Town history – Page 2

June 24, 2015June 22, 2017

Cafe Parfait

Next up in our Recipes from the Archives series – Jennie Martin’s “Cafe Parfait.” Jennie’s Martin’s recipe comes from the Davidson Civic Club’s Davidson Cook Book (circa 1928), the same volume that contained the Misses Scofield’s Ice Box Pudding #1. The Davidson Civic Club (1911 – 1959; Davidson Civic League from 1952) aimed to promote “a well-kept household and a place for good and pleasant living” in Davidson. The club’s first president was Cornelia Shaw, Davidson College’s first full-time librarian and registrar; the members raised money to establish the first town library, beautify the town, and name town streets.

The title page for the Davidson Cook Book (circa 1928).

Jane “Jennie” Vardell Rumple Martin (1872 – 1955) was raised in Charleston, South Carolina. She attended the Charlotte Female Institute (now Queens University) and afterwards married James Rumple of Salisbury, North Carolina. Rumple died in 1892, and in 1897 Jennie married William Joseph Martin, Jr. (1868 – 1943; Class of 1888).

A portrait of Jennie Vardell Rumple Martin taken in Charlotte, circa 1900. — A portrait of Jennie Martin taken in Charlotte, circa 1900.

W.J. Martin, Jr. moved to Davidson in 1870, when his father (William Joseph Martin, Sr., known as “The Colonel”) took up a post as a professor of chemistry (and served as acting College President in 1887 – 1888). After graduating with B.A. (1888) and M.A. (1894) from Davidson, Martin went on to the University of Virginia, where he received M.D. (1890) and Ph.D (1894) degrees. W.J. Martin was a professor of chemistry at Davidson College from 1896 until 1912, when he became College President. After retiring from that post in 1929, Dr. Martin served as President of the Assembly’s Training School (now Union Presbyterian Seminary) in Richmond until 1933. W.J. and Jennie Martin moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, for five years before returning to Davidson in 1939. Jennie Martin had a son from her first marriage, J. Malcomson Rumple, and four children with W.J.: William Joseph Martin III, Eloise Martin Currie, Jean Martin Foil, and Mary Martin Maddox.

Jennie Martin with daughter Eloise, in front of the Davidson College President's House. — Jennie Martin with daughter Eloise, in front of the Davidson College President’s House (unknown date).

Jennie Martin was extremely active in Davidson town life – she was fundamental in founding the Woman’s Book Club of Davidson (Booklover’s Club since 1911) in 1899, and the Young Matrons Club (Twentieth Century Club from 1927 to 1964) in 1922. According to the January 1899 Davidson College Magazine, the Woman’s Book Club was established to be a place for women to discuss the latest books – in fact, “The Magazine warns the learned Ph.D’s. to be on their guard and look to their colors, since the women in their midst intend to be intellectual! As to the Boys!-they simply are not in it.” The Booklover’s Club still exists as a space for women in Davidson to gather and learn together.

50th anniversary gathering for the Booklover's Club - Jennie Martin is center, surrounded by Hattie Thompson and Mrs. W.R. Gray. — 50th anniversary gathering for the Booklover’s Club – Jennie Martin is center, surrounded by Hattie Thompson and Mrs. W.R. Gray.

Now to Jennie Martin’s Cafe Parfait – this recipe for a cold treat seemed just the thing for summer.

I tripled all the ingredients and added a bit extra coffee, since I was concerned that the flavor wouldn’t come through all the cream. I began by making a sugar or simple syrup, and the coffee I used was Reanimator Coffee’s Guatemala Finca La Pastoria (since I already had a bag on hand). Pro tip: if you don’t constantly stir the egg yolk-sugar syrup-coffee mixture, the eggs will start to separate from the liquids. I borrowed an electric ice cream maker from Jean Coates, our Assistant Director for Access and Acquisitions, for the freezing process – undoubtedly a bit different than what Jennie Martin would have used!

My cat was very curious and fearful of the ice cream maker. — My cat was very curious about and fearful of the ice cream maker.

After the ice cream maker had completed its process, I put the resulting ice cream in my freezer overnight. The completed Cafe Parfait is delicious – it tastes a like a sweet cream frozen custard with a hint of coffee. The recipe was very simple to follow, and with the modern addition of an electric ice cream maker, it was also a speedy treat to make.

June 3, 2015June 22, 2017

Oatmeal Crispies (Children Love These)

For our third installment of Recipes from the Archives, I chose Helen Abernethy’s “Oatmeal Crispies (Children love these)” from the 1965 “The Village Cook Book: Recipes from the P.T.A. Pantry, Davidson, North Carolina.”

abernethy003 — The inside cover of the Davidson PTA cookbook, 1965.

According to the February 15, 1965 Mecklenburg Gazette, “A group of young Davidson housewives, who are also busily engaged in Parent-Teacher Association work, have begun a determined campaign to raise funds to buy a new 50-star American flag for the Davidson Elementary School auditorium… The proceeds of the cookbook will be used also for a recorder and filmstrips for the school library.” The cookbook cost $1.50, and could be purchased at the Davidson College Store, as well as local shops Cashion’s and P. Nicholls.

Helen McLandress Abernethy (1901 – 1992) was a longtime Davidson resident and prominent community member. Raised in Indianapolis, Helen earned an art degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1923 and an M.A. in arts education from the University of Chicago in 1932. In her obituary, the Mecklenburg Gazette (November 18, 1992) noted that she “worked in ink and oils, she had her own kiln and did beautiful, original work in ceramics and mosaics.” Helen worked as a commercial artist in Chicago and taught art in public schools in Birmingham, Alabama, Champaign, Illinois, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. She founded the art department of Barber-Scotia College in Concord, North Carolina, in 1957 and worked as an associate professor of art at the college until 1964. Her work was exhibited at the Mint Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Barber-Scotia College, and Davidson College.

Helen Abernethy with one of her works of art, (date unknown). — Helen Abernethy with one of her works of art (date unknown).

Flyer for Coffee with Helen Abernethy in the Davidson College Union (date unknown).

In 1936, Helen married George Lawrence Abernethy (1910 – 1996), well-known to many Davidsonians as the founder of the College’s Department of Philosophy and as a co-founder of the Humanities program. George Abernethy taught at Davidson from 1946 through 1976, after earning a B.A. at Bucknell University in 1932, an M.A. from Oberlin College in 1933, and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1936. In 1962, George was the first recipient of Davidson’s Thomas Jefferson Award , given to a faculty member who demonstrates “the highest example of personal and scholarly integrity” (Charlotte News, May 15, 1962). Helen and George had two children – Robert John Abernethy and Jean Helen Abernethy Poston. Both Abernethys requested that their memorials be made to Davidson College at the time of their deaths; George to the George Lawrence Abernethy Endowment, and Helen to the Helen Abernethy Art Book Fund.

The Abernethys at a party in 1960, speaking to an unknown woman. — The Abernethys at a party in 1960, speaking to an unknown woman (on the right).

The recipe Helen Abernethy submitted to the Davidson PTA Cookbook in 1965 is a fairly simple one. I selected it for this blog series because I was intrigued by the title addendum (“Children love these”), and because the crispies sounded delicious.

Helen Abernethy's Oatmeal Crispies recipe. — Helen Abernethy’s Oatmeal Crispies recipe.

As an amateur baker, I had to look up what creaming shortening and sugars meant – essentially, using a hand mixer to fluff up the shortening and then slowly adding the sugars in while continuously mixing. I took some liberties with the recipe: I used tin foil instead of wax paper to wrap the cookie dough rolls in (because I don’t have any wax paper at home), and I put the dough rolls in the freezer for roughly 2 hours, instead of into the icebox (read: refrigerator) for an unspecified amount of time. I baked the crispies for roughly 12 minutes per sheet, checking the color every few minutes or so. My batch made about two dozen cookies instead of five – I must have sliced mine considerably thicker than Helen Abernethy would have done.

The finished product, in E.H. Little Library's staff room for sharing! — The finished product, in E.H. Little Library’s staff room for sharing! My coworkers assure me that they turned out well.

March 4, 2015June 22, 2017

Ice Box Pudding #1

Inspired by our archival colleagues at Duke University Libraries’ Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen blog series (among other delicious historic cooking blogs, such as Cooking in the Archives), the Archives & Special Collections team decided to try our hand(s) at making (and eating) some of the recipes we have in our collections.

For our first recipe, I picked Misses Sadie and Minnie Scofield’s “Ice Box Pudding #1,” from The Davidson Cook Book compiled for the Davidson Civic Club circa 1928 (the same cookbook that includes a recipe for “Roasting a Husband”). The title page states that “The object of this book is to assist the good housewives to preserve, to the future generation, the many excellent and matchless recipes of the Davidson ladies.”

I’ll admit it – I wanted to try an easier recipe for this first go, which is part of the appeal of Ice Box Pudding. Another appeal was digging into the Misses Scofield, who appear to have been citizens of some note in the Davidson community of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Miss Minnie and Miss Sadie Scofield, circa 1890s.

John N. Scofield, the grandfather of Sadie (1873-1956) and Minnie (1878-1958), came to Davidson in 1857 as the contractor for the first Chambers Building (Old Chambers). Their grandmother ran a boardinghouse in town beginning in the late 1860s; her most famous boarder was Woodrow Wilson. Minnie and Sadie’s father, Stephen Charles “Skit” Scofield ran a popular store on the corner of Main and Depot streets, which the family home was attached to. After “Mr. Skit’s” death in 1917, the Misses Scofield opened a tea-room in the storefront.

The Scofield family in front of their home. — The Scofield family in front of their home, when Minnie and Sadie were younger (including family dog, “the fat boy”).

Mary Beaty’s Davidson: A History of the Town from 1835 until 1937 includes this colorful description of Minnie and Sadie Scofield: “They were wonderful cooks. Generations of students waxed fat at their tea room… In their later years they often sat in the empty store building, enjoying the unparalleled view its windows gave them of Davidson life as it passed by from any of four directions. They would rock and fan and comment on passerby (Miss Sadie sweetly, Miss Minnie venomously), and what they did not know about the town was not worth knowing. They and their home were institutions, a link with the Davidson now a century in the past.”

Another Scofield family picture, this time showing the storefront. The store and house were demolished in 1960.

I’ll fully admit that I’m not a very experienced cook, but I actually thought that the Scofields’ recipe for Ice Box Pudding was easy to follow and barely took any time at all!

Ice Box Pudding #1, as published in 1928.

I wasn’t sure how much a “cake” of bakers chocolate actually is, so I estimated that it was roughly a full-sized bar but bought extra chocolate just in case – one milk and one dark chocolate (Ghirardelli). I ended up using both, and doubling the rest of the ingredients, because I wasn’t sure if I was making enough pudding to fully cover the ladyfingers. I also added a splash of milk and a half pat of butter partway through the melting process, to thin out the chocolate mixture a bit while keeping it creamy. This resulted in what is probably a thicker pudding layer than the Scofield sisters would have turned out (although I didn’t hear any complaints from my coworkers after their taste-test!). Store-bought ladyfingers (Forno Bonomi) make up the base, and I put the pudding in the freezer for 12 hours instead of the fridge for 24. While this did stray from the historical recipe a bit, hopefully it remained close enough to the spirit of the 1928 Ice Box Pudding.

The final product! Before putting the pudding in the freezer (left), and after some of the E.H. Little Library and Center for Teaching and Learning staff got to it. — The final product! Before putting the pudding in the freezer (left), and after some of the E.H. Little Library and Center for Teaching and Learning staff got to it (right).

Overall, our first foray into archival cooking was a success – I’m excited to try out more (and possibly more complicated) recipes in the months to come!

September 24, 2014June 22, 2017

25th anniversary of Hurricane Hugo

In the early morning hours of September 22, 1989, Hurricane Hugo wreaked havoc around Davidson, after causing significant damage in the Caribbean and coastal South Carolina. The college community was lucky, for the most part – although the storm felled over 230 trees and damaged the roofs of four dormitories, as well as the porch of the President’s House, there were no injuries and buildings were able to be repaired. As Davidson student Jim Leach commented in the October 11, 1989 issue of The Davidsonian, “I was really happy that I have a home to go to for fall break… I feel sorry for the people in Charleston.”

Students with the Davidson College historical marker on campus, illustrating the amount of debris on September 22, 1989. — Students with the Davidson College historical marker on front campus, illustrating the amount of debris on September 22, 1989.

Downed tree — A damaged tree near Dormitory Row.

While fortunate that no lives were lost, Mecklenburg County declared a state of emergency and some homes in Davidson and the surrounding towns were without power for over a week. The cost of replacing the downed trees on campus was estimated at $400,000, and the cost alone was not the most severe blow – the October 1989 issue of Campus Chronicle quoted director of facilities planning Grover Meetze as saying, “You cannot express in tangible terms what was lost. Dollars and cents just won’t do it. Everyone had special trees around campus, and the sight of them all lying on the ground at once was powerful.”

A student relaxes, feet up against the roots of an upturned tree.

The damage from Hurricane Hugo was such that classes on the 22nd were canceled, a rare event at Davidson – as The Davidsonian commented, “Students will forever remember the unexpected holiday from classes.” Students, staff, and faculty worked together to help clear debris from campus, and the food service staff worked overtime to make sure students were fed. Then College President John Wells Kuykendall called the volunteer clean-up effort “the epitome of the Davidson spirit.”

President Kuykendall assisted with the campus clean-up all day on Friday, September 22nd, 1989.

Students walk on the trunk of a felled tree on campus.

May 7, 2014June 22, 2017

Underneath the Carolina Inn

A few weeks ago, the archives received a donation of several mysterious items from Irvin Brawley, a longtime Davidson College employee (1971 – 2010; Brawley retired as the Associate Director for Property Management and Insurance). These items had been unearthed from beneath the Carolina Inn during restoration work, but nothing else was known about them.

All told, the items included Two Lucky Strike “flat fifties” cigarette tins, a bottle of castor oil from Eckard’s, and a bottle of Sloan’s Family Liniment. Before delving into details about these items, a brief history of the building they were found underneath: many Davidsonians today are familiar with the Carolina Inn, in its role as the home for the College’s Center for Interdisciplinary Studies.

Built circa 1848, the structure first began serving as a store that same year, under the operation of Leroy Springs. In 1855, the building was sold to Hanson Pinkney Helper, giving the building its other frequently recognized name – the Helper Hotel.

Carolina Inn as the Helper Hotel, circa 1870s.

The Helper Hotel was much more than just a hotel – the building also housed Helper’s store, and in the latter part of the 1800s, Dr. J.J. Dupuy operated a drug store on the premises. A peek at one of the pages of Helper’s 1896 store ledger gives a taste of what the Davidson community was able to purchase:

F.M. Hobbs' account for 1897. — F.M. Hobbs’ account for 1896.

Fred Marvin Hobbs, a Davidson resident and member of the class of 1900, seems fond of candy, cigars, and bay rum. Sadly, Hobbs perished in a drowning incident in the Catawba River in July 1900 along with a fellow classmate, David Yonan. Both students are buried in the Davidson College cemetery.

F.M. Hobbs, a frequenter of Helper's store during his days at Davidson. — F.M. Hobbs, a frequenter of Helper’s store during his days at Davidson.

In 1901, the Sloan family purchased the building and continued running both an inn and a store on the premises. The Sloan’s daughter, Sadie Sloan Bohannan, ran the building as a weekend rooming house for young women visiting Davidson in the 1920s and ’30s – former Library Director and first College Archivist, Dr. Chalmers G. Davidson (class of 1928), recalled that period as:

“…the day of the ‘great belle’ in the South, and ‘prom-trotters,’ as they were called, who made the rounds from Princeton to Tulane stayed at Mrs. Bohannan’s during their Davidson weekends. Mrs. Bohannan had beautiful antiques (she sometimes put as many as four girls in one four poster bed – for a dollar which was high pay) and she ran a highly reputable house. Davidson students could go only to the top of the stair to deposit suitcases and no farther.” (from Mary D. Beaty’s Davidson: A History of the Town from 1835 until 1937)

The College purchased the Carolina Inn from the Sloan family in 1946, and the building has been used as student housing, community gathering space (the town’s “Teen Canteen”), and as office and classroom space. Renovated in 1971 and designated as a Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Site in 1977, the Carolina Inn still serves as a meeting place for the College community.

Returning to the four items found beneath the Inn, not much is known about them. The Lucky Strike tins could date from anytime in between the 1930s through the 1950s – this design was used throughout those years. Both of these tins have some loose tobacco remaining inside, and are a bit dented. The back of the tins list that these cigarettes were manufactured at “Factory No. 30 District of N.C.”

Lucky Strike "flat fifties" tin. — Lucky Strike “flat fifties” tin.

The bottle of castor oil from Eckerd’s is equally difficult to date – the label lists a Tryon Street address in Charlotte, as well as a recommended dosage of one to two tablespoons for adults or one to two teaspoons for children. Eckard’s expanded into North Carolina, including Charlotte, in the 1920s, and the store operated in the area until the company went defunct in 2006-2007. The slogan “Creators of Reasonable Drug Prices” appears to have been used by the chain for several decades, however, and no other markings on the bottle give further clues.

Eckerd's of Charlotte, N.C., castor oil. — Eckerd’s of Charlotte, N.C., castor oil.

Finally, Sloan’s Family Liniment – Earl Sloan began marketing his father’s horse liniment for use on people by the late 1800s, and Sloan’s Liniment can still be purchased today. This bottle, like the one of Eckerd’s castor oil, does not have any date information but does include instructions for use.

Sloan's Family Liniment: good for both animals and people! — Sloan’s Family Liniment: good for both animals and people!

If you have any information on our mysterious finds (or more finds of your own) from underneath the Carolina Inn, please get in touch with the archives!