When I was young my mother maintained a collection of index cards with handwritten recipes collected from family members, friends, and acquaintances. This was a very common practice in the mid-20th century, but women prior to that sometimes wrote in dedicated books for that purpose but also in diaries, scrapbooks, or other books with space for recording their collection of recipes.
In one household in a tiny town rural Ohio, a young woman began
collecting recipes in a disused journal. This leather-bound journal was
used as a ledger for the Union Center Grange from 1882 until 1909. The
original ownership of the Grange journal is clear, the inscription
inside the front cover reads, “Bought by A. J. Blank for Union Center
Grange No. 571, January 5/82.”
On page 79 the ledger entries stop and a recipe collection begins with Peanut Cookies
recipe one-1 Peanut Cookies
half cup shortening
1 cup molasses
[illegible] tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon ginger and
2 cups flour
half cup chopped peanuts
and enough flour to roll.
Bake about 13 minutes in
a moderate oven.
Reading through the book there were several clues to the author’s identity. Throughout the book there are places where someone either doodled abstract drawings or practiced their penmanship with rows of careful letters. More useful, however are the names she inscribed, Ida Williams, Ida Draper, and Walter Draper. As teenagers and young women sometimes do, on several pages she appeared to practice writing both her name, her boyfriend’s name, and the name she would take when they married.
What was the connection between the Draper and Williams families and the Union Center Grange? This remains unclear. The are no entries in ledger for dues paid by anyone with those surnames. The Grange was located in Uniopolis, Ohio. Ida penciled in an address for Walter in Belle Center, a town about 22 miles east of Uniopolis. But the question of how Ida Williams received the ledger remains a mystery.
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