By Heather Wilson, Library Reader Services

On 22 December 1874, two sisters wrote to Santa Claus from Columbus, Georgia. Lucy and Judy Caldwell attended the Claflin school, which was run by the New England Freedmen’s Aid Society and had opened in 1868. The New England Freedmen’s Aid Society was founded in Boston in response to an appeal from Edward L. Pierce on behalf of 8,000 formerly enslaved people at Port Royal, S.C. The Society was active from 1862-1874. Like other schools the Society operated, the Claflin school educated African Americans, and the Society provided teachers and additional funds. Students paid tuition to attend. Most of the teachers were white Northerners; one exception was Reuben Matthews, who had been a student at the Claflin school and then became the school’s only Black teacher. Judy and Lucy wrote to Santa on paper their teacher, Caroline Alfred, gave to them.

I first located the sisters in the 1870 United States census. Living in Columbus, Georgia, Lucy Caldwell, 9, and Judy Caldwell, 8, both Black, were listed as being born in Alabama. In the 1880 census, Lucy was still in Columbus and was listed as 20 years old and born in 1860, though her place of birth is listed as Georgia. In her letter, Judy says she is 12, which fits with the 1870 census record. Lucy would have been 13 or 14. I didn’t find Judy in the 1880 census. During Reconstruction, Black families in Columbus, GA lived under the constant threat of violence from white vigilante groups. Reading the Caldwell sisters’ letters to Santa provides a small glimpse into the lives of two Black girls, who hoped for a happy Christmas.

In her letter, Lucy, the elder sister, gives the impression that she only wrote because her sister asked her to do so. Lucy doesn’t ask Santa for any specific items; instead, she writes, “I have not much to say but I hope you will remember me and Judy also of what she says.” Lucy hopes Santa will bring her something (“remember” her), but mostly she writes to ask him to give Judy what she wants. And, in fact, Judy is very specific.

Judy wants a wax doll. The heads of wax dolls were made of – you guessed it! – wax, and they became popular in the United States in the 1870s. The bodies could be made of cloth. In her letter, Judy mentions she’d had a “China doll,” which had a head made of porcelain and was very delicate. A wax doll would have been sturdier. As I researched wax dolls from the 19th century, I only saw examples of white dolls. As I read Judy’s letter I found myself hoping not only that she got to unwrap a wax doll on Christmas morning, but that the doll would be Black like her.

Writing letters to Santa was a growing trend in the 1870s, and in their letters, children sought to assure Santa of their good behavior. Lucy and Judy specifically chose to write about their school conduct. (Perhaps they knew their teacher would also read their letters, and so wrote with two audiences in mind.) Lucy wrote that she was “promine[n]t in my studies although I have been absent a great many times.” Judy admits to having whispered once, but she provides many more examples of her hard work and dedication to school. She says she does her best at school “if nowhere else” and, because she is only twelve, knows Santa “can afford to bring me” a doll. By the end of her letter, Judy is at her wit’s end. Feeling she has made a strong case for the doll, she doesn’t know what else to say. Her words and punctuation become more adamant and she ends the letter by saying she “will be so glad to get it.” After writing so persuasively, how could anyone refuse her?!

Judy’s letter brims with personality and she makes a compelling case for the wax doll she wants! Here is a transcription of the letter in full:

Columbus Ga Dec. 22d. 1874

Dear Santa Clause I seat myself to ask you to please bring me a wax doll. I would like to have one very much. I never have had one, and I would be very pleased if you would bring me one. I have had a China doll, but I want a wax one. My teacher gave me this sheet of paper, so that I could write to you. I am only twelve years old so I think yo[u] can afford to bring me one. You may bring me anything else that you want to bring me, but bring me the doll. I have not failed this term, and have only whispered onec [sic]. I have got eight books out of the libary [sic], I do not want to have another bad mark, for I am going to study with all my might and will, and try to keep my lips closed. I have not been sent to my seat about my lessons, an [sic] I have always tried to do my best at school if nowheres [sic] else. I love to go to school, and I love to please my teacher. Now please Santa Clause bring me the wax doll, for I am impatient for it. I don’t know what to say all I want is you to bring me the doll. ! I will be so glad to get it.

Judy Caldwell

Age

twelve

The New England Freedmen’s Aid Society Records, 1862-1878, have been digitized. You can read Lucy and Judy Caldwell’s letters here. You can find the collection guide, and links to all of the digitized material, here.

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

A few weeks ago, I introduced you to Mary Breed of Lynn, Mass. and her fascinating family history. Now I’d like to continue her story, as told in her own words in a 12-page manuscript at the MHS.

When she wrote this manuscript in 1933, Mary was 64 years old. She had lived in Lynn her whole life, but now she and her husband Mayo were out of work and wanted to relocate to Boston. Not only would employment opportunities be more plentiful there, but Mary had ties to the city going back generations, and the move had been the express wish of her late grandfather John Bemis Ireland, a Boston blacksmith and wheelwright.

Mary hadn’t actually known her grandfather for the first two decades of her life. After his wife Nancy’s death in 1866, John moved to Boston and, for reasons that aren’t clear, “lost all track” of his daughter and her children. Then one day in 1888 (or 1889, Mary is inconsistent on this detail), John was strolling down a street in West Lynn on his way to a job, and “it just happened that they met each other.”

The family relationship reestablished, John began to visit the Breeds every week. Mary was obviously a fan of her newly discovered grandfather, writing, “we were glad and happy to meet him. I have his Photo now. Also a pair of fire tongs that he made when he was 21 years of age.” She bragged that he had “helped make the iron and steel works in Bunker Hill Monument, and the iron works in the old North Station and other places.” And according to her account, “he said he would have taken us all to Boston to live with him. He said he was sorry he hadn’t met us years before that he could have helped us out a lot.”

Unfortunately, this happy interlude didn’t last long. John died in November 1889, the day before the Great Lynn Fire. In one version of Mary’s timeline, this was only a month after their reunion.

In November 1933, Mary’s circumstances were dire. The country was in the depths of the Great Depression, her husband Mayo was unemployed, and she had been laid off from the shoe factory where she worked because of her age. She was also, incidentally, disabled since birth, “with a deformed left leg.” The only accommodation she asked for was a job she could perform sitting down. She had worked for 47 years and declared that she still could. Seeing her bold, clear, insistent handwriting, it’s easy to believe her.

She addressed her appeal to “To the Societys of Boston Mass. And The Historical Society,” hoping that some organization would help her to find work, possibly as companion to an elderly couple. Mayo could take care of the couple’s house. And surely the fact that her mother’s family hailed from Boston—not to mention that her grandfather had literally contributed to the city’s infrastructure—must count for something.

I love Mary’s spirit. She wrote, “I have lived a good respectable life and I have worked hard.”

Its pretty hard luck when I am able to do a good days work as ever before and I cannot work and help out a little. I am willing even now anytime to work if I could get something I could sit down at. I am pretty handy at anything I undertake to do. I make most of my own clothes by hand, I have never run a sewing machine. I have made Patchwork Quilts and sold quite a number. I love to sew and make pretty things that are usefull.

Mary’s only living relative was a brother in Maine. Mayo had a daughter from his first marriage, but she didn’t earn enough from her work as a housekeeper to support them. Mary complained that no one in Lynn cared about them except for one kind friend who sometimes gave her money for clothes. Some people, Mary said, would rather send them to the Poor House. Her frustration at the injustice is palpable.

They are not interested in anyone unless they are young. Those, they will try and help. The poor old has beens can beg or starve or be evicted from their tenements as I have been only a month ago.

One page is written directly to the reader.

Please don’t destroy this story. […] But I hope somebody will have a kind heart, and help a poor unfortunate Sister in need of work, and a permanent home where I can settle down and not have to worry anymore.

Mary’s plea was ultimately unsuccessful. She and Mayo didn’t relocate to Boston, at least not permanently; both died in Lynn, in 1950 and 1954 respectively. And while the MHS and other “Societys” could not or would not help Mary 88 years ago, we can at least share her story now.

By Heather Rockwood, Communications Associate

This is part two of a two-part series discussing the history of shoes and fashion. Read part one: Wedding Dresses & Shoes Before & After They Were White.

The manufacture of shoes was industrialized in the 19th century, but before the Industrial Revolution shoes were made by hand in workshops. Shoemaking was a specialized trade performed by many people working together in a workshop, not the single shoe cobbler we hear about in fairy tales like The Elves and the Shoemaker. Each person in the workshop had a specific job to do, from cutting the leather to forming the base of the shoe. Some shops could make dozens of shoes a week.

But don’t call them cobblers! Cobblers were not specialized or trained. The term was reserved for people looking to make ends meet. They would repair shoes, but the result was typically slipshod. Cobblers were usually illiterate and could be very poor. Shoemakers, on the other hand, were highly educated and well trained. They would have been offended if you called them a “cobbler,” as it would imply not only that they were lower class, but that their shoes would not be well made.

Workshops would keep fashionable daily footwear in stock, just like shoe stores today, so that a customer could walk into their shop and purchase shoes at that moment. It was less common and reserved for the pricier materials and the well-to-do customer, to have shoes custom made for someone. But shoes could also be imported, or sent back home from someone traveling abroad, like this letter from Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams shows: “The shoes you ordered, will be ready this day and will accompany the present letter. but why send money for them? you know the balance of trade was always against me.” And, apparently, Jefferson would not let Mrs. Adams pay for them.

Most footwear at this time was made to be worn with a buckle, like the wedding shoes of Rebecca Tailer Byles in the previous post about shoes. However, shoemakers did not produce buckles and they had to be obtained elsewhere. Most buckles were imported from England in the 18th century and had various styles. They could be used to dress for more formal occasions or for every day. The pair of buckles below is thought to have been worn by James Madison on formal occasions. These silver buckles are adorned with cut glass backed with tin foil, which would have made them sparkle.

The myth that shoes weren’t made to have a left or a right is not true; shoes were made to be in pairs that did have designated right and left sides, but it was the materials that were used to make the shoes that determined how they would be shaped. For instance, leather was used for shoes that were made to be worn daily. Once a pair of shoes had been purchased and worn, the leather would mold to the wearer’s foot. It would be very soft and comfortable and, as some sources say, even more comfortable than today’s shoes, which are made with plastics and do not mold to our feet in the same way.

I hope you learned a little more about shoes in the 18th and 19th centuries in these past two blog posts.

A selection of sources:

7 Common Misconceptions About 18th Century Shoemaking – 18th Century History — The Age of Reason and Change (history1700s.com)

Buckle Up! (colonialwilliamsburg.org)

Two Nerdy History Girls: Crafting Shoes for an 18th Century Lady

By Heather Rockwood, Communications Associate

These wedding shoes were made for Rebecca Tailer, a woman from a well-connected family in Boston, who married Mather Byles on 11 June 1747.  They were made to match her green wedding dress. Green is not typically the main color on wedding dresses today. Why is that?

White wedding dresses, the norm today, came into fashion in the mid-19th century after Queen Victoria wore a white gown when she married Prince Albert in 1840. Queen Victoria’s wedding, taking place just four years after photography was invented, was heavily photographed and publicized like no other wedding had yet been. It was seen by so many people that it set this fashion trend that continues into today.

Before Queen Victoria’s white gown became the fashion, most brides had to consider practicality in their wedding gowns, even upper-class women who could afford a bit of frippery. As there was no set color for weddings, middle- and lower-class women would usually pick their best dress from what they already owned, which could be any color, even black. For many western women, wedding gowns would be worn again, whether as a regular outfit, placed back amongst their usual rotation, or as a special occasion dress for holidays, parties, and, for some, when being presented to royalty. This meant that many wedding dresses were chosen for the longevity of the fabric and color, and not as they are today, dresses typically worn only once and then kept as an heirloom for the next generation.

Even after white wedding dresses rose in popularity, they were only functional for the upper class, those who could afford to have their dresses cleaned professionally after wearing them, used to show off their wealth.

Here are three shoes from the MHS collection that show the popularity of white as a wedding color in the 19th century.

This is part one of a two-part series discussing the history of shoes and fashion. Watch for the next part, “How Were Shoes Made Before the Industrial Revolution?,” coming soon!

A selection of sources:

7 Common Misconceptions About 18th Century Shoemaking – 18th Century History — The Age of Reason and Change (history1700s.com)

Buckle Up! (colonialwilliamsburg.org)

Two Nerdy History Girls: Crafting Shoes for an 18th Century Lady

By Hannah Elder, Assistant Reference Librarian for Rights and Reproductions

Happy December! As I write this, Thanksgiving has passed, we are part of the way through Hanukkah, and with Christmas and New Year right around the corner, we are well and truly in the holiday season. For me and my family, the holidays have always meant sharing recipes and baking together. Every year, we make a treat from my great-grandmother’s arsenal of recipes – her doughnuts, tossed in cinnamon sugar, are a perennial favorite. We experiment too, trying new recipes we find online or shared by a friend.

This year, as the holidays approached, I began to wonder what people in the past baked and how they got the recipes. With the collections of the MHS at my fingertips I knew I could find an answer. I started, of course, with our catalog AIBGAIL. Using the subject headings “Cooking” and “Cookbooks” and a simple keyword search for “recipe,” I was able to find a number of interesting titles in our collection. They ranged from manuscript volumes of family recipes, to a collection of recipes used in the kitchen of King Richard II, to published collections of community recipes, lovingly gathered and distributed.

Through browsing these titles, I got a pretty good idea of what people cooked and baked. I also started to understand that recipes spread in the past much how the do today; through word of mouth, passed on to next generations, or found in published cookbooks, written by authors of varying authority. But I wanted to take it a step further. What were early American cookbooks like? Where did the recipes come from? What was the first “home grown” cookbook, written by an American author and published in the United States? For that, I turned to the experts.

In their book United Tastes: The Making of the First American Cookbook, Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald provide answers to all of those questions and more. As the title suggests, the book explores the creation and significance of the first cookbook published by an American author in the United States: American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, published in 1796.

Before American authors began publishing their cookbooks, American home cooks looking for recipes used British (and some French) sources. According to Stavely and Fitzgerald, Simmons’ cookbook is largely a collection of recipes borrowed or copied verbatim from previously published British cookbooks.[1] Of the 192 recipes in American Cookery, only 44 of them (23%) have no obvious precedent in print. The rest were either copied directly from British cookbooks, heavily borrowed from them, or were traditional British dishes.[2] The dishes the Simmons plagiarized were likely already familiar to American audiences, as they came from cookbooks that had been reprinted and circulated in the United States prior to Simmons’ publication. Simmons drew from the cookbooks that struck a balance between refinement and simplicity, a balance that appealed to early Americans. These familiar recipes, combined with the use of American terms such as “molasses,” “cookie,” and “slapjack” as well as foods unknown in Europe such as johnnycakes, argue Stavely and Fitzgerald, are what makes American Cookery a truly American publication.[3]

By now, all of this research was making me hungry and left me itching to try out a recipe or two. After considering a few cookbooks and recipe collections, I decided to try one from the original: Amelia Simmons’ American Cookery. Since I was originally drawn into this rabbit hole by my family’s tradition of baking at the holidays, I decided to try my hand at one of Simmons’ sweet recipes. Luckily, there were plenty of them. As Stavely and Fitzgerald observe, “there are more cakes in American Cookery than any other type of food.” [4] At first, I was drawn to a recipe for “Another Christmas Cookey,” but had to rethink my plans when I reached the end of the recipe, which instructs to baker to place the “hard and dry” cookies into “an earthen pot, and dry cellar, or damp room,” after which they will be “finer softer and better when six months old.”[5]

Since that option was out, I decided to make another seasonally appropriate treat: gingerbread. Simmons includes five different recipes for gingerbread in her book and I chose one of her gingerbread cake recipes, titled “Soft Gingerbread to be baked in pans.” In its entirety, the recipe reads:

No. 2. Rub three pounds of sugar, two pounds of butter, into four pounds of flour, add 20 eggs, 4 ounces ginger, 4 spoons of rose water, bake as No. 1.

I did not want enough gingerbread to feed an army, so I reduced the measurements and quartered the recipe. With the help of some internet calculators, I ended up with these measurements:

1 2/3 cup sugar
2 sticks butter, softened
3 1/4 cup flour
5 eggs
1 oz ginger
1 tablespoon rosewater

My ingredients gathered, I got to work! Although the recipe is light on technique, I used some previous knowledge and baking logic to construct my gingerbread. I started by creaming together the butter and sugar (by hand, with a wooden spoon, the way Amelia would have). Once they were as well combine as I could manage (my arm got tired), I added the flour and “rubbed” the butter and sugar mixture into it.

At this point I must confess something: I don’t know how much flour I added. I was using a ¼ cup scoop to measure my flour and at the time I thought I had counted correctly. Looking back, I’m not sure whether I measured out 2 ¼ or 3 ¼ cups of flour. If I did use 2 ¼ cups, it was not a fatal flaw.

Once the unknown volume of flour was incorporated and had a texture a bit like damp sand, I added all of my wet ingredients. I gave it all a good mix and wound up with a thick, glossy batter. I plopped most of the batter into a pie pan (I abandoned the idea of the loaf pan but I don’t have a proper cake pan) and shepherded it into the oven.

While Simmons provides a baking time (15 minutes), I had to guess on the temperature. I tried 375°F, hoping to have the oven hot enough that it would cook in a reasonable time, but not so hot as to scorch my creation. As it went into the oven, I was most nervous about the thickness of the batter (very) and the lack of leavening agent. I was afraid I would end up with a tough, rubbery disk of ginger-flavored putty.

I checked it after 15 minutes, and while it wasn’t done by any means, it looked much more promising than I anticipated. I gave it another 10 minutes and was rewarded with something that looked and smelled great, far better than I ever imagined it could.

I gave it some time to cool and dug in. This gingerbread has a unique texture, more like a cornbread or another quick bread than the gingerbread cakes of today. It’s also much lighter in color than most would expect, owing to its lack of molasses. The rosewater adds a nice, unexpected floral note that balances the sharpness of the ginger. I used grated ginger from a tube that was likely much fresher than anything Amelia Simmons or her contemporaries would have used, but I think it is still a balanced cake and the ginger is not overwhelming. In all, I call this experiment a success!

If you’ve enjoyed this exploration of old-fashioned recipes, I encourage you to  check out previous posts on this blog by other MHS staff members Alex Bush, who tried to make bread pudding, and Emilie Haertsch, who tried Benjamin Franklin’s recipe for milk punch.

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

[1] Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald, United Tastes: The Making of the First American Cookbook (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017), 2.

[2] Ibid., 21.

[3] Ibid., 204-206.

[4] Ibid., 7.

[5] Amelia Simmons, American cookery, or, The art of dressing viands, fish, poultry, and vegetables : and the best modes of making pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, puddings, custards, and preserves : and all kinds of cakes, from the imperial plumb to plain cake, adapted to this country, and all grades of life (Hudson & Goodwin, 1796), 35.