandwiches] are made of meat, cheese, eggs, vegetables, salads, fish, dried fruits, nuts, jellies, preserves–of practically everything. And there are hot sandwiches–How good they are!–as well as cold ones. Indeed, this might almost be called the age of sandwiches…Along with the change in the nature of the sandwich has come a decided change in its use. once it was though of merely as a dinner bucket or picnic attribute. Now sandwiches are served at every sort of meal, except formal dinners, and even in the most fashionable of hotels and restaurants they are constantly in demand.

Most pages of the fold-out are themed recipes around an ingredient or set of ingredients, many with small advertisements. Sections include: Assorted Sandwiches, Sandwiches Made of Olives, Cheese Sandwiches, Some Sweet Sandwiches, Dainty Salad Sandwiches, Pleasing Nut Sandwiches, Special Egg Sandwiches, Many Cheese Sandwiches, Selected Hot Sandwiches, Choice Meat Sandwiches, Canned Fish. You may be alternatively fascinated and slightly confused by some of the options, but there are quite a few tasty options, especially if you like cream cheese, olives, or pickles.

There is, of course, a recipe for our old favorite, the lettuce sandwich. And there’s a more fancy tomato and lettuce version or lettuce and cream cheese. If you’d like to pair your lettuce with something a little more unique, you could try peanut butter, dried sausage, or Spanish onion. If you’re a fan of condiments (sweet or savory), there are sandwiches that cater to you, too! Try a Tartar, Jelly, or Brown Sugar Sandwich.

The few remaining pages are full-page ads: one for Supplee Ice Cream and one for Mrs. Schorer’s  Pic-o-naise and Olive-niase. Yes, you read that right. The latter is pretty obvious, but I wasn’t able to find an ingredient list for the Pic-o-naise. If I had to guess, based on the picture, I’d go with mayo mixed with pimento and olive or pickle (definitely something green and minced). We have a pamphlets for Supplee milk  and Mrs. Schlorer’s products elsewhere among the culinary materials, too. Anyway, for a 16-page supplement, Mrs. Scott’s Sandwich Book has a lot to tell us about sandwiches of the time. And hopefully you’re feeling inspired for your next picnic!

Cooking with/in French and German

Back in 2012, I wrote a post about some German cocktail manuals. In 2014, I shared Die Österreichisches Hausfrau: Ein Handbuch für Frauen und Mädchen aller Stände; Praktische Anleitung fur Führung der Hauswirtschaft,  a German-language household guide. And in 2015, I covered Les Gourmandises de Charlotte, a French-language children’s book where food has some strange consequences for one little girl. Although the focus of our culinary materials is content in the English language, it isn’t exclusively what we do–clearly! There are more books on our shelves (and at least one manuscript cookbook) that challenge us to think (or at least READ) internationally. This week, we’re looking at three such books from pre-1900.

One of the items has already been digitized and is available on our website (http://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/HFDBooks/TX707.M46_1786), so I won’t post too much of it here. (In fact, many, many copies of it have been digitized and are online.)

La cuisiniere bourgeoise, suivie de l’office : à l’usage de tous ceux qui se mêlent de dépenses de maisons (1786)

This is the oldest foreign language culinary history publication in the collection. La cuisiniere bourgeoise, suivie de l’office: à l’usage de tous ceux qui se mêlent de dépenses de maisons was published in 1786. It was actually first published in the 1740s and went through many editions. Like many cookbooks/culinary manuals of the time, it is text heavy and not very illustrated. In this particular case, it’s not illustrated at all. It includes paragraph-style recipes, as well as multi-course meal plans. As we might expect with American-published books, there isn’t a table of contents in this volume–at least not at the front. Instead, it’s at the back, in place of an index. I won’t embarrass myself by attempting to translate from French, but it is important to note this covers a lot of the core techniques and ingredients we associate with French cooking.

A little further on in French culinary history, we have Manuel complet d’économie domestique: contenant toutes les recettes les plus simples et les plus efficaces sur l’économie rurale et domestique, à l’usage de la ville et de la campagne, published in 1829 (we have a second edition). Written by Elisabeth Celnart, this is less a cookbook and more a home economics manual.

There are chapters on home and work and on diversions and entertainments (I like the section on training pigeons to sent messages, whereas the previous book had a lot of recipes on how to cook pigeons!). There are  also sections on food, cooking, and preservation, as well as on drinks and, as one the pages below shows, a paragraph about adulteration of beer. Stuck at the back of the volume is a fold-out of illustrations on proper construction of a chimney, too!

Because both the Manuel complet d’économie domestique and our last item are particularly fragile, I was only able to safely scan a few pages, but hopefully they give you a sense of the books. Neues und bewährtes illustriertes Kochbuch für alle Stände: zuverlässige Anleitung zur Bereitung der verschiedenartigsten Speisen, Backwerke, Getränke etc. was written by Henriette Davidis and dates to the late 1890s. The paper is fairly acidic, which is why it has taken on a darker color and tears easily. Both the front and back covers came free long ago, too, as I discovered–but it does have an interesting picture on the front.

This is strictly a cookbook and, in typical style of the era and origin, is written in a lovely Fraktur font.

Fraktur does seem daunting, but it was used for a lot of German language publishing from the 16th to the mid-20th centuries. Learning to read it is kind of like learning to read 18th or 19th century handwriting–it takes a bit of practice, but you can start to decipher it. Of course,  you still need to be able to understand German, too. The first page above has some pages from the chapter on sauces, including the classic Hollandaise and a remoulade, as well as a lemon butter and a sardine sauce. The second page, if can’t guess from the illustrations, is from the chapter on fish. The third page includes the introduction to the section on baking (tortes, cakes, yeast breads, lard-based treats, and the like).

Non-English language culinary publications can present a different set of challenges for researchers who don’t speak the language, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore them. Culinary traditions can travel across boundaries, oceans, and languages, so we need to embrace those challenges, leverage resources that can help make them accessible, and see what we kind find, hidden away in their pages. You just might find the best recipe for an Apfeltorte where you least (or most) expect it!

---

On a culinary-related note, I’ve been in clean-up mode lately. As a result, I have moved some culinary history ephemera that was previously digitized to a public home on Special Collections’ digital site: VT Special Collections Online. The main page will show you recent additions, many of which include these items. You can also check out some individual manuscript collections here (some of which were previously added and some of which are new additions) and our digitized books and publications here. I’m hoping to add more materials in the future, too!

New Pamphlet Round-Up #6!

It’s time again for another pamphlet round-up! (Side note: As with last time around, these are all brand new items. They haven’t been added to the Culinary Pamphlet Collection yet, but they will be soon! I’m actually getting some processing done this summer!) Presented in no particular order:

“Winter Menu Magic” comes from the National Biscuit Company (which you might know as Nabisco these days), and was published in 1933. It largely focuses on simple, thrifty, one-dish meals, including things like a “Vegetarian Loaf” made with graham crackers, a “Beefsteak and Oyster Pie,” and for those more special Sunday Dinners, a “Lobster Bisque.”

“The Story of Sugar Cane” is a history of, you guessed it, sugar cane, from the American Sugar Refining Company. The American Sugar Refining Company owned several brands, including Sunny Cane, Franklin, and Domino.

“Infant Feeding and Hygiene” is a 1913 pamphlet from the Nestle’s Food Company. It’s a multi-part booklet that covers care and feeding of the well and sick child, as well as a whole section on Nestle’s food itself. It contains testimonials and pictures of happy babies who have, presumably, been fed the namesake product.

This item necessitated scanning two pages. The cover title continues on the title page: “Bread and–Swift’s Premium Oleomargarine.” I love the “Not touched by hand” tagline, which, although the pamphlet isn’t dated, points to a period where machine production and sanitary environments were on the minds of consumers AND corporations.

“Good Things to Eat” comes from D&C Quality Food Products and dates from 1928. The company was based in Brooklyn and made a number of convenience items, including “My-T-Fine pudding,” flour, and pie mix.

“Creative Cooking with Cottage Cheese” is from the American Dairy Association and probably dates to the 1960s. “Creative” is right: there are dips, breads, meatless and meat main dishes, veggie,s, salads, a couple of sandwiches, and a heap of desserts.

Last up is “Meat in the Meal for Health Defense,” a 1942 pamphlet from the National Livestock and Meat Board. It includes recipes and advice for feeding a family in compliance with nutrition programs and defense efforts.

This is only about 1/5 of the pamphlet backlog in my office at present, but there are definitely some good discoveries, no matter what your interest. As always, you’re welcome to come view items–even the unprocessed ones–and visit us in Special Collections. We’ll be here all summer!

More on the Mary Frances Series

Back in 2012, one of my early posts on a children’s cookbook was about the two copies of The Mary Frances Cook Book or Adventures Among the Kitchen People that we had in our collection. While that post was about the two different covers between editions of the same year, at the time, I didn’t do much research into Mary Frances as a character. A couple of months, completely by chance, I discovered she was the star of not only one book, but seven! Not only that, we had two more on our shelves!

First, there’s The Mary Frances Sewing Book; or, Adventures Among the Thimble People (1913).

Our copy is actually a 1997 reprint, which is why the cover looks newer, but the contents are the same as the 1913. The preface references the previous volume from 1912, and the style is much the same. This book combines stories, fairy tale-esque characters, simple lessons (in this case, patterns and stitches) to teach lessons and sewing and mending. (I love how nicely illustrated these books are!)

The other title, which I happened to spot on the shelf while I was browsing for something completely different, is The Mary Frances Garden Book: or, Adventures Among the Garden People (1916).

Our copy is an original 1916 (as you can see from some of the wear and tear). One additional element of this book is that it includes little garden cut-out pieces and fold out pages in which to place them. Our copy has a number of loose cut-outs tucked in among the pages and even some slits in pages to suggest it saw some use from some little girl or boy.

The whole series (as far as I can tell) consist of seven books, published over 9 years:

• The Mary Frances Cook Book or Adventures Among the Kitchen People (1912)
• The Mary Frances Sewing Book; or, Adventures Among the Thimble People (1913)
• The Mary Frances Housekeeper, or, Adventures Among the Doll People (1914)
• The Mary Frances First Aid Book: with Ready Reference List of Ordinary Accidents and Illnesses, and Approved Home Remedies (1916)
• The Mary Frances Garden Book: or, Adventures Among the Garden People (1916)
• The Mary Frances Knitting and Crocheting Book, or, Adventures Among the Knitting People (1918)
• The Mary Frances Story Book: or, Adventures Among the Story People (1921)

Given the time period, this series appears to have been a multi-volume tutorial for young girls. It covers skills they would have been expected to have as wives, mothers, leaders of a family, and as educators of future children. Their storybook style and fairy tale themes can make them a little deceptive, but the lessons are clearly there. My lesson from this post? I have some more Mary Frances books to track down so we can complete our set!

Alcohol by Mail, Early 20th Century Style

Like a good blogger, I have a constant list of ideas in a file somewhere: culinary books, ephemera, or collections to write about some day. Today’s feature has been on my list, probably since the day we got it (or very nearly). I forgot about it for a while, then put it on the list some months ago. It seems as good a day as any to look at an item about mail order booze…

The image above is a c.1910s mail order price list from Lowenbach Bros. At the time we acquired the item, tempted as I was to lose hours on a single sheet of paper, I resisted. Which is to say, I didn’t go down the genealogy road and attempt to identify or locate one or more actual Lowenbach brothers who may have been connected to the business. So, you can imagine how excited I was to do a little digging this morning for the first time in 4+ years and discover someone else was very interested in this family and had written about it on a blog devoted to the pre-Prohibition whiskey industry. So, if you want to learn about the Lowenbach family, which included three generations, check out the post on “Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men.” It’s worth noting that the referenced blog post points the origins of the business being even closer to Blacksburg than Alexandria–it was in Harrisonburg!

(Hmm, what? Where were we? I may have been a bit distracted by the discovery of that blog…)

Anyway, our collection consists of this single mail order flyer. If you’re a cocktail historian or fan, many or all of the brands listed may seem unfamiliar. While there are certain brands and distillery locations that have been around for the long haul (a version of Old Crow, for example, has been around since the 1830s, though it’s had many evolutions). There were also plenty of more short-lived ones, too. And, as we know, Prohibition took a lot of business out of the running–including the Lowenbach Bros. I suspect this price list dates to the early 1910s, as the company was shut down by the ban and didn’t reopen afterward (at least not under the same or a similar name). I also love that the flyer includes bottled cocktails in three kinds from three different companies. Bottled cocktails have been around since the early days and while some version of them has always been on the shelves, there was a distinct decline in the latter half of the 20th century. Interest in them is on the rise again, as well as in barrel-aged cocktails. I feel like the Lowenbachs would have been behind that trend, too. After all barrels have always been integral to distilling and transporting alcohol.

I digitized the item for the post and since the whole collection is this one item, I was able to add to our digital collection site. You can look at it in on the web here: https://digitalsc.lib.vt.edu/items/show/6946. You can also read the finding aid online for the collection, too (though it may be time to re-visit it and add a bit more).

Items like this may seem odd or out of place, but they can still give us some great insight into cocktail culture and alcohol history. We’re here all summer, if you need some cocktail (or culinary) inspiration or just want to dig through some fun ephemera. You never know what you might find!