As I’ve written before I like to collect manuscript cookbooks. They are windows into the lives of those who compiled them. And they are mysteries. Who was this person? Is there handwriting from more than one person or is this the record of one woman’s life? Where did she live? How can you unravel her family and social connections from the pages of the book?
About a year ago I added another manuscript book to my collection. Inside the front cover M. Louise Brown wrote her name and the date she started her book while living in Pittsfield, New Hampshire.
I had recently moved to the New England region of the US and was eager to see some of the regional foods that Louise documented in her cookbook.
It was surprising then, that I started finding traces of the Pacific Northwest, an area I was very familiar with. I lived in Spokane, Washington for several years in the 1970s and in Seattle from 1999-2004. So when I saw two recipes for aplets, a candy straight from Washington’s apple-growing region, I was surprised. There were other references to loganberries, a hybrid fruit from the Pacific coast, and to a farm in Kent [Washington] where you could buy pitted cherries. It made me wonder who was this woman and why did this New England cookbook contain so many references to a place 3,000 miles away?
There were many false trails in tracking down M. Louise Brown of Pittsfield, New Hampshire. The first big clue was in the Pittsfield, New Hampshire Annual Report of the Town Officers 1906. She is listed as one of the fifteen teachers in the town’s schools. Her salary of $130 per year is the second lowest on the list, indicating that she was probably young and just starting in her career.
I found additional information in the Sexennial Record of the Class of 1904, Yale College published in 1911. There is an entry for her husband Paul Shaffrath. They married in 1908 in Seattle where her husband had a law practice. This provides additional information on her education. She graduated from Mr. Holyoke in 1905, a year before she returned to Pittsfield to work as a teacher. The General Catalogue of Mount Holyoke College, 1837-1924 confirms this information listing her in the Index of Students under her married name, Shaffrath. According to her entry on Find a Grave she was born in Pittsfield in 1880 and remained in Seattle until her death in 1939.
For a young woman of 28 the move from a small town of around 2,000 to the city of Seattle, with over 200,000, must have been exciting. At the very least it was a very different environment. Looking through her recipes it was evident that she found friends in her new home. She often provided a source for the recipes. While some came from newspapers or cookbooks, she lists over 40 people who shared their recipes. Some of these came from something called the Young Married Women’s Cork Board in Seattle. Such a club would have provided support for the transplanted New Englander and a place to exchange recipes.
The recipes themselves are typical of American personal cookbooks of the times. Dominated by recipes for cakes, cookies, candies and deserts, she also included some savory main dishes, a few vegetable recipes and a small section on preserves and pickles. Here are a few to whet your appetite.
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