Winter, 2004

New & Noteworthy	Holiday Open House & Tree Lighting	Past Newsletters
Food History		Letters & Reminiscences
Iron Heritage Trail Brochure		Collections Connection

On Saturday, December 4, from 2-4:30 p.m. the Sharon Historical Society will host an open house at the museum. Visitors of all ages will be welcome to visit the museum, watch Sharon weaver Ken Edholm demonstrate historical weaving techniques on the 18th century barn loom, munch refreshments, make pomander balls and ornaments, and enjoy the splendid holiday decorations designed and installed by local resident Charles Tomlinson, well-known costume and set designer for ballet, television and theatre.

Following the open house, everyone is invited to Sharon's lovely green to join in festive carol singing, enjoy the harmonies of the Salisbury Band and Hot Chocolate Society, and ooh and ahh over the lighting of the Sharon tree.

Questions/Information: call SHS at (860) 364-5688 or e-mail to: director@sharonhist.org.

Iron Heritage Trail Brochure Offers Brief History of Area Industry

The latest project of the Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area is a well-written and illustrated four-color brochure on the iron history of the tri-state area. Funded by the National Park Service, the brochure, written by geologist and historian Ed Kirby, offers photographs, maps and text detailing nine historic driving tours from Kent and Colebrook, Connecticut, to Lanesborough, Massachusetts.

The centerpiece of the iron heritage trail is the Beckley Furnace, located on Lower Road in East Canaan, Connecticut. Designated Connecticut's only Industrial Monument, this
furnace was put into blast in 1847 and operated until the winter of 1918-1919. From mid-May until mid-October, Friends of the Beckley Furnace are on site on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. to conduct tours and present programs at the educational center housed in the former Barnum Richardson Company office building.

Other sites that may be visited on one of the nine tours include the site of Samuel Forbes' eighteenth century Norfolk forge, the remains of the Buena Vista Furnace in Lower City, Falls Village, the Mount Riga Furnace in Salisbury, the restored Sharon Valley Lime Kiln in Sharon, the recently stabilized Kent Furnace, the Sharparoon Furnace in Dover, New York, and the Clove Iron Works Furnace #2 in Beekman, New York.

Copies of the free brochure are available at the Sharon Historical Society and various venues in the tri-state area. For further information, or to request brochures for distribution, contact the Sharon Historical Society at (860) 364-5688 or e-mail to: director@sharonhist.org.

 

New and Noteworthy

Winter Winterthur Lectures Set
Mark your calendars for two noteworthy lectures to be held at the SHS in early 2005. On Saturday, February 12, Maggie Lidz, the Curator of Gardens and Estate History at the Winterthur Museum, the famous Dupont estate in Delaware, will give a talk on historic gardens. On Saturday March 19, Patricia Halfpenny, Curator of Collections, will speak on the museum's unparalleled collection of American furniture and decorative arts. The lectures will be held at the historical society from 4-5:30, and pre-registration will be required. Watch the mail for more details.

Holiday Weaving Program
Weaving for the Holidays will take place on Saturday, December 11, from 10 a.m. to noon at the SHS. This program will teach participants to weave a small mat in seasonal colors that may be hung on a tree, in a window or used as a coaster. There is a materials fee of $3 for members, $5 for non-members. This activity is appropriate for ages 5 and up with adult assistance.

Seasonal Weekend Hours
The museum will be open for holiday shopping and tours on Saturday, November 27 and Saturday, December 18, from
1-4 pm. The gift shop has new stock with holiday ornaments, decorations, advent calendars, candles, cards and much more. Shop locally and support Sharon's history!

Sterling Silver Clock Tower
The perfect gift for the Sharon resident who has everything: a reproduction of Sharon's Clock Tower superbly interpreted as a pendant in beautiful sterling silver. Handmade by New York State artisan Norman Dann, the pendant measures
approximately 2" long and a quarter-inch wide. Quantities are limited so come by early!
The pendants retail for $40 each.

 

Letters & Reminiscences

In response to several articles that have appeared in the Sharon Archives over the last year, we have been privileged to receive some correspondence from long-time residents of Sharon who have moved on to-most often-warmer, climes! The following is a series of reminiscences of Sharon in the 1930s, sent to us by Charlie Hoag, who now resides in Fort Worth, Texas. If you have stories of Sharon to share, and yearn to become a published author, it's time to come out of the woodwork. Call, stop by, or simply mail your stories to the SHS. We will print as many as we can, and only with your permission.

(Letter reprinted by permission, October, 2004.)

Sharon, Connecticut, in the 1930s (and a little more):

During the 1930's I lived with my parents at a home adjacent to "The Brown Cup," a restaurant my parents owned across the street from the Center School (and high school). My mother was a registered nurse, having come here from Ireland with two of her sisters. She and my father met at a Christmas reception at Mr. and Mrs. William F. Buckley, Sr.'s home. In 1926 I went with my mother by ship to Ireland to visit her family. To this day I still communicate with my many cousins in Ireland and England via e-mail.

My father was determined that I get an education. The summer of 1935 I spent at Hotchkiss School with Henry Ford, II, as a classmate. I didn't like Hotchkiss at all so the next fall it was off to Salisbury School and I didn't like that either. They didn't play baseball and that was my personal goal. My father, who was on the school board, still didn't give up on my education so off I went to Amenia High School. All I did there was meet a lot of new people and have a good time. I finally got back to good old Sharon High where I was very happy. Mainly we played baseball! Everything went smoothly until Halloween night of 1938. Someone decided to traumatize Mr. Percival Wilde's home on Upper Main Street. Somehow I got myself involved in the mess of oil cans (which were thrown on the roof), wrecked cars and wagons (which were parked on the lawn). On my way home, in front of Dr. Chaffee's house, the Connecticut State Police stopped. They asked me my name and told me to get in their car. They took me to my father and told him what happened and that Mrs. Wilde had seen me pulling a wagon up to their front porch. She surmised that I was the instigator of all the mess, which I wasn't. After a trip to Cannan they brought me home. The next morning we had an assembly at school which was attended by the police and others. We were told to go home to get rags and brushes and to report to the Wilde home immediately. We spent the rest of the day cleaning up the mess. While all this was going on a member of our group proceeded to soap the inside windows of one of the police cars! By the way, Mrs. Wilde was a Sharonite from the Markres family. Mr. Wilde was on the school board (which I think is why the above event took place) and he was a well-known writer of one-act plays.

Well, the class of 1939 made it and we were the last class to graduate from Sharon High. Our principal was Mr. Edward Dakin. After that we all went to New York City to the World's Fair for our graduation trip. That winter Joe Stahovic, Don Carley and I packed up and went to West Palm Beach, Florida, where another Sharonite got me a job with Saks 5th Avenue. That Sharonite was George Scherbatoff. Stuart Prindle was the doorman at Saks. This trip was repeated during the winter of 1940-1941 then it was time for Bob Hotaling and I to say goodbye and off we went to the United States Air Force.

Bob and I stayed together for about six months then we went different ways in the Air Force. Bob became a Link Trainer Instructor and spent the war in Muskogee, Oklahoma. I went into the B-29 program and flew in them as a Flight Engineer until 1948 when I got out of the service. My wife, Anna Doris, two daughters and I went to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I graduated from Spartan School of Aeronautics. We then moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where two more children came along. I spent nearly thirty-five years with Bell Helicopter/Textron before retiring. I now have grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I lost my wife to Parkinson's nearly three
years ago.

That is more than the 1930's but it was hard to stop there. I am now 84 and reside at a care center where I am very well.

Regards to all, Charles Hoag

P.S. Also on that infamous Halloween night, someone put a cow in Sharon Center School and somebody else put a wagon on top of Frank Marckres' filling station on the Amenia Road. Wasn't me those times!! Also, I believe Ed Kirby can give you a more vivid description of my Caterpillar driving experiences. That happened in the 1930's also.

Food History Or "They Ate WHAT?".........compiled by Liz Shapiro

I love to cook, I love to eat, and I love history. The history of food and "foodways," the rituals surrounding the consumption of food, is a fascinating field of study. As any adult reading this article can testify, the foods that we eat and enjoy change almost as frequently as do our fashions. Jello molds, fondue parties, chicken a la king and mint chocolate-chip bundt cake (made with
yellow cake mix and pistachio instant pudding) are just a few of my childhood favorites that simply don't show up in most modern cookbooks, or even on the pages of Women's Day magazine!

As we enter into this most festive time of year and our minds fall precipitously towards our stomachs, let's spend a moment learning a little about the history of foods and cooking in the United States. The impetus for this article comes from one of my favorite boxes of archival material in the collection of the Historical Society-the one labeled "Cookbooks and Food". And, as a reward for those of you who are truly adventurous (and a little bit hungry) by the end of the article, I've included a few recipes from The Sharon Cook Book, 1901, published by the Ladies of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

If I've piqued your interest, I append a list of Internet sites that are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of food history. I also
include a short bibliography of modern resources on the history of food.

Part I
The first portion of this article is excerpted from "Not by Bread Alone", an exhibit that explored the influences and inventions that have shaped American food habits over the past two hundred years. The exhibit was on view at the Carl A. Kroch Library at Cornell University in 2002. The text is taken from the exhibit website and is reprinted with permission.

Early Cookery Books
By today's standards, early cookbooks offered very little in the way of systematic, step-by-step instruction. Quantities of ingredients were rarely given, and directions were ambiguous. 15th and 16th century books on food mainly described how to prepare ingredients with health and medicine in mind, and reflected the medieval preference for heavily spiced foods in vinegar based sauces.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, distinct national cuisines began to emerge, though the majority of published cookbooks record only the food habits of the wealthy. Alongside the growing body of published cookbooks was a rich oral tradition of shared family knowledge. Most middle class homemakers learned how to cook by watching their mothers and older sisters. Family traditions were often preserved by writing favorite recipes into household journals, which were passed down from one generation to the next.
From the 18th century onwards, an increasing number of cookery books were written by and for the growing middle class, which placed a new emphasis on how to achieve economy in the kitchen. Not until the 19th century did cookbooks begin to resemble the clear and comprehensive instruction manuals we use today.
Home Economics & Food Reform
The home economics movement helped homemakers apply scientific principles to improve conditions in their homes, institutions, and communities. By sharing their knowledge of nutrition and hygiene through outreach programs, home economists had a significant influence on American eating habits in the 20th century. The impact of the movement was strengthened after 1914, when federal funding from the Smith-Lever Act established the Cooperative Extension Service, an educational system designed to enable people to improve their lives and communities through partnerships with experts and institutions. Initially, many women responded skeptically to the new ideas promoted by home economists, particularly since their emphasis on Anglo-Saxon cooking did not reflect the rich culinary traditions of immigrant populations.
Home economists also responded to some of the major national crises of the twentieth century. During the Great Depression, for example, they provided guidance on selecting a healthful diet with limited means. And during the two world wars, they stressed the importance of meat and sugar substitutes, the need for food preservation, and the challenge of maintaining high nutritional standards despite wartime shortages.
Kitchen Technology
Technological invention and domestic reform had an enormous impact on the evolution of the American kitchen. By the late 19th century, fewer women could rely on domestic servants; the housewife of the early 20th century required, and demanded, a more efficient kitchen in which to work.
A wide range of cooking appliances and equipment emerged during this period, offering the choice of coal range, coal-and-gas range, gas burners to convert the coal range to gas, gas range, electric range, and oil-cooker. As electricity became less expensive, it gradually replaced gas. Although some originally feared it might cause electrocution, in fact, the electric stove proved to be safer than gas, which carried a risk of explosion.
Another useful feature of the 19th century kitchen was the refrigerator, at first simply a lidless box containing a lump of ice. Finally, kitchen tools emerged to meet every conceivable "need," from coffee grinders to apple peelers to salad spinners. Perhaps no other segment of house wares is more characteristically American than the never-ending parade of products and "gadgets."
Part II
As time went on and eating habits changed, so did recipes! It's no wonder that interpreting old recipes can be tricky. The ingredients in the recipes might be unfamiliar, and the measurements (a "handful") might sound nebulous at best. Also, what was both acceptable, and even fashionable, to eat changed dramatically over time.

The following guidelines to interpreting historic recipes appear on the website:
http://www.gti.net/mocolib1/kid/food2.html#oldcookbooks
The site offers tidbits of information on the changing American palate as well as resources for those who are interested in dishing up a little bit of culinary history!
Interpreting & Adapting Historic Recipes
Cooking the "real stuff" from original recipes sounds easy, but it's not...even if you're lucky enough to have access to ancient roasting pits, colonial beehive ovens, Conestoga kitchens and fireless cookers. What did the colonial housewife mean by when she wrote in her recipe "butter the size of an egg?" Exactly how hot was a "hot oven?" How did the Virginia housewife know when her hams were finished smoking? Was the Cincinnati housewife who cooked in the 1920s more likely to use single or double acting baking powder? This is complicated stuff. Historic hen's eggs were generally smaller than the ones we have today; hot ovens & smoked hams were a matter of experience and the preference/propensity for using "new-fangled" food items were (as they are today) a matter of money, tradition, and personal taste.
Truth is, most old recipes were not much more than shopping lists with cursory prep notes. Detailed instructions were not considered necessary because it was understood that whoever cooked the food already knew the basics. Measurements are time/country/food specific. Did you know some culinary historians say we Americans measure with objects (as opposed to weight) because of our pioneer heritage? Conestoga wagons had plenty of cups & spoons but very few reliable scales. Scientific oven temperatures and exact measurements had no place in pre-industrial kitchens...which explains why food was commonly "served forth" when it was "done." Standard measurements and detailed cooking instructions were a by-product of the Industrial Revolution and are commonly attributed to Fannie M. Farmer, principal of the Boston Cooking School.
There is no single place to obtain all of the historic conversions necessary to interpret & recreate original historic recipes in your kitchen. This does not mean your task is impossible. Quite the contrary. Many food historians agree on these points:
1. If you are working with an original text look for notes regarding measurements used---guidelines for the new cook, conversion charts or handwritten notes.
2. Check current & adapted cookbooks for similar recipes
---this will help interpret the "hot" oven (475 degrees) & provide modern measurements
3. Use common sense--if the recipe seems to call for too much salt, cut it down---maybe the salt used in ancient times was much more concentrated than today?
4. Ask for help! Many living history museums have staff who specialize in foodways (recreating original recipes, cooking in old kitchens & cultivating heirloom gardens).
5. No matter how close you come to the original recipe the end-product will probably taste different from what people ate long ago. Even if you cook it in the "traditional" way. Why? Because the food we buy today is different from the food they used back then.
The recipes that are included are from the Sharon Cook Book, published in 1901 by the Ladies of the Methodist Episcopal Church. I've chosen some which might be replicated today, a recipe for fruitcake that might evoke childhood memories, and one that illustrates rather graphically how tastes evolve over time!

Pressed Veal Hearts

Boil the hearts with one onion and with sweet herbs until tender. Lay sliced eggs in a basin, put in the sliced hearts and boil the liquor down to one cupful, season with pepper and salt. Add one tablespoonful of dissolved gelatine and pour over the meat. Place a weight on top and when chilled unmould and garnish with parsley.

Plain Fruit Cake

Three-fourths of a cupful of butter, two cupfuls of granulated sugar, two eggs, beaten separately, one teaspoonful of allspice, one-half teaspoon grated nutmeg, one-third teaspoonful ground cloves, one-fourth of a teaspoonful ground mace, one cupful of milk with three-fourths of a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in it, three cupfuls of sifted flour, with one teaspoonful cream tartar mixed in it, one cupful of sliced citron, two cupfuls of raisins. Mix materials in order given above, beating each well before it is mixed with the others. Add part of the flour and milk at one time, then the rest of the flour. Flour the fruit and add last. Bake in a moderate oven more than an hour.

Sharon Pudding

Cook two-thirds of a cup of rice in one quart of milk until it is soft, add one cup of cream, half a cup of milk, a piece of butter, as large as a small egg, one cup of sugar, a little salt, half a teaspoon of cinnamon, two-thirds of a cup of raisins. Bake slowly about two hours. It can be made with milk in place of cream if you add more butter, but cream is better.

Peanut Candy

Shell one quart of peanuts, skin and roll fine. This should make just a coffee cupful. Put a heaping cupful of granulated sugar in an iron or granite pan, set on a hot fire, and stir constantly until it melts, remembering that it must melt quickly to be a success. Meantime put the peanuts in the oven to heat and have the pans buttered and placed on the back of the range, where they will be hot, as soon as the sugar is melted pour in the hot peanuts, take directly from the fire, and pour it into the hot buttered pans. The candy when cold should be broken into pieces and should be thin, crisp and shiny.

Bibliography
Bittersweet: The Story of Sugar, Peter Macinnis
Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People, Linda Civitello
Food and Culture: A Reader, Carole Counihan, Penny Van Estenk
Food in History, Reay Tannahill
Pickled, Potted and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving
Changed the World, Sue Shephard
Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks, Constance B. Hieatt et. Al.

Websites of Interest
www.foodhistorynews.com
www.recipelink.com/history/html
www.geocities.com/foodedge/timeline.htm

Collections Connection by Marge McAvoy

In the summer 2004 issue of Sharon Archives, we listed all the items accessioned by the SHS this year. The first item on the list is "smoking cap." Donated by Barbara Bartram, it is an elegant little piece. It is about 5 inches tall, made of dark brown velvet, embroidered with red thread and black jet beads. It has no brim, but is adorned with a long tassel of red and black thread. Barely visible inside is the name "Robert J. Godwin" with the date 1860, most likely the name and date of the
manufacturer.

The little cap has been sitting on one of our workroom shelves for several months. Every time I walk by it, I like to imagine who might have worn it and why. I had a feeling that it had belonged to a man, and it turns out that is probably correct. At the suggestion of our Curator of Textiles, Francoise Kelz, I consulted The Encyclopedia of World Costume, in which I discovered that men did indeed wear special garments while they smoked! There was no specific entry for "smoking cap", but separate entries for "cap" and jacket" pretty much illustrate our little treasure. In the 1800s, various types of informal jackets began to replace the more formal coats. The smoking jacket "was usually of a richly-colored velvet, cloth or brocade, decorated by braid loops and buttons. It was reserved for use by gentlemen at home in the smoking room where they could savour their tobacco smoking without offending the ladies' susceptible nostrils in the drawing room".

The entry for "cap" proves our hat to be a "fez", so called after the town of Fez in Morocco. "Made of cloth or wool, it was generally dark red but could be in dark blue or black and was decorated by a silk tassel on top". Caps had come into style during the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when men generally wore heavy wigs (over shaved heads) in public. No doubt when they came home at the end of the day, they were glad to doff the wig, but would have needed other protection for their bald pates in colder temperatures. What could be better than a nice, soft, lightweight velvet cap, with a tassel, no less?

The wearing of a smoking outfit was done by the more well to do folk. Barbara Bartram tells us that this cap belonged to the Benedict family, who once owned a mill on the Millerton Road, near Mudge Pond Road. I asked Ed Kirby what he knew of the Benedict family, and if he thought they might have been well off enough to have leisure time in which to dress for a good smoke. He said he thought that they would. Milling was a lucrative industry. The miller would keep a small percentage of whatever grain he milled, which allowed him to earn a comfortable living if he managed his business well. After a quick trip to Hillside Cemetery, Ed returned to report that Abel Benedict, miller, died in 1874, and is buried next to his wife, whose name was Wealthy. Were they indeed wealthy, and was this his smoking cap? We don't yet know, but will keep researching it.

In the meantime, if you would like to see the little Fez, it is on display in the hall here at the SHS, along with many of the other recently donated items we have accessioned. Please stop by for a visit, and remember - if in doubt, don't throw it out!
Bring it to us first!