The making of a feast in 19th century frontier America
A family memoir of the 1860s describes what Thanksgiving and food production was like back then | The American Buffalo documentary reviewed
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I’m sharing personal history this time. Samhain, a November 1 Gaelic festival which marks the beginning of winter, is also a day to reflect on one’s ancestors. I’ve been reading a memoir from my great-great grandfather, who was raised in Ohio in the 1850s-1880s. The mouth-watering descriptions of Thanksgiving and holiday feasts seemed just right to share in November.
Then, from the same time-period, make sure you watch Ken Burns’ new documentary on Public Broadcasting System (PBS) called The American Buffalo.
Robin A.
THANKSGIVING AND HISTORY ARE ON MY MIND THIS MONTH, so I’m taking you on a trip backwards in time to the 1860s. What was Thanksgiving like then in the heart of the United States?
I found a written memoir from my great-great-grandfather, Frank Jennings, who grew up near Delaware, Ohio. He includes passages about Thanksgiving food and food preparation 160 years ago. Life was both different—and yet had many similarities.
Thanksgiving in the United States became official November 26, 1789, when President George Washington issued a proclamation making it a “Day of Publick Thanksgivin” and national holiday.
My great-great grandfather was born in 1852 in Ohio, one of ten surviving children raised on a farm by his resourceful frontier-farming parents. He was told that, as a baby, he was rocked in a wooden “sugar trough” like the ones used to collect sap from the maple trees.
Exactly 100 years ago, in 1923, he wrote up memoirs about his large family and his childhood. Those pages ended up with me—and all quotes here are from Frank Jennings. Some of the language sounds archaic now, but I lightly edited and reorganized it for easier reading.
By 1861, the Civil War had begun and families everywhere were impacted, but my ancestor’s journal focuses mostly on his hard-working family carving out an existence in Ohio, educating the children, and building community ties. He later earned a law degree and moved to San Diego, California, positioning the next five generations of my family in this state.
What struck me about his family memories were the camaraderie and practicality of extended family group-living, and the time devoted to food preparation: gardening/farming, hunting, preserving, and cooking. It sounds like frontier adults devoted hours per day to food production.
My ancestor Frank grew up in a household with 15-20 people. Besides the 10 children and two parents, the household included “Lucinda Ward whom father and mother raised from young childhood, grandmother Jennings and cousins who lived with us more or less of the time, domestic and outside help, school teachers boarding with the family and visiting guests.”
Meal times were busy for the cooks of the family. He adds, “Beginning about 1855 and continuing for some fifteen years, there was eaten at our table a daily average of more than 45 meals, 315 each week, and more than 16,000 a year.”
To help supply all these meals in the mid 1800s, there would have been a smaller stove inside, but bake-day took place at a large wood-burning outside iron oven which stood a short distance from the house. “It resembled in shape nothing so much as the shell of a large turtle elevated some three feet above the ground.” It was young Frank’s job to haul the wood and get the fire started.
“After the wood [in the oven] was thoroughly ignited and burning, the iron door was tightly closed… and the wood permitted to slowly burn until reduced to ashes. When the great, cavernous oven was intensely heated these [ashes] were withdrawn by a long handled scraper.”
“Then mother, assisted by Lucinda Ward and sister Sarah, came out bringing numerous pans of kneaded bread, properly raised for baking and by means of a long-handled shovel…they were distributed throughout the oven. There were twenty four loaves in all, and to my surprise, when baked appeared almost double in size those we buy in bakeries now. [in 1923] In due time the bread was beautifully browned and done. Then were brought out pies by the dozen, cookies literally by the peck, as well as cake and pudding, for there was ample heat in the oven to cook these as well.”
Practically everything consumed was produced on the farm with the exception of things like tea, coffee, sugar, salt and perhaps some grain.
Thanksgiving was probably attended by two dozen or more people. “Mother was a famous cook and took great pride and pleasure in preparing her wonderful Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years dinners. There was often much pleasantry and badinage exchanged on these occasions. I remember well that mother, like all good cooks, warned her guests at the introduction of each new dish, she questioned whether it would be fit to eat: and occasionally father, with knife, fork or spoon in hand ready to serve, with a twinkle in his eye and a feigned seriousness, would inquire, “Shall we try it or pass it by?” This usually caused a laugh and some pleasant discomfiture to mother.”
“I shall never forget the ravishing odors that pervaded the combination dining room and kitchen during the preparation of one of these big dinners. To the aroma of sage, cinnamon, cloves and spices was added the odor which came floating out from the stove oven whenever its door was opened to note the progress of an enormous turkey.”
“To these were added the those smells escaping from cooking vegetables, gravies, sauces, syrups and other edibles. [For dessert] there were aromas of freshly baked mince, pumpkin, or other pies, as well as cakes and doughnuts. Lastly, there came from beneath the cover of the great kettle, simmering on the back of the stove, the delicious smell of the great plum pudding which was always the crowning glory of these feasts.”
“I wish I were as able as my sisters to adequately describe these meals. I gave mother and the cooks the highest compliment a hungry, growing child could pay, by eating to the utmost limit of capacity. The menu of these dinners embraced everything the fastidious epicurean or the strong, hungry man could wish, and in unlimited abundance.”
“The stores from which it was supplied were all at hand, in the cellar, pantry, smoke-house, or buried in the ground outside. There were pickles—sweet, sour, spiced and of many kinds. There were delicious relishes, jams, jellies, and butters of every fruit the country produced, and vegetables of equally great variety. Of fresh meats, there was always at hand beef, pork, veal, mutton, turkey, chicken, duck and often wild game. There was beef and pork in barrels and hanging from rafters in the old smoke-house…
There was also fresh, in cans, or dried ready for instant use the ingredients of mince, apple, cherry, peach, currant, gooseberry, raspberry, plum, pumpkin and other kinds of pies, puddings and pastry, including the plum pudding which mother usually cooked at Thanksgiving. There was also a barrel of sauerkraut, another of vinegar, one or more kegs of syrup, a large can of honey, sometimes many homemade cheeses, and in the attic, so its contents would keep dry, was a big chest containing bushels of hickory, walnut, and hazelnuts.”
“When the long table was set and loaded with the creations of mother’s culinary art, it literally groaned with the burden and variety it supported, but as all gastronomical restrictions were banned for the occasion, the strain of the table gradually passed to the diners.”
“When capacity and desire were largely exhausted, as a finale, there was placed before each a great slab of wonderful plum pudding, overflown by a copious helping of delicious syrup, the whole being so inviting and absolutely irresistible that none could pass it by. And when this was finished, the great feast was at an end.”
I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving 2023 and celebration of Earth’s bounty!
Robin Applegarth
A riveting American history documentary
AT THE SAME TIME PERIOD covered by my ancestor’s memoir, a darker side of American history was unfolding. The government made— and then broke—treaties with Native American tribes, pushing them away from their ancestral lands. At the same time, early American adventurers hunted the buffalo they depended on almost to the brink of extinction, changing the landscape and Native American lives forever.
The new PBS documentary (in two parts) of The American Buffalo is by award-winning documentarian Ken Burns. I thought it was well-paced, riveting, and emotional as it described the iconic species of American bison roaming the heartland of America and how the decimation of that species also affected all the people involved. There is a close interweaving of the history of the Native Americans with the history of the buffalo.
The American continent transformed from a population of indigenous humans who mostly understood that we belonged to the Earth to a modern European worldview that the Earth belonged to us.
Where my ancestors lived, the indigenous people who called the Delaware County, Ohio region “home” included the Wyandot, Lenape, Shawnee, and Seneca Cayuga tribes. As a many-generations-later descendent of the European settlers, I feel our nation owes Native Americans some restitution for all the broken treaties, government removal from their lands, and suppression of their culture.
Part two of this documentary tells the hopeful story of the fractured but persistent restoration efforts to bring back the buffalo to reclaim some of its rightful place on American ground again. Some Native American tribes are reclaiming their role as people of the buffalo.
Deer sightings
Finally, another large animal has been active this fall. The deer have been in rut and I’ve encountered a large buck on my local walks a few times, following a doe.
Here’s another deer photo below from the Puget Sound, Washington region. Greg Johnston, author of a regional guidebook, was amused by this young buck who had been rooting in the grasses. He told me, “That’s a black-tailed deer, the coastal subspecies of mule deer.” Greg added, “Hiking grounds me, reminds me that the machinations of humanity are but aberrations, only nature is real.”
As long as we can find respite in nature, there are paths to renewal and restoration. I’m grateful for those opportunities. What are you grateful for this month?
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That was mouth-watering, thanks Robin.
I thoroughly enjoyed your fascinating story of Thanksgiving long ago as described by Frank Jennings. You have made my imagination soar and my appreciation deepen for those earlier times.
We recently watched Ken Burns’ outstanding documentary about the American Buffalo and found it most enlightening .