A Polish countess of ca. 1900 figures in our account, but first some background on women and brewing, which for our purposes here means brewing in the European tradition. According to a well-referenced Wikipedia essay:
From the beginning of industrialization to the 1960s and early 1970s, most women were moved out of the brewing industry, though throughout the world, they continued to homebrew following ancestral methods.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_brewing
Further reading suggests the period of exclusion started with the rise of male brewing guilds in Europe and intensified with the onset of industrialization. With the rise of modern craft brewing in the last 40 years and changing cultural attitudes, women have entered – or rather re-entered – professional brewing. Women have also been active in beer education, both consumer and academic, and form an important part of the consumer base.
Still, the brewing past provides notable examples of female achievement in commercial brewing, including in rural settings. First, a question of definition: Does a landowning member of the Polish aristocracy qualify as a “rural woman” in the present context?
Typically, women of modest means, often not benefitting from higher education, have been the focus of RWSA studies. This makes sense from numerous standpoints, especially a demographic one – the bulk of most nations’ peoples are low-earners if not often providing unwaged labour, a particular feature of women’s history.
Yet, some women who lived or worked in rural settings were not of this class, but rather its obverse: the gentry. Their challenges and achievements are still notable once the context in which they worked is factored. A good example is the “Countess Brewer” of Kiev, the city today styled Kyiv in Ukraine and formerly part of the Russian Empire. In 1896 dozens of American newspapers printed an item about the countess that apparently originated in the Philadelphia Record.
Zwierzyniec Brewery in Poland was an estate brewery established in the 19th century by Polish nobility. It has no known connection to Countess Branicka. (Budynek główny browaru w Zwierzyńcu). Via Wikipedia.
The stories describe a “Russian” countess who grew grain on her estates that was processed into beer in her brewery, also located on the estate it seems, albeit the actual location is not specified. It seems likely though that the brewery was on or near her barley-growing estate. Certainly the basic raw material for beer, barley, was grown on her lands which she had to visit regularly and probably lived at for certain periods.
The Naples Record printed the story in February 1896, see here (via Fulton Newspapers).
The Naples Record February 5, 1896 via Fulton Newspapers.
The story explains the countess paid a visit to a Berlin, Germany brewery to learn details of the pneumatic malting process. Her “large acreage” provided the necessary barley, but barley must be made into malt for brewing, and she could not get sufficient labor to operate a traditional floor maltings (a labor-intensive, multi-day process involving numerous steps of hydration, turning, and temperature control).
Pneumatic malting, a then comparatively recent industrial innovation, seemed the solution, and evidently the countess had kept up on technological developments in her field. Our research indicates that vital aspects of pneumatic malting had originated near Nancy, France via the work of Frenchman Nicholas Galland, and had been deployed in sizeable breweries, often in urban spaces. Milwaukee, Wisconsin was one as a firm holding a license from French and German inventors marketed such equipment from the late 19th century until the onset of Prohibition (1920).
Diagrammatic view of pneumatic malting. Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.), v. 17, 1911, “Malt” article, pp. 499 ff. Public domain. Image via Wikisource.
The countess provided samples of her beer to the German brewer who hosted her, which he pronounced equal to the best German and Bohemian (now Czech) beer. Then, as today, both German and Czech lager beers were widely acclaimed. The subtext evidently was that a woman was not expected to produce beer to a high standard, yet the countess proved the contrary as objectively assessed by a both a male and urban-based brewer, in Berlin.
The news report added the countess was believed to be “the only woman brewer in Europe”. This likely was an exaggeration. In addition, it did not factor that many women worked with their husbands in breweries and provided significant, “unofficial” support to the enterprise. The quotation does attest however to the rarity of women assuming an official role in breweries at the time.
As the news piece did not name the blue-blood brewer, who was she? Probably, Rosa Maria Branicka, a member of a noble Polish family. This lady often went by her married name, Rosa Maria Tarnowska (or Tarnowski). Her husband was Count Stanislaw Tarnowski, a well-known Polish historian and literary figure. A Countess Branicka is mentioned by the author Galina Ulianova in her 2009 study Female Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth-Century Russia. At pp. 170-171:
The big landowner Countess Maria Branicka owned eleven enterprises in Kiev Province [today, Kyiv oblast]: four mills (all leased out), two distilleries, one brewery and four sugar beet plants.
If, as seems likely, the countess brewer was the figure mentioned, the scale of her industry well exceeded even the bounds of commercial brewing. Ulianova adds that in 1897 these businesses aggregated a total of 2,010 workers and realized 2.2 million roubles. This was not a cottage enterprise – more a mini-empire.
It seems likely the determined-looking woman in a Geni webpage, Roza Maria Augusta Tarnowska (1854-1942), was the countess brewer. An ancestry website devoted to the Branicka family describes Roza Branicka as a countess, moreover. Her grandfather was Count Wladyslaw Grzegorz Branicki, a member of Polish nobility and general officer in the Russian army. He owned estates outside Kiev and was a descendant of Catherine the Great. It appears Countess Branicka inherited lands through her father Konstanty, which provided the basis for her entrepreneurship.
Takeaway
There have always been complexities to the social pattern including in gender and occupational history. Commercial brewing discloses numerous instances including in the shape of Countess Branicka, the presumed Countess Brewer. She was of the land-owning gentry even if not permanently living on her agricultural estate, hence, a rural-based or -interested woman. By dint of her initiative and drive, assisted surely by her education, family networks, and wealth, she sought out a technology developed and often applied in urban spaces by males. Her goal, with evident success, was to rival the best products made by male brewers working (often) in sophisticated centers.
Acknowledgement: Many thanks to Professor Cynthia Prescott for our helpful discussions and her assistance to finalize the text.
Jennifer Helton is Assistant Professor of History at Ohlone College in Fremont, California. She has written on the history of the woman suffrage movement in the west for a variety of outlets, including High Country News, WyoFile, and the National Park Service. Her essay on suffrage in her home state of Wyoming appears in Equality at the Ballot Box, an anthology published by the South Dakota Historical Society Press in 2019.
In 1875, the suffragist and feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote, “We are in the midst of a social revolution, greater than any political or religious revolution, that the world has ever seen, because it goes deep down to the very foundations of society. . . . Conservativism cries out we are going to destroy the family. Timid reformers answer, the political equality of woman will not change it. They are both wrong. It will entirely revolutionize it.”[1]
Today, the idea that women should vote and hold public office is, for the most part, no longer scandalous in the United States (though women are still under-represented in U.S. politics, at all levels). But in the nineteenth century, support for woman suffrage was a radical stance. Suffragists were accused of being “unwomanly” and “unsexed,” of seeking to destroy basic structures of society.
The American West was the first region of the United States to grant suffrage to its women. As a historian of the western suffrage movement, I have always wondered what inspired ordinary women to join this revolutionary cause. And as someone who grew up in small rural towns, I have always been intrigued by the strong support of rural areas for suffrage. In rural communities, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, adopting radical ideas can expose one to judgement, perhaps even censure. So how did rural western women find the courage to support suffrage?
The theme of this year’s Rural Women’s Studies Association conference was Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum. This theme prompted me to think about the role of the kitchen in the rural suffrage movement. Consider the possibilities of a kitchen table as a site of radicalization. We think of the nineteenth-century kitchen as women’s space, but the reality was more complicated. Western settler colonial communities rejected the values of the Indigenous societies of the West; in many of those societies women held authority and status. But when EuroAmericans came west, they brought their gender roles and legal structures with them. One aspect of this was the legal doctrine of coverture. Under coverture, women’s legal rights transferred to their husbands when they married. These rights included property ownership, the ownership of one’s wages, the ability to open a bank account, and laws relating to marriage and inheritance. Thus, in the EuroAmerican tradition, even though the kitchen was seen as women’s domain, a married woman did not actually own her own kitchen table. Nor did she have the right to profit off of the work she did at it.
Corner of Dazey kitchen. Homedale district, Malheur County, Oregon Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division https://lccn.loc.gov/2017773855
This had important consequences for many rural women. Farm women commonly made butter and sold eggs to earn money for the family. Abigail Scott Duniway, one of the most important of the western suffrage leaders, described how she made “thousands of pounds of butter every year for market” in addition to her other wifely and childrearing duties, which included “to sew and cook, and wash and iron; to bake and clean and stew and fry; to be, in short, a general pioneer drudge, with never a penny of my own . . .” She reported that her butter and egg money paid “for groceries, and to pay taxes or keep up the wear and tear of horsehoeing, plow-sharpening and harness-mending.”[2]
Though family expenses sucked up all of her profits, Duniway’s husband supported his wife’s business endeavors and mostly allowed her control of them. But not all husbands of the era did; nor did the law compel them to. Farm women were not legally entitled to keep their earnings. Though they had produced and marketed the goods with their own labor, a husband could take the profits any time he liked – and many did. Duniway recorded a case of a nursing mother, whose older children needed new waterproof suits (a necessity in the Oregon winter). The mother promised she would sew the suits if the children made enough butter to pay for the fabric. Over several months, they did. But her husband took their butter money and used it to buy a racehorse instead. The children did not get their suits, and the mother was powerless to do anything about it.[3]
Rural women also used their kitchens to make money by taking in boarders. Duniway writes of a woman whose husband abandoned her and their five small children. A male acquaintance loaned her $600, and she rented a building and started a boarding house. But just as she began to get back on her feet, her husband returned, took what little money she had, and left her broke – again. Moreover, the acquaintance never recouped the $600 loan, since the woman legally had no right to make a contract with him. Eventually the couple divorced, and in the ensuing poverty, the woman was unable to keep her family together. The children were scattered to other homes.[4]
Cases such as these are what drove Duniway to become a suffragist. She believed that if women had the vote, they could change the laws that created these situations.[5] When I read the letters and diaries of early suffragists, these are the recurring themes that seem to bring women into the movement. A drunken or unfaithful husband, an ugly divorce, the inability to claim a deceased husband’s property – these are the experiences that drove many women to suffrage activism. So is concern for the women who, unable to make ends meet, turned to prostitution to pay their bills.
Almost 150 years later, the political and social revolution that Stanton predicted is ongoing, though much has changed. But we should remember that for many of our ancestors, the spark for that revolution began at kitchen tables – tables at which women worked, but which they did not control.
[1] ECS, “Home Life,” in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ellen Carol DuBois, and Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Correspondence, Writings, Speeches, Studies in the Life of Women (New York: Schocken Books, 1981). P. 132.
[2] Abigail (Scott) Duniway, Path Breaking: An Autobiographical History of the Equal Suffrage Movement in Pacific Coast States, 2d ed, Studies in the Life of Women (New York: Schocken Books, 1971). 9-10.
Gramie Sweetser Drove a REO: diaries of an Aroostook County, Maine, farm wife, 1920-1956, Post #2
Pamela J. Snow Sweetser
Editor’s Note:
This is the second in an ongoing series, “Gramie Sweetser Drove a REO: diaries of an Aroostook County, Maine, farm wife, 1920-1956.” In this series, contributor Pamela J. Snow Sweetser highlights the seasonal activities and experiences of two generations of farm women in the early twentieth century. Also visit the first installment in this series.
Diaries of August 1920: “More to life than the daily grind”
“Diaries of August 1920: More to life than the daily grind” is the second posting for Gramie Sweetser Drove a REO: diaries of an Aroostook County, Maine,farm wife, 1920-1956. For Amy Richardson Sweetser, farmer’s wife and mother of five, May, June and July were crammed with work and disruptions. However, despite the pressures of harvest, August allowed the Sweetser family time for their favorite summer activities: Chautauqua, picnics, and lake excursions.
Mother-Daughter Diaries
Amy’s August diary ignores half the days, and reports snippets for the other half. The concurrent diary of her mother, Adwina O’Brien Richardson, fills in details and supplies reliable weather reports, a matter of direct bearing on Amy’s daily life. Mother and daughter were among Aroostook County’s influential middle-class women who regarded their family and community responsibilities the way modern women do their professions. They were devoted to their children—supporting their educations, social and athletic endeavors, encouraging their interests in music, art and theater, holding them to a strong work ethic, expecting behavior aligned with Christian morality, and always making time for family fun and recreation. Examining these two diaries offers a useful pause to think about methods for mining matters of history from diaries.[1]
Figure 1. August, 1920, from the diary of Amy Richardson Sweetser, kept on a calendar with a day minder page below the dates. Courtesy of Wayne & Pamela Snow Sweetser collections.
Figure 2. Addie’s “Day by Day a Perpetual Diary” covers 1920-1923. Entries were made horizontally, not vertically. Top, left to right, is 1920. Next row down is 1921 and so on. Courtesy Miriam Hoyt Gregg collection.
Setting, Method
In 1920, Aroostook County had cars on the roads, but horses remained the premiere power for the dominant industries of farming and logging. A rural place that
identified anywhere beyond the County line as “Outside,” [2] Aroostook was, paradoxically, keenly eager for all the latest Outside offered–everything from farm machinery to ladies’ fashions–and it was surprisingly cosmopolitan in its commercial mentality and cultural priorities. Trains brought north an astonishing array of visitors from Temperance speakers, to circuses and peddlers, to annual Chautauqua Assemblies such as the one Amy and her family enjoyed in August. Figure 3 map identifies their favorite lakes for camping.[3]
Figure 3. Aroostook County. The Sweetser’s favorite lakes identified with red arrows. In 1920, the County had auto roads mostly passable year round, but the best transportation for commerce and passengers was rail. A dense network of railroad lines laced together eastern Aroostook and tied directly to Canada and points south to Boston and beyond. Presque Isle was a crossroads for both local and main line trains. Map courtesy “The Maine Way,” Mainerec.com http://www.mainerec.com/roostook.asp?Category=203&PageNum=203.
Since the 1970’s, personal narrative theorists and feminist scholars have explored and defined methodologies for using women’s diaries as historical evidence, and as discrete histories in themselves. This ongoing work underscores that reading diaries is a nuanced interplay between the woman who kept the diary and the historian who attempts to understand what is, and what is not, written. More importantly, the experts have given us words and ways to think and talk about women’s diaries. When I study diaries, I am mindful of the following:
Feminist geography and the influence of place;
Temporal elements–the duality of timeespecially–what Margo Culley calls the “eternal present” where slipping into the diaries makes the past seem like the present;
The so-called “I’s” of a diary wherein the woman who keeps the diary is subject, writer/author, and reader of her own records;
The pasts of ordinary people matter;
Regardless of which fields, theories, or methods historians use, the essential form of history is a story, a narrative which becomes written history, even though we never know the full “reality” of the past.[4]
Diaries Transcribed: August 1920
I have divided the month into three segments separated with “Between the Lines” interludes and images. All fifteen of Amy’s entries are transcribed in italics, followed by selections from Addie’s which indicate day of the week and corroborate or elaborate on Amy’s.
August 1-3, 1920
to church out to Echo Lake—Hardy Hill to watch flying machines
Sun. Fine. Went to Church, Sunday school, and to Lizzie’s [Amy’s sister] to dinner. Then up river for lilies & out to cemetery. Amy’s folks went to Hardy hill to watch the flyers then to Echo Lake.
2. Mrs. Richards & Mrs. Schultz & Mother came over to dinner & we went
raspberrying p.m.
Mon. Fair. Amy came & washed & took Mrs. Richards, Schultz & I over home & girls had a nice dinner. All went raspberrying P.M.
3. Tue. I staid [sic] over and helped put up raspberries. Amy & I rode over to see potatoes and up to the other place [Sweetser farmland about ¾ mile away] at night. Haying some & boys help a lot.
Figure 4. Barnstormers had been in the area for several weeks. The Presque Isle Star-Herald, July 15, 1920. Courtesy Digital Archives, Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Public Library, Presque Isle, Maine.
Figure 5. Flying Jennys on Hardy Hill, Presque Isle, Maine, 1920, looking west. Photograph courtesy Dr. Richard Graves and Dr. Gary Boone, Presque Isle, Maine.
Between the Lines
August was off to a pleasant start for the family who went a second time to see the flying machines on Hardy Hill. According to Presque Isle’s weekly newspaper, the Star-Herald, barnstormers were causing quite a stir zooming about and carrying passengers aloft.[5] Hot, dry weather allowed haying to finally finish up, and Amy enjoyed company and help with the raspberries. For the boys, the best time was going to Echo Lake to cool off.
Figure 6. Woodland, circa 1922, just north of Presque Isle. Elvin Sweetser harvested hay with horse and man power. He owned that great labor saving machine, the horse-drawn dump rake, or sulky rake like the one pictured. Nonetheless, on the Sweetser farm it took man and boy power to pitch hay on and off the wagon. Courtesy Maine Memory Network and the Olof O. Nylander collection, samlat (display card) 13.Figure 7. Echo Lake, summer 1920. Amy and daughter on shore while boys play in the water with a found log. Courtesy Wayne and Pamela Snow Sweetser Collections.
August 4-8
4. went to Chautauqua P.M. Addie stayed out
Wed. Fine. Amy, girls & I came home P.M. They to Chautauqua. Alice, Myron, Mother Gartly & Mrs. Pitt Cook called.
5. went to ” ” ” [Chautauqua P.M. ] Took Clara L
Thu. Fine. swept & dusted as Hattie Conant, Erma Hopkinson, & May Boynton came and spent the P.M. Amy & girls went to Chautauqua. I went with Mrs. Richards in evening. Addie visited Normal School.
6. Fri. Fine & so Dusty. Addie staid over & Lizzie & Nina called P.M. Amy & Girls went to Chautauqua P.M. I went in evening. Addie went home & Blanche stayed
7. Out town at night.
Sat. Hot. Dusty. Blanche staid over & we cleaned up & cooked a little. Amy came with boys and they went to Chautauqua. I lay down an hour. Called to see Mrs. Tracy. Blanche & I went to Chautauqua evening.
8. went to Chautauqua P.M.
Sun. Hot. went to Church and Chautauqua. Amy & family brought dinners and went too. Mr. & Mrs. Forbes called. Alice & family called. Wrote to Eva.
Figure 8. Chautauqua Tent ca. 1920. Believed to be part of the Redpath Chautauqua of New York and New England which served the northeast circuit from around 1913 to 1933. Courtesy Maine Memory Network and the Crawford and Ella Peffer/Redpath Chautauqua collection.
Between the Lines
The Community Chautauqua was an event of high value to Amy Sweetser who had grown up attending and participating in encampments and Chautauquas. Months in the planning, the 1920 Presque Isle Community Chautauqua attracted huge crowds to enjoy five days of distinguished lectures, theater, music, and other cultural and spiritual enlightenment. Included was a daily Junior Chautauqua program.
The star attraction, proclaimed the Star Herald on July 1, 1920, was “the well known play of American life, “Polly of the Circus”. . . in itself an event of extraordinary interest, especially as 1920 has been a year during which people have been asked to encourage everything which is strictly American—be it in any walk of life. . . .”[6] Perhaps the nudge toward patriotic duty helped justify the expense and time spent in the midst of summer harvests. Theater was one of Amy’s personal passions (see Figure 14). Trains carried repertory theater companies to every corner of the country where they performed Broadway hits like Polly of the Circus in their “canvas playhouses.”[7]
Chautauqua, an offspring of the 19th c Lyceum Movement and summer Methodist-Episcopal Sunday School Institutes, originated in 1871, on the shores of Lake Chautauqua in Chautauqua, New York. The Chautauqua movement, still operating today, took off across America in the form of hundreds of Independent and Circuit Chautauquas that reached their zenith by the 1920s. These Tent Chautauquas were summer features in counties across the country, promoting the organization’s commitment to lifelong learning, interdenominational religion, scientific thought, social reform, music, theater, oration, art, and wholesome outdoor family recreation.[8]
Figure 9. Mantle Lake today. The park remains one of Presque Isle’s premiere recreational and educational sites in collaboration with the Presque Isle Recreation and Parks Department and the Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Public Library. Photo Courtesy alltrails.com and mainetrailfinder.com.
Except for a reference to “Southeast Presque” neither the diaries nor the Star Herald specify exactly where the Chautauqua Assembly set up. The most probable site was Mantle Lake Park. It was an ideal setting with grassy expanses near water and surrounded by Mother Nature.[9] The whole month of July the Chautauqua management waged an advertising blitz in the Star Herald that drew huge crowds to “the big brown tents.”[10]
Figure 10. The advertising blitz was under way. The Presque Isle Star Herald, July 8, 1920. Courtesy Digital Archives, Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Public Library, Presque Isle, Maine. Figure 11. Chautauqua advertisement for entertainment. The Star Herald, July 15, 1920. Courtesy Digital Archives, Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Public Library, Presque Isle, Maine.Figure 12. Distinguished lecturers promised motivational and educational talks. The Star Herald, July 22, 1920. Courtesy Digital Archives, Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Public Library, Presque Isle, Maine.Figure 13. Five days of summer camp for lucky kids with parents who could afford it. The Star Herald, July 22, 1920. Courtesy Digital Archives, Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Public Library, Presque Isle, Maine.Figure 14. Amy loved theater and often had roles in local productions. Image courtesy IMBd Tv https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0008442/mediaviewer/rm1647389952/. (See p 6, fn 7)
August 9-27
9. Mon. Hotter Washed a little . . . Helped Mrs. Schultz fix peas to can. . . .
10. Tue. Hotter yet. Heavy Showers P.M. Amy came and washed. Did shopping between showers. . . .Mrs. Schultz is doing a lot of canning. [as was Amy]
11. Wed. Warm. Dull Rain at night. . . .
12. Thu. Dull wet
13. all but dad went to S.S. picnic at Lorin Craige grove
Fri. Dull A.M. Fine P.M. . . . Amy came got her clothes. I went with Lizzie to SS Picnic at Craig’s grove downriver
14. went out town at night Bernice McKay came over to stay—B. [with Blanche]
15. to Caribou fish hatchery. P.M.
Sun. Sun & Shade. Amy & girls met to Church then all went to Caribou to Fish Hatchery. I lay in hammock most all day feeling badly in stomach & bowels. Lizzie called.
16. Mon. Fair warm . . . .
17. Tue. Hot so hot. Amy came and washed A.M. & went down town P.M. I rode down to Lizzie’s with her. They expect Helen’s young man & will then go to Squ Pan [sic].
Wed. Fine Cool Helen & Bennie Price called A.M. Dorothy came Ironed, cleaned rugs & Lizzie came. P.M. Mrs. Tracy called. Amy brought some cream took Bernice & Blanche to McKays. Lizzie brought me some buttermilk at night.
19. Thurs [combined with Wednesday, apparently]
20. Fri. Fine Lizzie brought me chicken stew and water lilies. Her Girls started for Squ Pan. Amy & Addie went to Cemetery & did some shopping P.M. I canned 5 pts. beens [sic]
21. Sat. Colder Windy. Feel weak. Slept good. Lay in Hamock [sic] P.M. Mr. McCaughy called. Mr. Wood bought the tenement and wants sewer connection with us. Amy & Addie, Alma & Nellie Potter called went down Town.
22. went down to Arthur’s Farm P.M.
Sun. Showers afternoon and evening. Amy & family came to church & took their dinners. E[lvin] all went to Lizzie’s & over to see Nina’s home. Nina telephoned they got to Squ Pan & were all well. Blanche went to Grand Falls with McKays.
23. Mon. Fair cool Feeling better. Wiped some dust. Amy & Addie came to wash. Canned 3 pts. beens. Mrs. Estes called & got some yeast of Amy. . . . .
24. Tue. Fine Amy brought girls who took the 11 o clock train with Nellie & Alma Potter for Squ Pan. I went home with Amy. Lois’ party came from Squ Pan.
25. Mother came over
Wed. Fine. Lots of harvesting being done. Am helping Amy some.
26. Thu. Fine
27. Girls came home
Fri.[marked Sat but actually Fri] Fine. Amy churned 13 ½ lbs. We came out and got the girls, who had a fine time at the Lake. I staid home Elizabeth Jenkins called.
Figure 15. The Caribou Fish Hatchery was a handy destination where the family could rent a canoe and enjoy a picnic and a day on the water. Dad with the paddle, Addie and Blanche riding while boys wait. Courtesy Wayne and Pamela Snow Sweetser Collections.
Between the Lines
Chautauqua ended and Amy was behind a day with laundry. Garden harvest piled up to be processed, butter had to be churned, and five children needed her attention. Still, she kept up with church, Sunday School picnics, and cemetery visits.[12] The family went canoeing at the Fish Hatchery, the daughters went off with friends as well as to Squa Pan Lake (today Scopan) with their cousins.[13] In all likelihood Amy, not Elvin, arranged for the upcoming camping trip to Portage Lake. As is usual, throughout both women’s diaries, they make minimal mention of the boys.
Figure 16. Amy on porch steps minding children and preparing cucumbers for pickles. Courtesy Wayne and Pamela Snow Sweetser Collections.
August 28-31
28. All went to Portage lake
Sat. Hot Dorothy mowed the lawn. Amy & family went to Portage Lak [sic]. Called to Mrs. Pomroys and Esteys.
29. Sun. Warm Went to Church & Sunday school. . . .
30. from Portage went to Fort Kent, Van buren, & home
Mon. Warm showers. . . Amy’s folks got home from Portage by way of Fort Kent.
31. Tue. Sun & shade Rain night . . . .
Figure 17. Ready to go! Dad behind the wheel. Mother in the middle seat. Boys separated. A daughter behind the camera. Courtesy Wayne and Pamela Snow Sweetser Collections.
Between the Lines
Portage Lake, with its magnificent sporting lodges and well-appointed camps, has been a big game hunting and fishing destination since the 1830s. Shoreline cottages and boat rentals, as well as numerous small beaches made it a popular destination for family tenting, boating, fishing, and swimming. A 35-mile drive west of Presque Isle, it was one of the Sweetsers’ favorite lakes.
Figure 18. Rental cottage at Portage Lake, 1920. Courtesy Wayne and Pamela Snow Sweetser Collections.Figure 19. Camping at Portage Lake was a beloved, annual water adventure for the boys. Courtesy Wayne and Pamela Snow Sweetser Collections.Figure 20. Amy and her sons, (L-R) Ralph, Richard and Lawrence at the shore. Portage Lake, 1919. Courtesy Wayne and Pamela Snow Sweetser Collections.
Women & Leisure
The United States 1930 census had a classification “housewives not gainfully occupied” that included 21.3 percent of the population. Women’s domestic work was not regarded as an occupation and thereby produced no gain. Women who drove children to the river for a swim and a picnic or who took them for long weekends at the lake were definitely not considered to be engaged in any type of work. Preparation of food and gear, mindfulness for child safety, supervising and serving food on the outing, driving home and cleaning up after were regarded as part of the fun and relaxation such an outing brought to the family.
Figure 21. Whole family in the canoe on Long Lake, 1925. Courtesy Wayne and Pamela Snow Sweetser Collections
Which is not to argue that Amy and other mothers despised outdoor recreation with their families. Quite the contrary, they could fill a picnic basket in a jiffy, organize and load up kids, and be off, glad for a change. The Sweetsers invested plenty of money and effort in leisure time with their children. In the 1920’s especially, family friends (parents and children) joined up to rent cabins on lakes around the County.
Figure 22. The women. Shared camp with family and friends. Madawaska Lake, 1926.Courtesy Wayne and Pamela Snow Sweetser Collections.
The habit of “going to camp” became generational. Though not as inclusive as it once was, some family members still co-own and share a camp on Scopan Lake that was passed down from Elvin and Amy’s twin sons, Ralph and Richard. All-season gatherings there have produced some fine memories reminiscent of those preserved below in family photo albums from nearly a century ago.
Figure 23. Goofy girls at Madawaska Lake, 1926. Blanche on right with one of her girlfriends.
Courtesy Wayne and Pamela Snow Sweetser Collections.
Figure 24. Bathing beauties at Cross Lake, 1927. A playful weekend with families again sharing a large camp. Courtesy Wayne and Pamela Snow Sweetser Collections.
Figure 25. “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!” Notice the legs–long enough to be Addie Junior’s; canoeing with a girlfriend on Cross Lake, 1927. Courtesy Cyndi Lauper’s hit single, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” 1983; music and lyrics by Robert Hazard, 1979.
[1] The older set from Adwina (Addie) O’Brien Richardson (1851-1941) are in the possession of Miriam Gregg, who has generously allowed me to make use of them. The second set from Addie’s daughter, Amy Richardson Sweetser (1876-1958) are in the possession of my husband, Wayne Sweetser, who has granted me unlimited access and use of them.
[4] Selected references that have informed my studies; by no means an exhaustive list.
Suzanne Bunkers and Cynthia A. Huff, eds., Inscribing the Daily, Critical Essays on Women’s Diaries (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996); David Carr, Time, Narrative, and History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); Margo Culley, ed., A Day at a Time: Diary Literature of American Women from 1764 to the Present (New York: Feminist Press, 1985); Mona Domosh, Joni Seager, Putting Women in Place, Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the World (New York: The Guilford Press, 2001); Judy Long, Telling Women’s Lives, Subject/Narrator/Reader/Text (New York: New York University Press, 1999); Elliot G. Mishler, “Models of narrative Analysis: A Typology,” Journal of Narrative and Life History, 5/2 (1995): 87-124; Pamela Moss, ed. Feminist Geography in Practice, Research and Methods (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2002); James Olney, ed. Studies in Autobiography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Sidoni Smith, & Julia Watson, Reading Autobiography, A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2001); Penny Summerfield, Histories of the Self: Personal Narratives and Historical Practice (New York: Routledge, 2019); Alex Winder, “Nakba Diaries: Unsettling the Scale and Temporality of Historical Writing.” Al Muntaqa 2, no. 2 (2019): 24-39. Accessed July 26, 2021. doi:10.31430/almuntaqa.2.2.0024.
[5] Presque Isle Star-Herald, July 15-August 5, 1920. Courtesy Digital Archives, Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Public Library Presque Isle, Maine. My most useful and willing source for finding rare photographs is Dr. Richard Graves, Presque Isle optometrist and historian. A Google search yields quick information on the Curtis JN-4 (Flying Jenny) and barnstorming, all the rage in the 1920’s.
[6] The Presque Isle Star Herald, July 1, 1920, p. 11. Digital Archives, Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Public Library, http://turner.advantage-preservation.com/.
[10] “The Sprague’s Mills Road Carnival,” a tongue-in-cheek report covering a well-attended hearing on the Trunk Line Road proposition facetiously suggested the planners should have requested the use of Chautauqua “big brown tents” to accommodate the crowd. The Presque Star Herald, July 8, 1920.
[11]No mention of the 19th amendment ratified on August 18, 1920, though typically neither Addie nor Amy had much to say about politics in their diaries.
[12] In rare diary moments Amy confesses to being “lonesome.” Probably a state of melancholy we call “depression” today. Addie used the same term and had debilitating episodes with it. It is reasonable to assume the death of Louis, her youngest son, troubled Amy long after his passing in 1918. The extended family had a well-established tradition of honoring their dead with regular cemetery visits to attend grave sites and place flowers of remembrance. Among their favorites were forget-me-nots.
[13] The lake name Amy and Addie used was officially changed ten years ago. “Squa” is offensive to Native American women, yet it took a century after the diaries were written to finally change the name of 6 locations in Maine bearing the insulting word. “Six Aroostook County locations renamed to remove racial slurs,” Bangor Daily News, September 9, 2011, https://bangordailynews.com/2011/09/05/.
I’ve always been told that the history you study is a reflection of yourself. How true that statement is. If someone asked me in 2014 what I planned to do with my degree, I would have shrugged my shoulders and uncertainly replied, “I don’t know.” All I knew was two things: that I am a History major and no, for the millionth time, I am not going to teach social studies. In hindsight, my research interests were broad and unfocused as an undergraduate. However, my junior and senior years at Fort Valley State University helped narrow them down. I owe this to my mentor and professor Dr. Dawn Herd-Clark, who introduced me to the intersection of agriculture, black women, and land-grant extension work. It is because of her that I began studying Margaret Toomer and eventually found my way to Sadye Hunter Wier, two of the many black women who used agriculture to build a community in the era of Jim Crow. I saw something of their lives in mine. I saw something of their origins in mine. Thus began my path as a historian.
It could have been the similarities in our upbringings, coming from families that endured Jim Crow. I like to think that agriculture runs in my blood, being the descendant of sharecroppers. Looking back, I don’t think it was a coincidence that extension work became my focus. Despite attending Fort Valley State, Georgia’s 1890 land-grand institution dedicated to agricultural and industrial education, Margaret Toomer was my first encounter with agricultural extension work. An organization under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Cooperative Extension Service aided farmers in areas such as home improvement, food preservation, and livestock care. A fellow Georgia native herself, Toomer was a Home Demonstration Agent—a title held by women in the service—who dedicated her tenure to home improvement among the black farmers of middle Georgia. Moreover, she collaborated with Farm Demonstration Agent Otis O’Neal to co-chair then-Fort Valley College’s Ham and Egg Show, a local fair dedicated to agricultural education. The show became so popular that multiple states throughout the South adopted their own versions. O’Neal may have been the face of the show, but my work uncovered how important Toomer was to its genesis, popularity, and longevity. At the time, I was completely unaware that Fort Valley State held this kind of history; despite liking the project immensely, it hadn’t occurred to me that extension work would be my calling as a historian. However, Toomer and I both benefitted from this journey. Her contributions to black extension in middle Georgia gained more recognition and I laid the foundation for what would become my graduate career.
My studies took me to Mississippi State University, another land-grant institution. Margaret Toomer may have been the end goal, but my seminar classes led me to exploring the life of yet another black home demonstration agent: Sadye Wier. Mississippi born and raised, Wier came from a family of educators and used that background as the foundation for her work with local families and clubs. Wier’s social standing proved advantageous in her career. Her husband Robert Wier was a local businessman and cultivated close relationships with Starkville’s elite. Even after retiring from Cooperative Extension Service, Sadye Wier remained a pillar of the black community by championing local causes and working with nearby grassroots organizations. To accomplish this in the era of Jim Crow is a feat in and of itself and yet… she did it. More importantly, though, it woke within me a great desire to enact change the same way by helping farmers acquire the resources necessary to improve their homesteads, especially in the era of corporate farming.
Is it plausible to say that because of these two women, I can see the intricacies of race and gender in agriculture? Certainly. Agricultural history helped me contemplate broader themes within Southern and American history. I have uncovered historical precedents I didn’t know existed. But most importantly, my researched has allowed me to draw parallels with black farmers then and now, especially with the political climate surrounding their lack of funding. The social implications of agricultural extension is complex and relatable; I have, through family members, come across many stories of growing up the children of sharecroppers or enduring the constant dismissal of the plight of black farmers in today’s society. Though their voices are growing louder, it is my sincerest hope that my skills as a historian will not only contribute to cooperative extension’s small but impressive historiography, but will enact change in the fields of agricultural and rural development. I can only stand on the shoulders of Toomer and Wier and marvel at the view.
“May, June, July: the dailiness of life” from Gramie Sweetser Drove a REO: diaries of an Aroostook County, Maine, farm wife, 1920-1956, is the first of a series that follows the contours one woman’s life over the seasons of a year. The posts draw from my research on rural women’s household work.
In 1970, I earned a bachelor’s degree in English, and some years later a master’s degree in Colonial U.S. History. Around 2001, I undertook PhD studies at the University of Maine to extend my Masters’ thesis about cattle in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. However, major life changes (‘new’ husband) introduced me to the Sweetser family diary collections which are the subject of this weblog. I abandoned the cattle and fell into the lives of Adwina O’Brien Richardson and Amy Richardson Sweetser, great grandmother and grandmother to my husband, Wayne Sweetser.[1]
My findings yielded a gendered story of place: “The harder I work, the more there is to do,” Aroostook’s rural women respond to the forces of modernization, 1870-1940, an ongoing exploration of how women far from the cutting edge of social changes reacted to the forces of modernization. The untimely loss of my extraordinary advisor, Adelaide & Alan Bird Professor of History at the University of Maine, Marli F. Weiner, (1953-2009), followed by more unanticipated events and snarls, threw my PhD progress into disarray. Nonetheless, I continued my research as an independent scholar.
Since 2006, I have presented annually at events such as the Rural Women’s Studies Association Triennial Conferences, the Deerfield-Wellesley Symposium, the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, and the Norlands Conference. My historical and educational articles have been published by Boston University Press, Yale University Press, and the National Council of Teachers of English. Most recently I contributed two essays with recipes to the RWSA 2021 publication, Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook, Cynthia Prescott and Maureen Thompson, editors.
Figure 1. Author, Pamela Snow Sweetser March, 2021. Tailgate tea-time after a good outing on snowshoes. Courtesy of the author.
Reflexivity
I physically experience farm life in the context of the research I conduct, and I often reflect on the lives of women in this same place when it was in its ascendancy. Our farmhouse was Amy Sweetser’s home. I use her surviving laundry tools to wash wool from my sheep. I ride and drive my horses on the same roads and fields she traveled. Like Amy Sweetser and other farm wives who lived in Aroostook, I spin wool and make soap; plant and weed gardens, gather eggs; and preserve summer’s fruits and vegetables.
Figure 2. Amy Sweetser’s diaries.
The Place
Maine’s Aroostook County, bordered on three sides by Canada, occupies the entire top tier and more than 20% of the state. According to the US Census, in 1920 its 6,828 square mile expanse was home to 81,728 people. Today’s population is 67,055. Amy Sweetser lived in Presque Isle and Maysville during that robust period when Aroostook County ascended from a logging hinterland to the “Garden” of the state, and then to “Potato Empire” of the world.
Amy and Elvin Sweetser’s 100 acre farm on the Higgins Road was 3 miles from Main Street in Presque Isle. Now known as Raymond Brook Farm, the house, barns, and out buildings are still in use.
Figure 3. 1927, Amy Richardson Sweetser’s farm home, Higgins Road, Presque Isle, Maine. Courtesy Sweetser family collections.Figure 4. Raymond Brook Farm, house and barns today; built in 1858 on an 1832 Land Grant. Photo courtesy Paul Cyr Photography, Presque Isle, ME.
May, June, July: the dailiness of life
Among the many, many brilliant women who have influenced my writing is Bettina Aptheker. Her Tapestries of Life, Women’s Work, Women’s Consciousness, and the Meaning of Daily Experience (Amherst: University of MA Press, 1989) helped me analyze and understand that slippery expression, women’s work. Aptheker identifies the “dailiness of women’s lives” as the way(s) women shoulder perpetual emotional and physical responsibilities while coping with a persistent undertow of disruptions. Conditions of personal resilience, culture, race, class, age, gender, income, social status, relationships with men and with other women influence how women manage[d], or fail[ed] to manage, the disparate and often paradoxical elements of personal, family, household, community or professional work.[2]
The “dailiness” of Amy’s work was anchored to the rhythms of life and the turn of the seasons on a farm. Every week, month, season was the same, yet every day was different. No day passed without cooking, kitchen tasks, and children. Monday was always dedicated to laundry, and Tuesday to ironing. Wednesday through Saturday were for cleaning, sewing, food processing and preservation, shopping, charities and clubs, social and civic duties. Sunday spelled church. Except for disruptions. A rainy Monday threw off the laundry schedule, which postponed Tuesday’s ironing. Children got sick or had time-dictated activities to attend, particularly as the school year wound down. Mother herself sometimes got sick.
May, June, July were arguably the most intense months on the farm. Success or failure foretold how the rest of the year would likely go. Good results with foraged fiddleheads, dandelion greens, and berries (all to be preserved), cooperative weather for putting in gardens and field crops, the hay crop done by mid-July, made other matters easier to accomplish.
Mrs. Elvin Cyrus Sweetser had the advantage of an upbringing that prepared her for the demands of being a farmer’s wife. Born Amy Geneva Richardson on January 12, 1876, to Adwina O’Brien Richardson and Charles Richardson, she had an older sister, Mary Elizabeth (Lizzie). The Richardsons were a prosperous and prominent Maysville family.
Figure 5. Addie and Charles Richardson paying a call on Amy and Elvin Sweetser, 1917. Courtesy Sweetser family collections.
Figure 6. Amy (standing) and sister Lizzie Richardson, 1892, ages 16 & 18. Courtesy Sweetser family collections.
The two girls grew up in a household where education, theater, good clothes, social reform and civic duty, music and evangelical religion, and a strong work ethic, wove the fabric of their lives. In their world gendered roles and responsibilities were clear but not inflexible. Despite their material comforts and social advantages, the Richardsons were not inclined to take their good fortune for granted.
From Addie’s diaries, we learn much about Amy before 1920. She loved her family deeply and was well loved by them. On Friday, January 12, 1883, Addie wrote: . . . Amy’s birthday! She is seven and our darling baby still. Made her a cake and dressed her up, and Grandpa got her a candy treat.”
Figure 7. Amy Geneva Richardson all dressed up for her seventh birthday, 1883, Courtesy Sweetser family collections.Figure 8. Amy “our darling baby still. . . .” Addie Richardson diary, January 12, 1883. Courtesy Sweetser family collections.
Throughout her teens, Amy was her mother’s greatest help. She was efficient, energetic, and tenacious. Even after she married Elvin Sweetser in 1900 and moved to her new home across the river, Amy remained close to her mother. In 1910 Charles Richardson built a large house in town on Third Street and sold their farm. In 1917 he passed away, and in 1918 Amy and Elvin’s four year old son, Louis, died from measles.
Soon after they lost Louis, Amy and Elvin began dividing the year between the Richardson house on Third Street and the farm, which supported the family in both places. In the winter Elvin commuted daily from town to the Higgins Road to attend livestock. Amy was thrifty and supplemented their income by selling preserves, butter, surplus garden produce, and by singing at funerals. She sewed constantly so that she and her daughters could have the latest fashions for the least cost. They lived well, but they worked themselves and their children hard to do it.
Figure 9. Farm house on the Higgins Road got a good coat of paint that year. Courtesy Sweetser family collections.Figure 10. Home on Third Street. Addie Richardson lived on the second floor, Sweetser family on the ground floor. Courtesy Sweetser family collection.
Mobility was essential to Amy’s work. She handled horses confidently. She drove her cars fast, and she was often on the road picking up piglets for the farm, visiting neighbors, taxiing children and hired help, driving cross country to pick strawberries, attending church and club meetings, or enjoying picnic outings and road trips with the whole family. She loved horse racing and the occasional car races at the fair.
Figure 11. The seven passenger REO for a family of seven. Oldsmobile model named for Ransom E. Olds, automobile manufacturer. The REO was on the market from 1915-1953. Courtesy of Sweetser family collections.
In 1920, the year of her first extant diary, Amy was 44 with five children: two daughters, Addie Junior and Blanche, ages 19 and 15, three sons, Lawrence, 10, and twins Ralph and Richard age 8.
Figure 12. Amy Sweetser, Sunday morning, off to church with the family. Courtesy Sweetser family collection.
Amy saw to it that the family was mostly food self-sufficient. Hens, dairy and beef cattle, pigs, a wheat crop, orchards, gardens, wild-growing greens, berries and nuts supplied nearly everything except for necessities such as sugar, yeast, coffee, tea and spices.
Planting time began in May, made stressful that year by a week of sore throat and headaches, for which Amy had no time off. The move from town took a couple of days to finish. She made constant use of the new milk separator. The pine floor where she stood to operate it still has ghostly imprints from three decades of her feet. Memorial Day at the end of the month brought a bittersweet visit to Louis’s grave. Half the month has no entries.
Figure 13. Amy kept her diary on a large calendar that year. Courtesy Sweetser family collection.
Mon. 3 Mrs. Richard’s birthday.
Tues. 4. Took a load to the farm clear and cold
Wed. 5. Moved over [to the farm]
Thu. 6. Had a seperator [sic] set up in Shed
Fri. 7. B[lanche] came over. walked got the car fixed so it will go
Sat. 8. Lamoureau [neighbor] sawing wood for us
Tues. 11. harrowing for first time
Fri. 14. sowed wheat A.M. planting P.M. [entries like this served as farm records]
Sun. 16. I have had a bad sore throat & cold in head all the week & no better.
Wed. 19. Clare Lamoreau went into St. Margaret’s Hospital. Mother has a bad cold on lungs.
Thu. 20. Planted sweet peas and nasturtium
Fri. 21. Clare L. operated on this morning
Sat. 22. Blanche and Marion B. walked over [from town]
Sun. 23. Addie came back from church with us. G.A.R. sermon [Grand Army of the Republic]
Mon. 24. Took voile dress up to Mrs. Smith to cut & fit [done while in town doing laundry]
Sun. 30. took flowers out to cemetary [sic]
June, the start of strawberry season, brought the annual mix of end of school year and beginning of summer flurries. Both of Amy’s daughters trained to be teachers at what is now the University of Maine at Presque Isle, then called the Normal School. The family found time to play together and to attend their various club events. Eight days have no entries.
Figure 14. Strawberry month. Courtesy Sweetser family collection.
Tues. 1. Mother sold her tenement house to Arthur & Cook
Wed. 2. finished planting at noon. A little rain the first for several weeks.
Thu. 3. Rain
Fri. 4. put some garden in
Sat. 5. Opal Wiley came over with Addie
Sun. 6. Baccalaureate sermon for High S. Priest Rained nearly all day
Mon. 7. E[lvin]took B[lanche] out in morning and A[ddie] & Opal in P.M. rainy
Tue. 8. Fair
Sun.13. Normal School Baccalaureate Sermon Mr. Carlton
Mon. 14. Normal Time & Pagent [sic] out to Normal. Address by Gov. Milliken in evening
Wed. 16. V. & C. Club had picnic at A.V. Park A&B went. Mother & the rest of us went to river
Sat. 19. Went up river fishing then to Washburn
Sun. 20. Went to church—Echo Lake—Gertrude’s [made a call] Mrs. Williams Baby Boy born
Mon. 21. [We] are taking care of Russell [hired couple’s child]
Fri. 25. Mamma having the parlor & hall
Sat. 26. floors fixed [two day project at Third Street house]
Sun. 27. went out to the cemetery. I.O.O.F. missionary[?] [Independent Order of Odd Fellows]
[chicken penciled on calendar date. Possibly what she took to the IOOF meeting]
Mon. 28. Strawberrying all day up on Lancaster got about 20 qts.
Tue. 29. Put up 13 ½ qts berries. Northwester a terrible shower p.m. Rain washed the potatoes P.M. very bad
Wed. 30. another bad shower, washed more than yesterday.
July is haying month, among the most urgent times for livestock farmers who muster every family member in a race to cut and dry grasses at peak nutrition, then gather them in, and who are inevitably thwarted by rain and humidity. Amy’s sister Lizzie married Arthur Hoyt, so references to Hoyt’s indicate extended family. Ten days have no entries and three record one of Amy’s taxi tasks: transporting carpenters.
Fri. 2. picked berries on Levie [sic Levi Knowles, neighbor] pasture put up 3 qts.
Sun. 4. rain
Mon. 5. rain
Tue. 6. fine
Wed. 7. rain
Thu. 8. began work on barn [Elvin added new stable with a cement cellar] rain
Fri. 9. Mrs. Knowles & I went over to Charlie Perry’s to S.S. Class picnic. [Sunday School]
Sun. 11. Dick Hoyts folks came over—left Hazel
Mon. 12. Carrying carpenters
Tue. 13 men ^ back &
Wed. 14 forth
Thu. 15. Dick & Myrtie came after Hasel [sic] & Blanche went down with them [to Third Street] Mr. Sanders folk called in evening
Fri. 16. got a few strawberries & raspberries
Sun. 18. Mr. Ranger back from 4 weeks vacation. went down to Dick’s left Addie & brought B home
Mon. 19. rain men could not work on barn
Wed. 21. Kathleen over for all night
Thu. 22. began to hay [very late start.]
Fri. 23. Addie came back from Myrties Mother came over to stay all night.
Sat. 24. finished Barn. Flying machines came over to stay on Hardy Hill [south side of Aroostook River, visible from Higgins Road and Third Street]
Sun. 25. after church went up to Madawaska Lake
July’s last four entries capture the “Dailiness” of Amy’s life. Established routines with family, household, and farm work carried on. Rain had delayed not only the barn construction, but more urgently, the beginning of hay harvest. However, on Saturday folks enjoyed the unexpected pleasure of watching flying machines land on nearby Hardy Hill. Sunday the family all went to church, and then had themselves a picnic at Madawaska Lake. Meanwhile the cut hay was finally curing in the field.
[1] These unpublished diaries are in the possession of two of Adwina Richardson’s great grandchildren: Miriam Hoyt Gregg, who has generously allowed me to make use of Addie’s; Wayne Sweetser, my husband, who holds Amy’s. Miriam and Wayne live in Presque Isle, Maine.
Editor’s note: Gary Gillman, a Toronto, Ontario, Canada-based beer and food blogger, has graciously offered to share this post about Ginger Farm. He blogs at Beer Et Seq, where you can learn lots more about Ontario beer and food history.
Ginger Farm, Ontario
What is, or was, Ginger Farm? And wherefore its butter tart?
Ginger Farm no longer exists. It is covered today by tons of concrete, asphalt, and steel. But between 1924 and 1958 it was a working farm, near Milton, Ontario, Canada. Milton is a 50-minute drive west of Toronto along Highway 401, the broad ribbon vital to Ontario commerce. From Milton you can wend towards Guelph, Cambridge, Kitchener, London, Chatham, and finally Windsor where the bridge connects to Detroit, U.S.A.
Industrial Milton, Ontario, as of 2004. Decimal10 at English Wikipedia, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In the late 1950s, 100-acre Ginger Farm was expropriated by the Ontario government to help build Highway 401. Part of the farm lies under the clover-leaf linking Highways 401 and 25. Atop the other part is Maplehurst Correctional Facility. Built in the early 1970s, it is known to initiates, I understand, as the Milton Hilton.
A book edited by David Patchell-Evans, Chronicles of Ginger Farm (Bastian Publishing: 2009), indicates Lancelot and Gwendoline Clarke purchased the property in 1924. Gwendoline, nee Fitz-Gerald, was born in Sudbury, Suffolk (England).
Lancelot, also from Suffolk, had emigrated to Canada in his teens. He worked in farming near Milton and pursued other occupations, before returning to Britain with the Canadian Army.
So the couple met in England, and decided to live in Canada. Once landed as newlyweds here, they travelled west to Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan to take up farming. After a few years they moved with their two children to Ontario, and purchased land for farming near Milton. That became Ginger Farm, where they remained for the rest of their lives.
In her spare time Gwendoline (d. 1966) authored a regular newspaper column on farming and rural life. The series was called “Chronicles of Ginger Farm”. David Mitchell-Evans is a grandchild of the Clarkes and collected many of her articles for his Chronicles book.
The farm was named Ginger, not because the ginger plant was cultivated there, but for reasons that combine whimsy, a literary sense, and knowledge of life’s hard knocks. As related in Chronicles, Gwendoline wrote in 1929:
…let me tell you, right here and now, in case there are any who don’t know it, that besides brain and brawn, it requires ginger of the highest quality and spiciest order to come anywhere near success [in farming], and the smaller the capital, the more ginger required.
It is a sign how much has changed that “ginger” in this sense sounds old-fashioned today.
Gwendoline Clarke’s Writing
Gwendoline with Ginger Farm became widely known in the Province of Ontario due to her newspaper work. The columns appeared in the Free Press of Acton nearby and were reprinted throughout Ontario. The Flesherton Advance, a newspaper in Ontario’s Grey Highlands, printed many columns.
Her writing also appeared in Britain, probably via the Canadian-founded Women’s Institute, which had branches there. Gwendoline was an active participant in Ontario’s Scotch Block chapter.
Her writing covers the years of the Second World War, especially how farmers coped with rising food prices and falling crop revenues. Many staples were short such as fruit, nuts, tobacco, and coffee.
Her columns limned the daily occurrences of farming life: raising crops, calving and other livestock management, the change of the seasons, the mercurial weather. Occasionally she describes seeking diversions, often a movie in a nearby town.
She was interested in new technology, anything that could make a busy farmer’s life less hectic. One column relates her assessment of the pressure cooker then becoming popular. She describes the different types available, and notes the great time saving in recipe preparation.
She entirely approved of the new method, and as to risk of explosion, she advised, well, just be careful!
Gwendoline’s writing demonstrates a lively and intuitive intelligence, practical but with a questing bent. This is shown by her interest in the past, and her expressed desire to read more than time allowed her. But she did find time to write on local history, outside the column.
She was perceptive both of animal and human natures, and in general expressed a live-and-let-live philosophy.
In a 1941 article* in the Flesherton Advance she describes a makeshift butter tart, the confection that (in our view) did not originate in Canada – think Scotland – but has become a Canadian specialty. Some types of pecan pie, or treacle tart, are a similar idea.
Due to wartime conditions currants and raisins were not available to enhance the egg, sugar, and butter base. She decided to use mincemeat from a jar in the cellar. Mincemeat need I say is the sweetened, preserved fruit mixture prepared in British-influenced cultures from time immemorial, especially for Christmas.
The unorthodox tart was a clear success, to the point taciturn Lancelot, whom she always calls “Partner”, praised its qualities, albeit “not solicited”.
As a busy farmer proud of her role co-running an ever-parlous business, Gwendoline had little time, is my sense, to record recipes, an activity she probably viewed as frivolous.
Still, the butter tart was so good she had to pass it on, to posterity’s benefit.
Gwendoline expressed the wish that her butter tart, should it find general approval, be called the Ginger Farm Special. This never acquired traction, to my knowledge, but it’s not too late. Readers of a cookery bent might fetch up some mincemeat and give it a try.
A reader’s report on the outcome would be interesting to read!
…………..
*To see the original article in Fulton Historical Newspapers, search “recipes and suchlike” at https://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html. To view other Ginger Farm articles, search “Ginger Farm”.
Catharine Wilson (RWSA Co-Chair 2015-2021 and Conference Host)
During 11-15 May 2021, 221 people gathered at the RWSA 14th Triennial Conference, hosted by the University of Guelph. This was the RWSA’s first virtual conference and a great success. The conference theme, Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum, attracted people from fourteen countries who shared their research about rural women, food, and other issues on the table: activism, feminism, social justice, mental health, innovation, community development, and cultural expression, — both historical and contemporary — locally and globally.
For two years, the Local Arrangement Committee (LAC) had been making plans to hold the conference on the University of Guelph campus in Canada. They had arranged pre- and post conference tours, performers, special dining events, and raised $40,00 in cash and in-kind sponsorship. Then the pandemic hit in March of 2020 and these much-anticipated events were replaced with uncertainty and risk. It was no longer feasible to meet in person. No vaccine existed, some people had lost funding and were worried about their jobs, and others were not able to travel internationally. Organizers did not want to put participants at risk. Outright cancellation was not good for the organization, as six years would have passed before the next scheduled conference. Postponing it to 2022 raised questions about whether the economy and travel would be normalized by then.
The RWSA decided to go virtual, and the great pivot began. The Program Committee notified panelists of the decision and the LAC renegotiated with sponsors and performers and cancelled tours and venues. The LAC created a conference website and selected Hopin as a virtual hosting platform because it was supported by the University of Guelph and had session rooms, a stage, an expo hall, AND attendees could chat with a friend, network with colleagues, and make new contacts, valued informal experiences that are the hallmark of RWSA conferences.
The conference began with the launch of A Taste of Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook which featured our members’ heirloom recipes, storytelling, and scholarly content. Special events throughout the week included keynote speaker Métis Dr. Kim Anderson’s presentation on Indigenous “Kitchen Table Methodologies,” food as a tool of colonization, and making a territorial acknowledgement a practice. In a special plenary session, panelists and the audience discussed how COVID-19 was affecting rural women. Another plenary addressed mentorship and development networks. Performances included music therapist Mary Parkinson who told her family’s rural life story through period music, and the week ended with theatre artist Taylor Graham and her students presenting excerpts from the Canadian classic play The Farm Show. Throughout the week, the expo hall featured culinary collections, rural organizations, farm yoga, and historical mini documentaries.
Kim Anderson, “Making Relational Space; Nokom’s house and Kitchen Table Methodologies”
Going virtual was the right decision. It gave presenters and organizers the security of knowing they could plan, the event occurred according to our triennial schedule, without risk to participants and with less expense for the organization and attendees. Our attendance doubled, as with no travel and accommodation costs, more people joined who might otherwise have found it too expensive. The reach of the conference extended making our conference theme “Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum” even more meaningful as people joined in the discussion from France, Australia, Nigeria, India, Netherlands, Argentina, Canada, the U.S., and other countries.
The experience had its challenges and some unexpected advantages too. We had to work with a world clock as the program took shape. Participants needed training within the virtual environment and with varying home equipment and internet access sometimes struggled to upload their slides and videos. Such challenges pulled people together as we helped each other. Once familiar with the online environment, participants engaged in lively discussions in thirty-five sessions, thematic break-times, and in the lounge area. Displays and live demonstrations took place in the expo area. We missed the opportunity to hug friends, the bus tours, the Saturday morning trip to the market, those chance encounters in the cafeteria lineup, and dinners on the town, but the online experience provided advantages beyond those listed above. One could knit while listening to a panel from the comfort of their home office and no one needed to pack a suitcase, stand in long airport lineups, or struggle with sleepless nights in a strange bed.
Altogether people found the experience rewarding so that future conference organizers are considering the possibility of hybrid conferences.
As the COVID pandemic transformed our lives, one thing remained a constant. The kitchen continued to be the center of home life. In fact, social distancing, lockdowns, and other challenges associated with the pandemic made the kitchen even more important as cooking, eating, studying, and above all work, intersect around the kitchen table.
Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbookedited by Cynthia C. Prescott and Maureen S. Thompson, concludes with perspectives on the pandemic and situates them amid the long history of cooking, food, and women’s work in the home. The book combines scholarly essays with reflections, recipes, and recollections that bring out the complex history and work around the kitchen table. With over 20 contributors and 60 selections, Backstories takes the reader from the East Coast’s Delmarva Peninsula to the American and Canadian Midwest, the Mexican-American border, to Hawaii and beyond and situate the kitchen across a range of cultural and historical contexts.
Cynthia C. Prescott, Professor of History at the University of North Dakota explained “Our goal was to bring together recipes, interdisciplinary scholarship, oral traditions, and personal memories to explore three centuries of rural foodways and women’s lives. Whether you are a foodie or a gender or food studies researcher, you will find much to savor in this unique volume.”
Maureen S. Thompson, a PhD candidate at Florida International University noted: “Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook is a captivating amalgamation of scholarly articles juxtaposed with heartwarming family memories associated with particular foods, and yes, plenty of recipes. Rural Women’s Studies Association members generously contributed scholarly articles paired with foodways, memories, and reminiscences to create, perhaps, the first academic cookbook.”
The volume was produced in conjunction with the Rural Women’s Studies Association triennial meeting which this year has the theme “Kitchen Table Talk to Global Forum.” Catharine Wilson, Co-Chair of the RWSA and Host of the 2021 Conference, remarks: “Backstories serve up a delicious “taste” of what the RWSA is about: they are international and capture farm and rural women’s/gender studies in historical perspective. Members savored reflecting on their foodways and collecting the recipes, a process that whetted their appetites for our 14th Triennial Conference … Bon appétit!”.
Like all books from The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, it is available as a free download and as a low-cost paperback via Amazon.com. William Caraher, director of The Digital Press, noted: “It was a pleasure to collaborate with the editors and contributors to produce something genuinely unique. That we can make this book available for free as a download and as an affordable paperback should ensure that it appears in as many kitchens and libraries as possible.”
Paperback copies of the book are available for $20 USD as a fundraiser for RWSA’s Jensen-Neth Fund, which supports students, activists, and international scholars participating in RWSA conferences.
Images:
Prescott_Author_Photo: Cynthia C. Prescott photo (courtesy of the University of North Dakota)
Thompson_Author_Photo: Maureen S. Thompson photo (courtesy of Maureen S. Thompson)
Hard copy sales shipped within USA benefit RWSA’s Jensen-Neth Fund. Global sales available via Amazon.
In this post, Backstories co-editor Maureen S. Thompson reflects on the making of RWSA’s new “academic cookbook.”
“An academic cookbook?” my perplexed peers, friends, and family questioned whenever I described the passion project that engaged me and coeditor, Cynthia Prescott, over the past few years. I ultimately explained Backstories: The Kitchen Table Cookbook as the perfect amalgamation of scholarly articles juxtaposed with heartwarming family memories associated with particular foods, and yes, plenty of recipes. There’s even a section on the pandemic, an event no one saw lurking around the corner when this project was first conceived at the 2018 Triennial Rural Women’s Studies Conference hosted by Ohio University.
Since the inception of Home Economics, recipes have become scientific, standardized, and frankly, rather clinical in nature. We don’t remember exact measurements or cooking times associated with recipes, but we do remember the experience of making pizzelles with Nona for the neighborhood cookie swap or the disappointment of a failed souffle concocted for International Night at the local high school. The cultural values and memories humans covey upon food, and its preparation, are integral to our perception of the world at large.
Essays contained within this volume cover a range of topics, including teaching foodways, the origins of cookbooks, immigration stories, and contemporary celebrity chefs. We encounter stories relating hunger experienced by westward-bound pioneers and how they exhibited hospitality with limited resources, cooking contests, and how the 2020 pandemic modified Passover ingredients and rituals. Readers will discover the amount of time and effort required for crafting homemade tamales, venison mincemeat, and sauerbraten. Lastly, Backstories emulates some early cookbooks that contained “receipts,” as recipes were formerly termed, for home health remedies.
Every recipe, organization, and person possess a backstory. Cindy and I hoped to include an updated history of the Rural Women’s Studies Association. As one of the founding members, Joan Jensen penned the original version in 2003, but subsequent details were housed primarily in people’s memories instead of writing. I contacted Joan and Cindy approached longtime members to compile an accurate and up-to date account which is included in this book. Although only the coeditors’ names appear on the cover, this cookbook was a collaborative venture and I thank every RWSA member who contributed. We literally could not have produced this book without your submissions. Special thanks to Cindy, who oversaw the project and mentored me throughout. I would also like to thank Bill Caraher at The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota for his assistance producing this book.
Similar to church ladies or members of women’s auxiliaries of the past, we compiled this cookbook as a fundraiser for our organization, but RWSA contributors also provided scholarly analysis addressing history, gender, race, class, political, and economic issues associated with food production and consumption. In kindred spirit with our foremothers, we present Backstories: The Kitchen Table Cookbook. I hope this volume conveys a greater understanding of food history, and that readers develop a deeper appreciation for foodstuffs, the people who grow, harvest, and deliver sustenance, and for the efforts of those who create new dishes, and prepare and serve meals on a daily basis. Bon appetite!
The program has been finalized for Rural Women’s Studies Association’s first-ever virtual conference! Register now for the conference, which will occur on the Hopin virtual platform May 11-15, 2021.
The deadline to register is Sunday, May 9th at midnight Eastern Daylight Time (UTC -4).
Check out the Schedule-at-a-Glance here, or scroll down to download the full program.
Full conference information available online.
Schedule at-a-Glance (All times are Eastern Daylight Time or UTC -4)
Tuesday, May 11
8:30-9:00am – Explore the Conference Platform on your own
9:00-9:45am – Welcome Session
BREAK – 10:00-10:30am
10:30am-12:00pm – Concurrent Sessions 1: Gender Structures in Livestock Breeding and Farm Management 2: Educating Mother: Political and Economic Education for Rural Women
12:00-2:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT – Launch of the RWSA Cookbook
2:00-3:00pm – Concurrent Sessions 3: Situated Solidarities: “Feeding the World” Mythology and Transnational Feminist Praxis, a roundtable discussion 4: Women and Cattle Production: From Midwestern Convents to the High Plains
BREAK – 3:30-4:00pm – Break Time: Meet Other Grad Students
4:00-5:00pm – Concurrent Sessions 5: Confronting Crisis in the Countryside: Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality in Rural Environments 6: Can She Cook?
Wednesday, May 12
8:30-10:00am – Concurrent Sessions 7: Rural Women and 21st-century: Liminality, Exception, and Empowerment 8: Girlhood and Sisterhood from Rural to Global
BREAK – 10:00-10:30am – Break Time: Next Berkshire Conference
10:30am-12:00pm – Concurrent Sessions 9: Domestic Spaces: Preserving Rural Life 10: Cookbooks and Food Experts: A Taste of Backstories: The Kitchen Table Talk Cookbook
BREAK – 12:00-12:30pm
12:30-2:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT – Keynote Speaker: Kim Anderson
2:00-3:30pm – Concurrent Sessions 11: Dairying as an Occupational Identity for Women: From Farm to Factory in the Netherlands and Sweden 12: Tales & Tables: Foodways of Eastern Montana 13: Rural Women and Political Action in the 1970s and 1980s
BREAK – 3:30-4:00pm
4:00-5:00pm – Concurrent Sessions 14: Women, Foodways, and Power in Arkansas 15: Regional Foodways in the 19th Century
7:00-8:00pm – Session 16: Family Farms/Family Decisions
Thursday, May 13
8:30-10:00am – Concurrent Sessions 17: Nigerian Women and Mental Health 18: Recipes, Memory, and Identity
BREAK – 10:00-10:30am
10:30am-12:00pm – Concurrent Sessions 19: Rural Women Making and Breaking the Mold 20: Rural Women as Home Healers 21: The Food We Eat, the Stories We Tell: Kitchen Table Talk from Appalachia
12:00-2:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT- RWSA BUSINESS MEETING
12:30-2:00pm – Launch of “What Canada Ate” exhibit & website, a Tribute to Anita Stewart
2:00-3:30pm – Concurrent Sessions 22: Politics Begin in the Kitchen 23: From Rural Hearth to Cookstove 24: Selling Produce, Navigating Markets
BREAK – 3:30-4:00pm – Break Time: Share Ideas about Publishing
Friday, May 14
8:30-10:00am – Concurrent Sessions 25: Rural Women’s Mental and Physical Health 26: Rural Women: Recipes and Remembering
10:30am-12:00pm – Concurrent Sessions 27: Food on the Rural Canadian Homefront 28: Food, Family, and Poverty in the US 29: A Daughter, a live play reading
12:00-2:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT – Collecting COVID Stories, a Roundtable
2:00-3:30pm – Concurrent Sessions 30: Passionate and Personal: ‘non-feminist” Rural Labour’s Broader Implications 31: Reading Between the Lines: Women, Literature, & the Kitchen Table in 20th-Century Rural and Prairie Canada
3:00-5:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT – Musical Performance by Mary Parkinson
Saturday, May 15 8:30-10:00am – Concurrent Sessions 32: What’s on the Table 33: Social Action and Identity Building
BREAK – 10:00-10:30am – Break Time: Grad Student Get-together
10:30am-12:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT: Mentorship & Development Networks for Rural Women & Researchers
12:00-2:00pm – SPECIAL EVENT – Farm Show
2:00-3:30pm – Concurrent Sessions 34: Leaders in Extension Service and Agricultural Journalism 35: Fellowship in the Digital Age: Rural Women, Community, and Social Media
BREAK – 3:30-4:00pm – Break Time: Sharing Ideas about the Next RWSA Conference
