A Sauerkraut Thanksgiving

 

(Bon Appétit) ... I didn't know what to say that day to explain our tradition, but I've since done some research, and I now know where it comes from: Baltimore. Serving sauerkraut at Thanksgiving is an old tradition there, rooted in the homes of the city's German immigrants. In 1863, when Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, about a quarter of Baltimore's population was German. Sauerkraut was a given on their celebratory table, and so it became a common part of Thanksgiving meals across the city. Over time, it didn't even matter if you came from German stock: Sauerkraut became a Baltimore thing. My grandfather's family was as Irish as they come—Mack was their surname, a shortened version of Macgillycuddy—but he grew up on the Chesapeake Bay, eating sauerkraut on the fourth Thursday of every November. Continued

{Falmanac slow-cooks his Thanksgiving sauerkraut with spareribs and caraway seeds.}

Photo: Making sauerkraut c1915 (Library of Congress).

Riding the rails and seeing the sights

(exploreharford.com) On a recent Saturday morning, I had an opportunity to ride Amtrak north from Baltimore to Philadelphia. I had not been on a train in something like 13 years, and I was interested to see how I would view the places in Harford and Cecil counties along the rail line from a different perspective.
Crossing Bush River into Perryman, I was surprised to see very little had changed, or at least I had that feeling. Other than a few new industrial buildings here and there, and some new homes near the water at Forest Greens, the area looked open and much of it is still being farmed.
Seeing what remains of the venerable Mitchell family canning buildings, now given over to the storage of farm implements and other equipment, reminded me of a story I had read in an old edition of The Aegis from the 1940s or 1950s about two wandering hobos who got what the newspaper called "the ride of their lives." Continued

Photos: Top: Amtrak Susquehanna River bridge Bottom: Mitchell Cannery. (MDRails)

Dembytown

"In 1917 Harford's decades of sunny, prosperous, and seemingly unending tranquility were abruptly interrupted by America's entry into World War I. Many Countians volunteered for and saw service in Europe during the conflict, it seems arguable that the greatest affect the Great War had on Harford came in October 1917, when the federal government condemned the entire Gunpowder and Bush river necks -35,211 acres of land and 34,000 acres covered by water or about 60 square miles in all. Heretofore, as historian Keir Stirling has written, these stretches of southern Harford County "were locally known as the 'Garden of Eden,' where an excellent grade of shoe peg corn had been grown for many years. Many area farmers were able to produce 125 bushels of corn to the acre. The Baker family and others engaged in the profitable canning industry were producing about 300,000 cases of shoe peg corn and tomatoes worth approximately $1.5 million annually by 1917 .... The famous Poole's Island peaches were ... were canned locally and considered to be of high quality. Local fishing was another industry worth $700,000 a year."
Overnight all this changed as everyone living on those bay-front lands had to move to make way for the poison-gas testing facilities Washington felt the war demanded. The former landowners - the Cadwaladers, Bakers, Mitchells, and others - received some payment from the government for their lost acres and many of them then purchased other farms and resumed their lives. The workers, generally black tenant farmers, received nothing and were forced to move from the source of their livelihoods. Many such displaced families, including the Dembys and Gilberts, settled in a stretch of land near Magnolia; the houses, church, and school they built created the community now called Dembytown (HA-1603, HA-1604)." From the 1998 Historical Preservation Element.

The Good Old Days: Funny Money

(Maryland Morning) Summer is here, bringing with it sunshine and humidity–but also lots of fresh summer fruits. Here in Maryland, we wanted to examine the way people who used to pick and can strawberries, tomatoes, and potatoes used to be paid. This was called piecework, and instead of receiving cash right away, for every bushel or pound or bucket workers picked or canned, they would receive a ticket or a token [scrip], and trade them in for actual money at the end of the week. Continued

See also: What did your folks do for a living - when they were children?

History needs company: Army seeks to turn over maintenance of Mitchell House

(The Record) The historic Malcolm Mitchell House on the outskirts of Aberdeen Proving Ground has served as everything from office space to a natural history museum, but the U.S. Army is hoping someone else can take over the building’s upkeep.
Built in 1905 near what is now Ruggles Golf Course, the Queen Anne-style house was a wedding present from Mitchell to his son and daughter-in-law, according to an Army report.
The family had a farm on the property and also ran a vegetable canning business there until the property was absorbed into Aberdeen Proving Ground more than 90 years ago. Continued

Mary Clyde Streett, Spenceola Farm owner

(Baltimore Sun) Mary Clyde Streett, who helped operate a once-thriving Harford County tomato cannery, died of dementia Dec. 26 at the Bel Air Convalescent Center. She was 98. Born Mary Clyde Spencer in Forest Hill, she worked alongside her father in his canning operation in Frogtown, between Bel Air and Forest Hill. Continued

Photos: 1. Spenceola Farms Tomatoes (Falmanac) 2. Child Laborer in Maryland, c1909, by Lewis Hine/Maryland Child Labor Committee

What did your folks do for a living - when they were children?

My parents' families can be very tightlipped on certain subjects. For example: They still haven't told me my father was married & divorced, previous to marrying my mother. I'm 45 years old - I think I can handle it. They are all ancient now, I guess they'll never tell me.
So I wasn't surprised at Christmas dinner, a few years back, when my uncle mentioned that he and my father, and the rest of the family, spent every summer working as migrant laborers, picking crops all over the region. "When was this?" I asked. "Oh, our whole lives growing up," he said. This was in the 20's and 30's. They picked fruits and vegetables on the Delmarva peninsula, and in York County too. I asked him if he liked the work? "Nah." "How about my dad?" "He hated it." (Interestingly, both men had huge gardens as adults.) "Did the girls work?" "Everybody worked."
The other day, I came across the pictures below, made by Lewis Hine, in the employ of the Maryland Child Labor Committee. They show Baltimoreans, mostly Polish families from Fells Point, working in the fields in 1909. This was a few years before my father's generation, so I guess the Child Labor Committee didn't get very far with its crusade. The photographs below are from the Library of Congress. You can see more of them by clicking here and putting in the key words "Hine" & "Maryland." Any captions below are from the original pictures.

Off to the berry farms of Maryland. Taken on Fells Point, Baltimore, Md.
A street full of Baltimore immigrants lined up and ready to start for the country to the berry farms. Wolfe Street, near Canton Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland.
Typical cooking and eating quarters of berry pickers. Anne Arundel Co., Maryland.
Annie Bissie, a little picker in the fields near Baltimore.
John Slebzak
Three families live in this shack: one room above and one below. Bottomley's farm near Baltimore, Md.
Interior of a shack occupied by berry pickers. Anne Arundel County., Maryland.
Interior of one family room in upper floor of one of the berry-pickers shacks, Bottomley's farm, near Baltimore.
Groups showing a few of the workers stringing beans in the J. S. Farrand Packing Co., Baltimore, Md.

A canning machine and some of the boy[s] Small boys work at and around these machines some of which[?][ are dangerous. J. S. Farrand Packing Co., Baltimore, Md. Witness--J. W. Magruder. July 7, 1909.

A strawberry field on Rock Creek, near Baltimore. Whites and negroes, old and young, work here from 4:30 A.M. until sunset some days. A long hot day.

These children are representatives of the two families that occupy this one room in a shack on Bottomley's farm, Baltimore, Md.

Marie and Albert Kawalski. 615 S. Band [Bond?] St., Baltimore, Md. Albert is 10 and Marie 11 years old. They worked, with mother, last winter, shucking oysters for Varn & Beard Packing Co., Young Island, S.C. (near Charleston). Mrs. Kawalski did not have things represented to her correctly and she found that all the children that had fare paid were compelled to work for the company. Other smaller children worked some and went to school some. Maire and Albert have worked several summers in the berry, beans and tomato fields packing houses near Baltimore.

Laura Petty, a 6 year old berry picker on Jenkins farm, Rock Creek near Baltimore, Md. "I'm just beginnin'. Picked two boxes yesterday. (2 cents a box).

Cannneries map graces Aberdeen bank

(The Record) - A slice of Harford County’s industrial past is on display at Harford Bank, in Aberdeen.
On the wall hangs a map displaying locations and names of canneries that flourished in county during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The project was the result of a collaboration between the Harford County Historical Society, Churchville resident and canning-expert Bernie Bodt, and Erin Wiley, of the Harford County Department of Planning and Zoning. Continued

The Return of a Lost Jersey Tomato

(NYTimes) - ... “What we’ve got here is a memory of how tomatoes used to taste.”
That memory is so powerful that when the seeds of a favorite tomato, the Ramapo, became unavailable in the late 1980s, the state’s gardeners began a letter-writing campaign, demanding that Rutgers bring it back.
“The 1990s is when we began to hear a swelling of dissatisfaction with the flavor of tomatoes in New Jersey,” Mr. Rabin said. “Something had to give.” Continued

Photo: Spenceola Farms Tomatoes, Canon EOS 5D

Mmm, rendered edible beef fat

Baltimore Museum of Industry.
Canon EOS 5D, EF 28-135 mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens.

Mmm, tinned meat

Baltimore Museum of Industry.
Canon EOS 5D, EF 28-135 mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens.

There will be corn

Hyde Station, Hydes Maryland

The Maryland & Pennsylvania Railroad (MA&PA) passed through Hyde & Baldwin, Maryland, which are about a mile apart, and there is a station in each place. The reason for this is while Baldwin, a prosperous little crossroads, was the obvious choice for a station, Hyde (later called Hydes and as lonely then as it is now), featured a cannery. And also because the MA&PA was always hard up for revenue on the Maryland portion of the tracks; they'd stop for a barking dog, if there was the possibility of it buying a ticket.
The cannery sat across the street from the station and a portion of it sat there well into the 1980's until, for no apparent reason, it was torn down. I always liked that little ruin. The cannery itself was instrumental in getting the MA&PA, or one of its predecessors, up and running, as it was used to demonstrate to prospective investors that the line was financially viable. (Which it wasn't really; not at the time.) I read that the railroad took all those investors on an excursion one day, to eat corn. And that has always stuck with me, and it's why I am such an awful railfan. I didn't care much about the coaches they rode in, or the engine that pulled them, the thing that stuck in my mind was this: Why would those people give up a day to ride a train and eat corn? Were they just playing along, or did they really want to do such a thing?
I like to think that they enjoyed themselves. And not because the 19th century was that dull; it wasn't, not for prosperous Baltimoreans. I imagine it was for the same reasons that my own parents were, in my eyes, so very boring. They weren't dull for lack of wit, or lack of funds, or lack of imagination; they were dull because of history. Rather they were dull for having experienced what is often considered exciting history: The Great Depression and World War Two. After that they didn't want any more excitement. They and their friends were happy to cultivate their gardens; which they did in droves, in the great and new suburbs of America. And that's how I picture those men on that train, Civil War vets, probably most of them, and most of them having more than one sibling or spouse dead at an early age from cholera, or yellow fever, or diphtheria, or whooping cough, and most of them having survived all the "panics" that wiped out fortunes, large & small, every ten years or so back then, sitting on a plush seat contentedly eating a plate of corn and thinking, "this sure beats getting your ass shot off at Little Round Top."

Baldwin Station, Baldwin, Maryland

 

Canon EOS 30D & EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS lens

Key Ingredients Lecture Cancelled - Wed, Aug 22

The lecture on canning on Delmarva is cancelled for Wednesday, August 22. All others continue as planned. - The Historical Society of Cecil County Blog

Key Ingredients lecture series kicks off

The Key Ingredients lecture series kicked off Wednesday evening with a fascinating lecture called "Before the Age of Acme" by Dr. Constance Cooper, the manuscript librarian at the Historical Society of Delaware. Dr. Cooper outlined what it was like to shop for food in the era before supermarkets and convenience stores replaced corner stores and she provided the audience with a fun look back at the history of food shopping. Once the slide-illustrated talk was over, the audience had plenty of questions for her about how food shopping, preparation, and service habits have changed over the centuries.You won’t want to miss the other upcoming talks in this series, which all take place at 7:00 p.m. on the designated date at the Society, 135 E. Main Street, Elkton:

• Wednesday Aug 22 at 7:00 p.m. Ed Kee presents a lecture on "Saving Our Harvest," the story of the Mid-Atlantic's canning and freezing industry
  
• Monday, August 27 -- 'Building Houses out of Chicken Legs – Black Women, Food & Power” is the subject by Dr. Psyche Williams Forson. Using a receipe of scholarly analysis, personal interviews, film advertisments, cookbooks and literature, Williams-Forsythe examines the role of the chicken in African American Life, paying special attention to the connection between chickens and African-American Women. From slavery to the present, families have been fed with chickens raised by these women, who have made their livings cooking and serving in houses, resturants, on the roadside, at the harbor and in churches.
  
• Wednesday, Sept. 5 -- Dr. Cooper returns for a talk on the "The Delmarva Peach Industry."
  
• Wednesday, Sept. 12 -- A talk on Growing Heirloom Vegetables by Heather Morrisey, a history and how to guide for growing heirloom vegetables.
  

Key Ingredients: America by Food, has been made possible by the Maryland Humanities Council. Key Ingredients is part of Museum on Main Street, a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and the Federation of State Humanities Councils. These lectures are also underwitten by a grant from the Maryland Humanities Council.

From the The Historical Society of Cecil County Blog

Oysters

My father had an uncle who was born "a little slow," real slow actually, but he wasn't slow with an oyster knife, so they sent him to work in a cannery. This was back during the Great Depression, long before the ADA. He always entered the citywide oyster shucking contest and he aways won. He was the oyster shucking champion of Baltimore every year until the day he died. Come to think of it, it's the only distinction anyone in my family has ever earned. Slow indeed.

Spenceola Farms

Unlike a lot of subdivisions, Spenceola Farms was known as just that (Spenceola Farms), for many a decade. Not only was it a real farm, it had a local brand of tomatoes named for it. While it's impossible to preserve all of the past for ever and ever (people have to live somewhere & there's more of us than ever before), we do like it when developers pay heed to the past when naming projects.

Mitchell's Shoe Peg Corn

Once upon a time, around the turn of the 20th century, Harford County, Maryland led the nation in commercial canning. The industry centered around Perryman (aka Perrymansville) and Aberdeen. Numerous fortunes were made under various brands, but only one remains today: Mitchell's Shoe Peg Corn. And even that brand is now canned under the auspices of Hanover Foods of Hanover, Pennsylvania, though still quite tasty regardless. Like so much local history, a lot of the area was annexed by the federal government to build Edgewood Arsenal and Aberdeen Proving Ground. Indeed most of the county's earliest structures came under the care of the army which later reported that the historic buildings "blowed up real good." Sigh.

Old House #7

Now here's an example of the kind of history that I really like. This little building is too young to be on anyone's historical list, but it's old enough to start thinking in that direction. What was this building used for? A store, a school, a residence? I don't know. It's located in Perryman, Maryland, right across from the post office; which is another great old building. By the way, the large poles in the background are part of the catenary lining Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.

Update: According to "An Architectural History of Harford County, Maryland" by Christopher Weeks, this building was once the headquarters of the F.O. Mitchell Brothers company, famous growers and canners of "Mitchell's Shoepeg Corn." The building was built around 1900.

Saving Our Harvest

The Story of the Mid-Atlantic Region's Canning and Freezing Industry by Ed Kee




"In the 1840’s, a few pioneering entrepreneurs in Baltimore began preserving Chesapeake Bay oysters by cooking them in hermetically sealed cans. This was the beginning of America’s food processing industry. Subsequently, a major food industry that canned and froze vegetables, fruit and seafood spread across the Mid-Atlantic States of Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, and Delaware. By the end of the 19th century, nearly 1,000 independent canning companies, representing sixty-one percent of America’s canneries, were operating in these four states. The food canning and freezing industry, above all, is the story of innovative people – processors, farmers, mechanics, factory workers, farm workers, oyster shuckers and many more – interacting with each other and their environment as they brought science, technology, old fashioned common sense and an incredible work ethic to bear on the task of growing, processing, and marketing high quality, safe and nutritious canned and frozen foods to America and the World." You can order a copy here.