Grandma Minnie in Her Own Words

Grandma Minnie was born on Christmas Eve in 1890. As we have seen in an earlier post, she spent her childhood along the Erie Canal in Fort Plain, New York. Minnie always enjoyed telling her grandchildren about her life along the canal.:

Grandma Minnie reminiscing 1979

 

At some time during Minnie's "golden years," a family friend recorded an interview with Minnie, asking her about life in Fort Plain in the 1890's. Minnie's daughter Glenadore also participated in the conversation. An excerpt from the undated interview follows:

Interviewer: Can you tell me Minnie, about the days along the old canal? Did your father sell things besides the everyday type of food and like that at the store?

Minnie: Oh yes.

Minnie as a toddler on the porch of the store

Interviewer: Tell me, what did he sell? Did he sell supplies for the animals and like that too?

Minnie: You mean, for the horses? He had the hay and the straw and the oats for the animals. There was a building on the other side, and that’s where he kept the hay and the straw and the oats and the wood. And he had a rack for a cord of wood. It was slab wood.

Interviewer: Did the farmers and the townspeople sometimes come and trade there too?

Minnie: Oh yes, a lot of the townspeople come down and bought things and my father would deliver them. And I would ride in the wagon with him. [Laughs] Then I would go to the Larkin Company, and I would get a list of stuff that I wanted.

Interviewer: That was pretty popular in those days, the Larkin Company. Now tell me about the packet boats, did they eat on the packet boats too, and what about when they had to do their washing and like that? Did they do that on the boats?

Minnie: Oh yes, they did the wash; they had lots of water.

Interviewer: The canal water? Is that what they used to wash with?

Minnie: I guess so, where else would they get it?

Interviewer: Did the boats run at night or just in the daytime?

Minnie: Oh yes, I guess they did [run all night].

Interviewer: How many hours did they leave the team pulling the boat?

Minnie: Eight hours, eight hour shifts.

Interviewer: And the men changed then too?

Minnie: Oh yes, the drivers, and the lock tenders had eight hour [shifts] too.

Interviewer: Now can you tell me, did they have horses or mules on that canal, to pull the boats?

Minnie: Oh, it was mostly mules. And they’d change every eight hours; they had to walk [for eight hours].

Interviewer: Did they carry some of those mules down inside the boats, to have an extra team, or did they have stations along the canal [where they would change the teams]?

Minnie: No, they were always on the boats. And when they changed, they had to change while the boat was in being locked. They had a ramp, and the mules would go on the ramp, and then they’d go down in the cabin. And some of’em were balky [laughs], and they had a time to get’em there!

Interviewer: Tell me how the purchases were made at the store.

Minnie: Well, they had to get the groceries and supplies and take’em into the boats, when the lock tenders were lockin’ the boats in the locks, that was all the time they had to do all that. My father had to load up groceries and get’em and run across the lock gates and take’em [i.e., the supplies] down in the cabins, oh yes. And it was a lot of hard work for my father, because you had to hurry, because the boats don’t stay very long in the locks to get out. 

Minnie's family in front of the store

Interviewer: How many hours a day was the store open?

Minnie: It went right around the clock! The hired men had to sleep on the counter some nights, ‘cause the boats went all day around. And then they’d just take turns; one night my father would, and the next night, the hired man. They had to lay on the counter in the grocery store.

Interviewer: I was wondering when they had time to sleep, but they took turns then.

Minnie: That’s all the time they had, ‘cause the boats went day and night.

Interviewer: On the boats, the packet boats, can you tell me, did they cook and serve the meals on the packet boats?

Minnie: Oh yes, right down in the cabins, they must have had stoves, they probably had kerosene stoves, don’t you think so? Of course, my father had wood too; I don’t think they had much coal in them days.

Glen: Did any of the boats winter over here? Did they tie up for the winter?

Minnie: Why yes, in the canal. All the boats were there. They tied up at Lockville for the winter, and they could go to the grocery store and get all their supplies.

Glen: Well, did they live on the boats in the winter?

Minnie: Sure. They must have had their stoves to keep warm, oil stoves, or wood.

Interviewer: What about the ashes?

Minnie: They dumped them in the canal, ashes from the wood stoves.

Interviewer: Well now, didn’t those canals have quite an odor to them in the summer? It couldn’t have been very sanitary like that. What did they do with their garbage?

Minnie: [They dumped it] along the banks of the canal. Or it went down in the bottom of the canal. [Laughs]

Along the canal in Fort Plain

Interviewer: Tell us a little bit about Fort Plain in those years. Was there any manufacturing at all?

Minnie: Oh yes, they was lots of things, different things. Manufacturing and stores  --  they had the knittin’ mill,  silk mill -- Duffy’s silk mill, and they had a lot of harness stores down here and they made harnesses. They had a lot of different stores, they sold dishes, one store had nice china dishes, and variety shops, “5 and 10’s”.

Glen: How about the carriage makers? Were the carriage shops in business?

Minnie: Yes, they had a lot of different ones, they had hose companies too, where they made hoses.

Glen: How about the fire companies, and racing at the race track?

Minnie: Oh yeah, that was a race track around behind there. The fire companies used to have races and Will, my husband, belonged to one of’em. And if you belonged for so many years, you was exempt from jury duty. I know when we were courtin’, boy, when that fire alarm whistled, Will goes a’scootin’, he always run to the fire, ‘cause he was a fireman. It was a great life.

Glen: How about your tea parties with your friends, down on the canal?

Minnie: Oh, I had lots of tea parties with the youngsters my age, because my father had a big case, with all kinds of candy and gum and stuff, and then we had soda pop, and they’d bring some cookies and something they’d made, and upstairs [from the store], we’d have a party. And I used to soak crackers, of all crazy things, I’d soak them little oyster crackers in water till they swelled all up, and ate’em! We used to like it. [Laughs]

Minnie as a young girl

Interviewer: How many months in the year was the canal open, Minnie, do you remember?

Minnie: Oh, it opened about April, and then it closed the end of the year. I think maybe it didn’t close until the first of December. It closed for the winter.

Interviewer: Was any water added in the summertime, when the canal got a little low? Did they add water from some of the rivers?

Minnie: I don’t know how they did that.

Interviewer: Well, they must have done it some way.

Minnie: Maybe from the aqueduct.

Interviewer: Minnie, do you have any other things that you’d like to tell people at this time?

Minnie: Oh yes, I wanted to tell you about the lock tenders. Between the two locks was quite a strip of land. And that’s where they had their little shanty, I would call it, where the lock tender stayed. They had a fire in there, and they would sleep in there, that’s where they slept. And every hour they’d change. And then they’d come over to the grocery store, and they’d shake dice, and my mother would make egg nog. And it was made of hard cider and eggs. And boy, was that good  --  that’s what the lock tenders said! [laughs]

Interviewer: Minnie, toward the end of the canal days, they used steam, didn’t they, on some of the boats? Did they have steam engines in them?

Minnie: Oh, there was steam boats, in the later times. And of course, they have a whistle. When they’re coming up there by the bridges, they’d blow the whistle, and my father was so familiar [with the whistles] that he would know when he heard the whistle just what boat it was, just from hearin’ the whistle.

Interviewer: Now, they had some pleasure boats too, did they?

Minnie: Oh yes, they had pleasure boats here, they’d have excursions. They would go from here up to Mindenville, to the lock. And then they would get off there, and along the road and up the hill a ways was a woods. And there was a sulfur springs up in there, and they’d go up in there, and they’d have their picnics up in there. Yeah, they had quite a thing like that.

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As Minnie herself said, "It was a great life." Later, as a young married woman, Minnie got the following cookie recipe from a neighbor up the street:

Minnie's Cookie Recipe

As you will notice, and is typical of many of Minnie's recipes, it tells us the ingredients without giving much guidance as to steps in preparation. I especially like the old-fashioned turn of phrase, "Mix stiff with flour." After experimenting with the recipe a couple of times,  I have modernized it as follows:

Minnie’s Molasses Cookies (From Mrs. Vrooman)

2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. ginger

½ tsp. ground cloves

½ cup margarine (1 stick)

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup molasses

1 egg

½ tsp. vanilla extract

Approximately 1 cup granulated sugar for coating the cookie balls before baking

Pre-sift flour.

Sift together first 6 ingredients in a medium bowl. Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together margarine and brown sugar.

Beat in molasses, egg, and vanilla extract.

Stir in flour mixture to form a stiff dough.

Molasses cookie dough

Cover and chill in refrigerator until firm (4 hours or overnight).
Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Scoop out dough with a soup spoon, and roll into 1 inch balls.

Roll balls in granulated sugar and place on cookie sheet, about 2 inches apart.

Press down gently on cookie dough with the bottom of a glass, to flatten slightly.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until tops are slightly crinkled.

Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack. 

In honor of the holidays, and Minnie's Christmas Eve birthday, my daughter and I made the cookies, using red and green colored sugar to coat the cookie dough balls. The result is below. Mix, bake, and enjoy!

Molasses Cookies for Christmas

Iroquois Harvest - The Journey Continues

If you haven't already read last week's post, you may want to read that first before continuing here. 

It is late December. You have been trudging through the wintry landscape for almost three weeks. You are cold, wet, tired and hungry. Approaching your destination, an Oneida village near where the Turning Stone casino now stands, you wonder how you will be received  --  as friend or foe. A figure appears at the crest of the next hill. As she approaches, you see that it is a woman bringing you baked pumpkins to eat. Later, at the village you feast on bear meat and salmon every day, the latter caught in the tributaries of the St. Lawrence River. They are so plentiful that the villagers may catch as many as 800 fish in one day.

Iroquois Menu #2

Broiled salmon

Baked squash

Whole wheat bread

Broiled salmon:

4 small salmon steaks (or 2 large salmon fillets)

2 tbsp. canola or olive oil

juice of one lemon

½ minced onion (or 1 clove garlic, minced)

2 tsp. dried herbs (your choice  --  I use “herbes de Provence,” a mixture of rosemary, thyme, basil and oregano)

1. Preheat broiler.

2. Rinse salmon and pat dry with paper towels.

3. Place salmon steaks or fillets on pre-greased broiler pan. Brush with half the oil.

4. Broil salmon, turning after 5-7 minutes.

5. When turned over, brush again with remaining oil, squeeze the lemon juice over the fish, and sprinkle with minced onion and/or garlic and your choice of herbs.

6. Broil again until done, another 5-7 minutes.

You may wish to salt a little to taste. Garlic salt adds a nice flavor if you don’t have fresh garlic.

Baked acorn squash:

I learned this recipe from a roommate in graduate school. Who would have thought that the basic recipe was hundreds of years old?

1 acorn squash

½ c. honey

1 tbsp. butter or margarine

½ tsp. cinnamon or nutmeg

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Wash squash. Split it open carefully with large knife.

3. Scoop out the pulp and seeds. You can bake the lightly salted seeds alongside the squash if you wish; they make a tasty and nourishing snack.

4.  Place squash halves, cut side down, in a shallow baking dish with ½ inch water. This will prevent the squash from getting burned and sticking to the pan. Place pan in oven.

5. After 30 minutes, remove pan from oven, carefully turn squash halves right side up. Pour into each half ¼ c. honey, ½ tbsp. butter or margarine, ¼ tsp. cinnamon or nutmeg.

6. Bake again until done, about another 30 minutes. Seeds will require less baking time and should not be placed in the same pan with the water and squash.

Heat a loaf of whole wheat bread in the oven for the last 5-6 minutes of squash cooking time; it complements the salmon and squash nicely. The Iroquois did not cultivate wheat, but they enjoyed the wheat bread baked by their neighbors at Rensselaerswijck.

Variation: Use butternut squash instead of acorn squash; butter and salt instead of honey. You can reduce baking time by cooking the squash in the microwave for 5-10 minutes. Or, if you’re really in a hurry, do the entire cooking process in the microwave, about 10 minutes each side. 

Salmon, Squash, Whole Wheat Bread

 

* * *

When the travelers left the Oneida village to return east, they were given salmon, bear meat, corn bread and corn meal to take with them. Along the trail, they would use the corn meal to cook sappaen, a type of porridge much like our modern-day oatmeal. According to food historian Peter Rose, in Food, Drink and Celebrations of the Hudson Valley Dutch, this Iroquois corn mush became so popular with the Dutch colonists that it became a daily dish for them as it had been for the Iroquois. In fact, it survives in a different form in our supermarkets, in canned creamed corn.

On the whole, the diet described by van den Bogaert is a balanced one, with ample sources of protein, carbohydrate and vitamins. In particular, the growing of corn, beans and squash together in the same field was the hallmark of Iroquoian horticulture and the basis of their diet. According to extensive research conducted by Dr. John Hart, Director of Research and Collections at the New York State Museum, the cultivation of these three crops in New York State in a system known as intercropping, dates from about AD 1300. This system, in which bean and squash seeds are planted around sprouting stalks of corn, requires a sophisticated knowledge of agriculture. It is a polyculture that mimics natural plant communities: The corn stalks furnish a support for the bean plants; the beans, as legumes, produce nitrogen which makes it a self-fertilizing system; and the squash vines act as a natural mulch, discouraging the growth of weeds.

In the cooking pot as well as in the field, the Three Sisters work well together. Corn is high in calories, and it is 7-10 % protein. Beans contain a larger amount of protein, including a complementary amino acid to that found in corn. Squashes provide significant calories, vitamins and minerals, and their seeds are high in oil and protein as well.

In the villages visited by van den Bogaert and his companions, foods such as venison, salmon, corn and berries were dried and either hung from the rafters of the longhouses, or kept in bark-lined storage pits or granaries. In this way, there would be enough provisions to last through the long winters, and to share with weary travelers such as van den Bogaert and his companions. 

                                          

Author's Note: This post, and the previous one, are based on an article that appeared in The Altamont Enterprise on November 19, 2009. Used by permission.

A Taste of the Iroquois Harvest

Last week we went back in time to the earliest forebears of Grandma Minnie in New Netherland. Here is a story and a menu from the era when her ancestor Cornelis Van Slyck arrived in Rensselaerswijck in the early part of the 17^th century:

Imagine walking in the dead of winter from Albany 100 miles west past Amsterdam, Canajoharie, and Utica, floundering through three feet of snow, sometimes waiting for flooding creeks to recede, and wondering where your next meal was coming from. Such a journey was undertaken by three young Dutchmen in the winter of 1634, the same year that Cornelis arrived in the colony. (To our knowledge, Cornelis did not participate in this trip, but the tales he almost certainly heard from its leader may have encouraged him to press west on his own at a later date.)

With the assistance of Mohawk guides, the trio traveled west from Fort Orange through Mohawk and Oneida territory into what is now Oneida County. As employees of the Dutch West India Company, their mission was to investigate the situation regarding the fur trade.

There were reports that the French were making incursions into New Netherland from the north, and were offering the Iroquois more for their furs than the Dutch were. The three men left Fort Orange on December 11, 1634 (377 years ago today!) with five Mohawk guides, and stayed at a number of Iroquois villages as they made their way west. Once the provisions they had brought with them ran out, they were dependent on their Mohawk and Oneida hosts for nourishment and shelter.

The leader of the expedition, Harmen van den Bogaert, wrote an account of their journey, which has been translated by Dr. Charles Gehring and William Starna, and published by Syracuse University Press in 1988. The journal gives modern readers a window into some of the customs of 17^th century Iroquois, including an almost daily account of the foods the travelers were offered. Many of these foods sound familiar to 21^st century inhabitants of the Capital Region: nearly every Upstate New York school child has heard of the “Three Sisters,” corn, beans, and squash, which were the staples of the Iroquois diet. We also still enjoy turkey, salmon, pumpkins, blueberries, strawberries, and corn muffins. Although we may prepare these foods differently from the way van den Bogaert’s neighbors did, our recipes have their origins in the daily diet of the original inhabitants of the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys. Some other foods that are mentioned, such as bear meat, beaver meat, rabbit and venison, are a bit more exotic to modern tastes, although not unheard of.

On December 14, van den Bogaert writes, “I bought a very fat turkey for two hands of sewant [wampum], which the chief cooked for us; and the grease that cooked from it, he put in our beans and corn.” The journal mentions cornbread on several occasions, which sometimes has beans baked in it, or chestnuts, dried blueberries and sunflower seeds. To experiment with replicating some of these meals, I came up with the following menu:

Iroquois Harvest Menu

Bean and corn stew

Cornbread with berries and sunflower seeds

Turkey drumsticks

Stew, Cornbread, and Turkey Drumsticks

For the bean and corn stew, I adapted my favorite chili recipe. You can either sauté the scallions, garlic and green pepper first, then add the beans and other ingredients, and simmer for 25 minutes. Or, as an alternate way of cooking this dish, I also tried putting all the ingredients at once into my slow cooker, and letting it cook on low for about 4 hours. Either way, this type of chili or stew always tastes better on the second day, when the flavors have had a chance to melt into each other.

Bean and corn stew:

2 stalks scallions cut into ½ inch pieces

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 medium green pepper, chopped (or use red or yellow pepper, to give the stew more color)

3 (15-oz) cans kidney or pinto beans, rinsed and drained (The Iroquois grew several varieties of beans, so you can mix and match to suit your taste. I like to use 1 can each of black, red, and white beans. Or substitute a can of pinto beans for any of those.)

1 (16-oz.) can recipe-style stewed tomatoes, with the juice

1 (8 ¾ oz.) can of corn

½ to 1 tbsp. ground cumin, to taste

2 bay leaves (Be sure to remove these before serving.)

You can also add more flavor if you wish, by adding a half jar of mild salsa and/or a few slices of bacon, crumbled. If you wish to copy van den Bogaert’s description more closely, simmer a couple of turkey drumsticks in chicken stock and serve those on the side.

Cornbread:

Great-grandma Kittie Van Slyke, who spent her whole life in the Mohawk Valley, had a simple recipe for cornbread: 1 pint buttermilk, 1 pint cornmeal, 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons melted butter, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and a pinch of salt. I decided to make it even simpler by using a cornbread mix:

To your favorite cornbread or corn muffin mix, add any combination of the following:

1/3 c. sunflower seeds, 1/3 c. chopped chestnuts, 1/3 c. dried blueberries. If you cannot find dried blueberries, you can substitute dried cranberries. Or you can use fresh blueberries, which would make the muffins or bread more like our familiar blueberry muffins. Follow instructions on the package for temperature and baking time, and enjoy this hearty Mohawk meal. 

 

To be continued . . . 

Author's Note: This post is based on an article that appeared in The Altamont Enterprise on November 19, 2009. Used by permission. 

Reaching Back in Time

A series of photos from Minnie's family archives leads us back in time over 200 years. Like watching a film rolling backwards, we can reach back, first to a summer day 50 years ago:

August 1960

On a warm August afternoon in 1960, four generations of Minnie's family gathered for a family portrait on the side porch of the large house bought by Minnie's father in 1908. Minnie is in the top row, to the right. She is 70 years old in this photo. Her mother, Kittie Van Slyke Fineour (top left) is 92 years old. Two of Minnie's daughters sit in front of her, and son Bill is bottom right, with his family (wife Grace, and children) to the left.

At this time in history, Dwight Eisenhower's administration in the White House was winding down; in three months time, JFK (John Fitzgerald Kennedy) would be elected the 35th President of the United States. The population of the U.S. was 180 million, and the Space Race with the Soviet Union was on. The USSR launched Sputnik 5, with dogs Belka ("Squirrel") and Strelka ("Little Arrow") the very month this photo was snapped. The space capsule, with its canine cargo intact and alive, was safely recovered the next day.

Let's roll the film back another 50 years:

Van Slyke-Fineour Extended Family, Summer 1912

This family portrait may have been taken only a few feet from the earlier one. Minnie and her husband Will stand at the left. They are newlyweds, having married in February of that year. Minnie is a young 22, and her husband is somewhat older, age 37 in 1912. Minnie's parents Kittie and Fred Fineour are the couple standing at the right end of the row. Kittie, born in 1868, is 44 in this picture, and Fred (born in 1862) is 50. Minnie's younger brother Frederic stands in front of his mother. Other cousins stand between the two couples in the back row.

Front and center sit Kittie's parents, Jonas Van Slyke and Margaret Colson. Their birth dates reach back to 1841 and 1840 respectively, and they were married in 1864, when the American Civil War was still raging. But by the time this photo was snapped, Jonas had reached the age when he sat and pondered a lot, and his wife Margaret often admonished him to "get up and air your pants," as family lore reports.

1912 was a busy year in politics, with developments in technology and social history as well. New Mexico and Arizona were admitted to the Union as respectively the 47th and 48th states; Woodrow Wilson would be elected the 28th President of the United States a few months later. It was also the year that Roald Amundsen reported reaching the South Pole. Tragically, the Titanic ocean liner sank on its maiden voyage, having been struck by an iceberg.

The woman's suffrage movement was actively demonstrating in both the US and Britain, but women would not get the vote in the US until several years later. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, the "bread and roses" strike  at the woolen mills was part of the movement for better wages and working conditions for both male and female mill workers.

In technology, the Ford Motor Company produced 26,000 cars that year, making the first modern electric traffic light, installed in Salt Lake City, a welcome piece of equipment to help regulate the increasing flow of traffic.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, Harry Houdini, Pablo Picasso, and Marc Chagall in turn captured the population's attention for their popular or shocking accomplishments, and the Mayor of Tokyo gifted the city of Washington, D.C. with 3,000 cherry trees to symbolize the friendship between the two nations.

Last but not least, chocolate lovers will be glad to know that the National Biscuit Company introduced the Oreo cookie the year this photo was taken.

Now let's roll the  film back about another 65 years:

Jonas and David D. Van Slyke

This daguerreotype was taken sometime in the second half of the 1840's. The little boy seen here leaning confidently on his father's shoulder is the bearded grandfather we saw in the last photograph. Jonas appears to be about five years old in the picture, but we're not exactly sure when it was taken. His father, David D. Van Slyke, was born August 28, 1813, and married his wife Sally Moyer in September 1840. David D. was in his early to mid-30's at this time.

In the latter half of the 1840's, the new science and art of photography was in its infancy. Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre first demonstrated his invention to the French Academie des Sciences in January 1839. This image was apparently taken within the next decade.

While young Jonas roamed the hillsides of the Mohawk Valley, President James K. Polk precipitated a war with Mexico, hoping to wrest a large swatch of territory from that country. There was drought on the Great Plains, which had seen sufficient rainfall in previous years. White hunters began to decimate the vast herds of bison that roamed the plains, eventually depriving the Native American hunters of their source of sustenance.

Other names in the news were Brigham Young, the charismatic Mormon leader who led his followers from western New York State beyond the western limits of United States territory; Henry David Thoreau, who was jailed in Concord, Massachusetts for refusing to pay a tax to support the Mexican War; Edgar Allan Poe, who published "The Cask of Amontillado" in the September issue of Godey's Lady's Book; and William Morton, a Boston dentist who pioneered  the use of ether as an anesthetic during tooth extractions. This invention also found immediate use in operations on casualties in the Mexican War, opening a new era in medicine.

One last image, also a daguerreotype, takes us back another generation in Minnie's family history:

David Van Slyke and Betsy Hellegas

This daguerreotype, probably taken at the same time as the previous one, shows us David D. Van Slyke's parents: David Van Slyke, born on Christmas Eve in 1787, and Elizabeth ("Betsy") Hellegas, born in May 1790. They were married about 1810. If the picture dates from the same era as the previous one, David would be 60-ish, and Betsy five years younger.


With this image, we can reach back to the year of David's birth, the year that the US Constitution was drafted by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, presided over by George Washington. The Federalist Papers published after the Convention urged the States to ratify the Constitution. By the end of that year, three states (Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey) had ratified it.

Three years later, the first US census in 1790 would count a population of 3.9 million.

David Van Slyke was the first of Minnie's ancestors to be born after the American Revolution. David's father, Nicholas Van Slyke, fought in the Battle of Oriskany as a young man. If we go back even further in time, we can trace Minnie's forbears to Cornelis Van Slyck, who came to New Netherland from Breukelen in the Netherlands in 1634. Cornelis married a Mohawk woman, with whom he had four children. We can clearly see the Native American heritage in David's features, even 200 years later.

                                                                        *   *   *

Sources:

http://www.answers.com
http://www.wikipedia.org
http://www.metmuseum.org
http://www.census.gov/history/www/reference/genealogy/census_records.html

"Dainty Serving"

"The advisability of making the dishes attractive by dainty serving is not enough appreciated by the busy housewife. It seems so much easier to dish the meat and vegetables 'anyhow,' than to use the extra exertion needed to make them pretty, that she is apt to grow careless. Habit is everything in such matters. The practice once acquired of arranging the food to please the eye, as well as the palate, the added labor is taken for granted and seldom observed."

With these subtly scolding words, the Queen of the Household gently exhorts the Victorian era homemaker to pay attention not only to how food is prepared, but to how it is dished out as well. The advice is relevant even today, since in our busier-than-ever twenty-first century lives, we are apt to eat on the run or slap together a sandwich on a paper plate even at home.

Thanksgiving place setting

Fortunately, family gatherings at holidays such as Thanksgiving usually break this daily pattern. This is the one day all year that Americans of all faiths and ages trot out their best china and linens  --  perhaps the chipped Stanglware inherited from Mom and the thrice-mended lace tablecloth of Grandma's. They polish the tarnished silver spoon that came from Great-grandma's trousseau and the cut-glass Fostoria goblets that were Aunt Marg's.

Each family has its own traditional Thanksgiving recipes for turkey, stuffing, vegetables, and pies. Here are a few from Great-grandma Nan's book of household hints and recipes. They are part of the Thanksgiving menu proposed by the Queen of the Household in 1891. (See last week's post for the whole menu list.)

Turnips

Turnips:
Pare and cut into pieces; put them into boiling water well salted, and boil until tender; drain thoroughly and then mash, and add a piece of butter, pepper and salt to taste, and a small teaspoon sugar; stir until they are thoroughly mixed, and serve hot.

Sweet potatoes

Sweet Potatoes:
Sweet potatoes require from 45 to 55 minutes to boil, and from 1 to 1 1/4 hours to bake; the time given will make the potatoes moist and sweet; if, however, they are preferred dry and mealy, 15 minutes less will be enough.

Celery

Celery:

Wash, trim and scrape the stalks, selecting those that are white and tender; crisp by leaving in ice-cold water until they are wanted for the table; arrange neatly in a celery-glass; pass between the oysters and the meat.





We did not have oysters at our Thanksgiving dinner this year, but we did have the traditional turkey and stuffing, and two kinds of vegetables: carrots and turnips. These are two root vegetables, which our forebears were able to keep well in root cellars before the days of refrigeration.

The meal was scrumptious and daintily served. The colors on my plate mimicked those of the late November landscape outside my window:

Bon appetit!

But we all saved room for pie . . .

Happy Thanksgiving!  (Thank you to Margriet W. for hosting this year's feast.)

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This afternoon, my husband and I drove west into the Mohawk Valley for a visit to the old homestead. We brought pumpkin and apple pies for a post-Thanksgiving treat. Flipping through old photo albums, we saw pictures of Grandma Minnie as a young adult, with her proud parents holding one toddler after another as her family grew. I feel fortunate to have those scenes of life as it was lived 100 years ago in the neighborhood where Dad grew up.

We drove homeward as the afternoon sun waned, and as we came over the crest of a hill, we could see the skyline of Albany in the distance. I slowed down as a family of wild turkeys crossed the road in front of the car. As we approached home, pink and purple streaks in the sky were reflected in the Schoharie Creek and the Watervliet Reservoir. The sun slid behind the pines as I pulled into the driveway. The long holiday weekend was over.

"Over the River . . .

. . . and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go."

Thus begins an old holiday song that had particular significance for me as a young child.

 

Over the River and Through the Woods

It was our family custom to travel west into the Mohawk Valley on Thanksgiving, to celebrate this typically American holiday with Grandma Minnie and our aunts and uncle from my Dad's side of the family. Of course, we didn't travel by horse-drawn sleigh as portrayed in the video, but instead by car over the highway. Even if the road was sometimes snowy, most often it was plowed.

When we arrived at Grandma Minnie's house, after warming up with snacks and beverages, a dozen or more family members would seat themselves around the large table in the dining room, extended out to its maximum length for the occasion.

The table boards seemed to groan under the weight of the turkey and other dishes prepared once a year for this special feast. Minnie would always prepare creamed oysters for Dad, and there would be several varieties of pie for dessert  --  pumpkin, blueberry, and mincemeat.

After dinner we would retire to the parlor, where Aunts Glenadore and Charlotte would entertain us with piano and violin, until it was time for us all to gather around the old Victorian era upright with its trilling tremolo, to belt out, "Swing the Shining Sickle," a harvest song from the 1920's.

Only then was it permitted to turn on the television for the inevitable football games, which Dad watched while we kids dozed on the sofa, overcome by a surfeit of soporific turkey flesh and other goodies.

My earliest memories of these holiday gatherings include my great-grandmother, Kittie Van Slyke, who was born in 1868, and who lived to be 94 years old. It was she who owned the book of household hints and recipes, "Queen of the Household," which has been passed down to me along with Minnie's handwritten notebook.

Queen of the Household - Frontispiece

While leafing through the crumbling pages of this 120-year-old volume earlier this afternoon, I wondered how families in the Mohawk Valley celebrated Thanksgiving in Kittie's young adulthood. The holiday was declared an official day of  thanksgiving and praise by President Abraham Lincoln a few short years before Kittie was born. Perhaps by the time her cookbook was published, some traditions had already emerged.

Sure enough, on page 531, in a chapter entitled "A Year's Bill of Fare," I came upon a suggested menu for Thanksgiving dinner:


                                                Thanksgiving Dinner

Oyster soup                    
Celery
Roast Turkey, with Cranberry Sauce
Mashed Potatoes
Baked Sweet Potatoes
Mashed Turnips
Roast Pig
Carrots With Cream
Boston Baked Beans
Minced Cabbage
Pumpkin Pie
Plum Pudding
Fruit, Nuts, Cheese
Tea and Coffee

With the exception of the roast pig, plum pudding, and perhaps the oyster soup, the menu is not so different from the typical Thanksgiving fare of today. Stay tuned; perhaps I'll try out a recipe or two this Thursday . . .

A Home of Their Own

Elisabeth & Barend, with baby Jake 1912

As their family grew, Elisabeth and Barend began to realize that the apartment on Third Avenue was too small. In the early 1920’s, they purchased a plot of land on the outskirts of Albany, near where the Eagle Point Elementary School now stands. Today, seeing the paved streets and rows of houses in the neighborhood where I grew up (a block away from “the old homestead”), I try to imagine what it must have been like there in that previous era. The main road, Route 20, was paved, but there were no streets yet adjacent to their house. The family had to walk through a grassy field to get to the road, where a trolley would take them downtown. 

With his carpentry skills, Barend built a small house, then a larger one for the growing family. They planted fruit trees and a grape arbor in the lower lot next to the house. The only thing missing to replicate the bucolic environment of their rural villages in the Netherlands was  a cow to provide milk for the children.

But where to find a cow in New York State’s capital city? Across the Hudson River in rural Rensselaer County lived another Dutch family who owned several cows, and who agreed to sell a Holstein named “Baasje” (“Bossie”) to the VandenBerghs. The only catch was, lacking a truck to transport the cow home from the farm, Barend would have to walk the animal from Castleton on the eastern side of the river to the western edge of Albany, a distance of twelve and a half miles (20 kilometers). This journey must have taken about six hours, with Barend leading the bovine slowly along the river, past Poplar Island, Cow Island, Bear Island, and Cabbage Island, across the river at Rensselaer, and along Route 20 to Beacon Avenue, perhaps stopping here and there along the way, wherever he could find water for the thirsty animal.

It must have been worth the journey, because eventually the family owned three or four cows, including a calf which became a family pet. It was this calf that had the unfortunate fate of being slaughtered for beef steak, as the children watched horrified from an upstairs window. After that experience, the family determined that they would never do such a thing again. 

But they continued to enjoy the fruits of their labors, and of their garden in the lower lot.

VandenBergh family 1937, in lower lot with blossoming fruit trees

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I don't know whether the family grew endive in their kitchen garden, but if so, Grandma may have prepared this stamppot recipe from her cookbook. Endive is quite bitter, and thus an acquired taste, but in this recipe the bitter flavor is mitigated by the blandness of the mashed potatoes.


Stamppot With Endive:

Ingredients:

- 5 or 6 small or 3 large potatoes
- 3 endives
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 - 2 tablespoons butter or margarine

- Peel and rinse potatoes. If using large potatoes, cut in quarters.

- Place the potatoes in salted water, just barely covering the potatoes.

- Lay the washed and trimmed endives on top of the potatoes, so that they will be steamed as the potatoes boil.

Boiling potatoes with endive

- Cook until potatoes are tender, 20 to 25 minutes.

- Drain so that there is about a half inch of water in the bottom of the pan.

- Mash the potatoes and endive together, with a tablespoon or two of butter or margarine.

Stamppot with endive

Gathering Nuts -- Montgomery County, Late 1940's

It was a sun-dazzled late autumn afternoon, much like today. We don't know the exact date, but the photos may have been taken the year Mom and Dad were married (1946); if so, it was probably not more than six weeks after their wedding. Mom and Dad enclose the rest of the party like bookends: Mom in a pinkish skirt and sweater set, and Dad in a blue shirt or sweater, frozen in the act of tossing a stick at the tree branches to shake down a few more nuts.

This is the only slide in the series where I can positively identify each of the figures. Moving right from Mom, we see Dad's sister Doris, Grandma Minnie, and sisters Charlotte and Margaret. I can hear their voices as clearly as if I had been there that day  --  Grandma Minnie exclaiming, "Land sakes, Bill, don't hit your sister with that stick!"

Mom stands a little apart from the family group, perhaps still a bit shy with her new sisters-in-law, or perhaps simply not dressed for the occasion, not having known that the visit to the in-laws would include an excursion to the countryside to gather nuts. Otherwise, why the pink skirt and high heels? I'm sure she wanted to make a good impression on Dad's sisters.

Just as the figures in the photos are frozen in mid-gesture, the sunny afternoon in central New York seems congealed in time, at the cusp of the changing seasons and times. It was like that moment when the sun tinges the treetops with gold just before it makes its way over the rooftops to bathe the entire landscape in light.

In history, this moment was the pause after World War II, when horror gave way to hope, the GI's came home, and reconstruction was about to begin in Europe. The returning soldiers would fuel not only an economic boom, but a baby boom as well. The babies born that year are now in their sixties and collecting Social Security.

Today we turned the clocks back one hour ("Spring ahead, fall back"), to return to Standard Time from Daylight Savings Time.

But we can't really turn the clock back, certainly not to that autumn afternoon of 65 years ago. We can only look back and ponder with hindsight at time's relentless march, and at what we know now that the figures on that idyllic afternoon didn't know: a creeping mass of frigid air known as the Cold War would dampen spirits for the next few decades in spite of the hopefulness of the present moment.

And what would the family do with the nuts they gathered that day? It is difficult to tell what kind of nuts they were, perhaps chestnuts for a Thanksgiving stuffing recipe, or maybe some other variety that Minnie would use in one of her recipes for fruit conserves.

I have not attempted any of these recipes yet; they call for enormous quantities of fruit and sugar, but curiously no pectin such as we would expect as a thickening agent in a modern recipe for jam or jelly. The fruits used may naturally contain a certain amount of pectin, which may also be the reason for the inclusion of the grated orange rind. The purplish blots on the paper indicate that Minnie must have used at least one of the recipes and dripped a few drops of the fruit mixture while testing whether it had jelled or not.

If any reader tries one of the recipes, please let me know how it turned out!

Thank you to Margriet W. for scanning these slides.

Settling In

If Elizabeth and Barend had looked a block and a half north when they stepped out onto Broadway as they left Albany’s Union Station, they would have seen an old Dutch-style house called coincidentally the Vandenburgh (with a “u”) House.[1] Demolished in the 1940’s, it was one of the last remaining physical reminders of Albany’s Dutch colonial origins. 

Albany received its city charter in 1686, but settlement by Europeans in this riverside port area goes back to the early 17^th century, when the Dutch West India Company began trading for furs with the rival Mohican and Mohawk peoples who inhabited the nearby islands and forests. If our grandparents had looked a block or two west from the train station, they may have been able to glimpse the First Church of Albany, whose pulpit, carved of Flemish oak and adorned with an hourglass to time the Dominee’s sermons, was brought from Amsterdam in 1656, purchased for the grand sum of twenty-five beaver pelts.[2] The church's current building dates from 1797.

According to census records, when Barend and Elizabeth arrived in Albany, the city's population  was just over 100,000; it would grow to 135,000 in the next forty years, when it began to decline due to migration to the suburbs.   

New York State Capitol - Roof renovation 2011

Albany’s Capitol building was undergoing major renovations in the spring of 1911, in the aftermath of a devastating fire earlier that year that had collapsed a large portion of the building, decimated the museum collections, and virtually destroyed the State Library that the building had housed. (Coincidentally, a project to restore and renovate a different section of the building's roof is taking place as I write this.) Also damaged in the tragic fire were priceless archives that documented Albany’s early Dutch history.[3] In mid-1911, the State Education Department, which was to be the new home of the library, archives, and museum, was nearing completion across the street from the Capitol.

New York State Education Building

Barend and Elizabeth settled in Albany’s South End, a warren of two-story homes inhabited by immigrants from the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Poland, and Italy. Family lore has them living, appropriately enough, on Elizabeth Street. But the 1920 census record shows their address as 75 Third Avenue, which is just around the corner from Elizabeth Street. Barend is mistakenly listed as “John VandenBerg”; his occupation is shown as carpenter. Elizabeth kept house and looked after the couple’s five children born by that time: Jacob, Elizabeth, Louisa, Jasper, and Grace (my mother, who is listed as a six-month-old in the census report). Stepping out on the “stoop” to look for playmates, the children must have heard a polyglot stew of languages and inhaled the rich aromas of spaghetti sauce, kielbasa, and corned beef and cabbage, as well as their mother’s traditional stamppot.

Church on Jay Street

On Sundays the family walked a mile or so to the Fourth Reformed Church on Jay Street. Coincidentally, one of the couple’s great-grandchildren now lives on that block, almost directly across from the now-abandoned church. Jay Street is one of the last streets in Albany to still have the old cobblestones, probably placed in the 1920’s, now picturesque although showing their age.

Jay Street, Fall 2011

Grandma Elizabeth’s cookbook, Eenvoudige Berekende Recepten (“Simple Hearty Recipes”) contains the following recipe, which she may have cooked for her growing family on Third Avenue. It is as tasty today as it was a hundred years ago.

 Stamppot with Apples and Bacon

-        1 kg. (2 pounds) sour apples

-        1 ½ kg. (3 lbs.) potatoes

-        400 grams (about 1 lb.) lean bacon

-        10 gr. (2 teaspoons) salt

- Wash the bacon with warm water and cook it for about half an hour in ½ liter (2 cups) boiling water.

- Peel and rinse the potatoes, and set them to cook in the same pot with the bacon, adding the salt.

- Peel and quarter the apples, removing also the cores, and place the apple quarters in the pot.

- Let all boil for about 30 minutes, taking care that the water doesn’t boil away. Add a bit more water if necessary.

- Remove the bacon from the pan and mash the apples and potatoes together. Crumble half of the bacon and stir it into the potato mixture.

- Serve with the rest of the bacon alongside or on top of the potatoes.

Stamppot with Apples and Bacon

(I used only half the amounts called for, and it turned out to be plenty for the two of us now at home.)

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[1] Rittner, Don. Images of America: Albany. Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, S.C. 2000.

[2] Alexander, Robert S. Albany’s First Church. Newsgraphics Printers, Delmar, NY. 1998.

[3] Restoration and translation of these 17^th century documents continues to this day under the aegis of the New Netherland Institute, funded in part by a grant from the Dutch government.

Arrival at Last

If you haven't already read the last two posts, you may want to read those before continuing here.

Elisabeth and Barend did indeed leave Loosdrecht the day after their wedding. They traveled by train to Rotterdam, from whence they embarked on the SS Potsdam, one of the Holland America Line's huge passenger ships. Finding the correct quay among the vast maze of docks and ships must have been a challenge. At that time, and for many years after, Rotterdam was the world's largest seaport, with thousands of ships jockeying for position among its waves and wharves.

SS Potsdam 1900

I have only vague memories of Grandma and Grandpa Vanden Bergh from my earliest childhood, when they were both in their 60's. So it is difficult for me to imagine how they must have felt as a pair of twenty-somethings just beginning their life together as they searched for their ship among the floating behemoths at Rotterdam's seaport. Did they trudge along slowly with apprehension? Or trip gaily and giddily, finally out from under the watchful eyes and intrusive thumbs of parents, siblings, and employers?

Did they stride up the gangplank with nary a look back over their shoulders, or with heavy hearts and a lump in their throats as they thought of family, friends, and the fatherland they were leaving behind? We may never know for sure, but I believe that they must have had mixed feelings, perhaps a stew of apprehension and exuberance common to many who leave their countries of birth behind to seek a fresh beginning in a foreign land.

In any case, once aboard the crowded ship, Barend and Elisabeth must have felt some satisfaction that their frugality and good luck had enabled them to purchase second class tickets. In fact, in later years, Grandma Elisabeth always wanted people to know that they had traveled second class, not steerage!

The passage across the Atlantic Ocean took ten days. The ship's manifest lists their last name as v.d.Bergh, and in the far right column under Destination, "New York" is crossed out and "Hoboken" (New Jersey) is inserted, apparently the port at which immigrants who did not travel as steerage were processed. Although Barend and Elisabeth did not pass through the doors of Ellis Island, they were indeed part of the Great Immigration that took place between 1892 and 1924, when 22 million immigrants came through the ports of New York and New Jersey.  Their names are inscribed with 700,000 others on the Wall of Honor at the site of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum.

Ellis Island as seen from Staten Island Ferry

From Hoboken, Elisabeth and Barend must have gone by ferry across the river to New York City, where they found their way to Grand Central Station, which was undergoing a ten-year-long construction project during this era. The new terminal, that which we know today, would not open until 1913.

The New York Central Railroad took them the 150 miles (240 kilometers) north to Albany, the capital of New York State, where they had decided to settle.The train would have left them off at Albany's Union Station, an imposing granite structure completed in 1900. The station, now vacant, stands on Broadway in downtown Albany, across from a quiet park where government employees enjoy the autumn sun on their lunch breaks. But a hundred years ago, the area was far from quiet. Albany was a major hub for travelers, with a hundred trains a day arriving at the station from all points of the compass. Barend and Elisabeth must have stepped out into the spring sunlight dazzled by the chaos of trolleys, cars, and horse-drawn wagons competing for space along the street lined with hotels and restaurants.

Union Station in Albany, NY

Looking left and right, they caught sight of a policeman and showed him a crumpled piece of paper with a name scrawled on it -- Schij, a family from Loosdrecht who had emigrated earlier  -- and an address in Albany's South End. The officer directed them to which trolley they should board to find their friends' neighborhood, which would soon be their neighborhood as well.

To be continued . . .