Orange Carrot Cake, Anna D. Cannon

I imagine that Anna D. Cannon had some stories. After graduating high school in 1942, she became the first female school bus driver in Montgomery County, and worked the job for 30 years.

Unfortunately, Anna is another person whose stories I may never know. I know only that she was born in 1924 in Garrett County to Gilmore and Linna DeWitt. Anna and several of her eight siblings on the family farm were listed as “unpaid family worker” in the 1940 census.

Anna married Lawrence A. Winters, who died in 1960. Her second husband, Frank Cannon, died in 1994.

Anna Cannon lived to be 93, and her 2017 obituary lists many losses in her life aside from her two husbands. Two of her children preceded her in death, as did five sisters and four brothers.

She did leave two daughters and four sons.

She was from a large family and she had a large family, most of whom dispersed from their Oakland, Maryland roots.

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Gertrude’s Crazy Chowder, Gertrude Comer

One of these days I’m going to stop choosing recipes before looking into whether there’s an uncover-able story. This is another new post with scant facts.
Still, I enjoyed looking into the life of Gertrude Comer, who contributed her “crazy” chowder to a cookbook put out by the Gatch Memorial United Methodist Church in the 1960s.

I do know that Gertrude lived most of her life in Northeast Baltimore, near where the Gatch Memorial United Methodist Church stands on Bel Air Road. In 1996, she told the Baltimore Sun about her desire to remain in the neighborhood. She looked forward to affordable senior housing being built nearby. “I would like to stay in my neighborhood and not have to repair an old house,” she said.

The old house in question was 5722 Belair Road, where Gertrude had lived with the Rubshaw family for many decades, just down the street from Gatch UMC.
I found Gertrude in many other peoples’ obituaries, including that of her mother, who died in 1961. Gertrude is mentioned, along with her sisters Helen Zepp, Mildred Kelly, and Betty Lou Rubshaw.

When and how Gertrude became a part of this family is a bit of a mystery. Her biological parents, according to her 2006 death certificate, were James C. Myers and Mary Jane Yager. Gertrude was born in West Virginia in 1916. The Rubshaw family, meanwhile, lived in Indiana at the time. By 1940, they had made their way to Martinsburg, WV, and Betty Lou worked with Gertrude at the Carlile Paper Box Company factory. They must have enjoyed working together – the sisters would later open a beauty parlor in Baltimore called the Shamrock Beauty Shop.

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Puff Tuna Sandwich, Marian Barclift

For Marian Barclift, gratitude was a part of everyday life. She believed that finding and sharing joy would attract positivity into her life. The numerous friends, family, and coworkers who mourned her passing are evidence that it worked for her. She passed away on November 27th, 2009, the day after that year’s Thanksgiving.

Her Baltimore Sun obituary describes the success she had as a teacher at Pimlico Junior High School, where former principal Samuel R. Billups observed that “Marian had an awareness of students and their concerns, and she knew how to reach out to them and get them to put their best foot forward.”

The obituary described Barclift’s impactful career. From 1975 until her retirement in 1990, she worked as a guidance counselor at Western High School, where the National Honor Society was renamed the Marian H. Barclift National Honor Society chapter.

Barclift was also active in the Sharp Street United Methodist Church. She served as president of the Naylor Hughes Fellowship, a service group within the church that produced “Our Book of Favorite Recipes” in 1994. Marian contributed several healthful and low-calorie dishes to the cookbook.

Barclift’s Baltimore Sun obituary was a good source of information about her work life and her involvement at the church. But I have more to go on. Thanks to the Enoch Pratt Free Library African American Funeral Programs Collection, I know that Marian was “the baby” of five girls, the youngest daughter of a postal worker and a teacher, and that her father recited Paul Laurence Dunbar poetry to the little girl: “Little brown baby with sparkling eyes, come to your pappy and sit on his knee…” Fittingly sweet words spoken to a person who later “radiated warmth in her lifetime relationships with her family and friends.”

Enoch Pratt Free Library
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Kinklings, Eva Reeder

“The kinkling and the doughnut die,
The pancake and the waffle cease,
But now doth come the rhubarb pie,
Oh, may I have another piece?”

— Baltimore Sun 1910

The Germans who colonized Western Maryland in the 1700s brought with them devout Christianity — primarily Lutheranism and Calvinism. But where one scratches the surface of devout Christianity, one often finds a little bit of Paganism hiding out, and Carnival season might be one of the times when the old ways are less hidden (despite the masks.)

Fat Tuesday aka Fastnacht happens to coincide with a time when a feast may have taken place among Germanic tribes, a celebration to drive away winter and usher in Spring fertility and sunlight.

This became the festivities referenced by Shakespeare in his 1601 play The Merchant of Venice:
“Nor thrust your head into the public street
To gaze on Christian fools with varnish’d faces.”

Although the area along the Monocacy River that Germans settled was a fertile region, it could also be a harsh and isolated one. There weren’t a lot of public streets to thrust one’s head into, and many of the social aspects of Carnival were left to the old world.

But not the sweet treats.

Fastnacht doughnuts famously took on the name “Kinklings” in Western Maryland and became a beloved tradition beyond the German communities where they originated.

An 1889 advertisement in the Frederick News touted “Golden Tinge” flour. “Next week will be fastnacht,” reminded the ad, “so all ye good housekeepers fill up your barrels.”

The same newspaper warned elsewhere that “old wiseacres say if you don’t make kinklins today you will have bed bugs all the year.” Who could risk that?

Eventually, churches and bakers helped people avoid the bedbugs with less hassle by selling fresh kinklings. One baker advertised that he would “have them delivered hot.”

Mrs. Eva Reeder shared her recipe in a cookbook produced in the 1970s by St. Mark Lutheran Church in Adamstown.

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Horse’s Collar, John A. Weaver

“Tom Smith liked clothes.”

The Afro-American covered every detail of Thomas R. Smith’s 1938 funeral. Five women wept. “Two were relatives.” United States Senator George Radcliffe spoke at the service, which was held on the lawn of Smith’s home at 6621 Reisterstown Road. Inside the house, Tom’s body was dressed in striped trousers; a satin, striped black ascot; and a black coat with a gardenia in the buttonhole. In his closet, he left sixteen pairs of white shoes, silk shirts and boxers, and “innumerable suits of all kinds, colors and materials.”

On the lawn of Smith’s home, across from where Reisterstown Plaza now sits, mourners interacted with his herd of goats, who demanded to have their heads scratched. One goat chewed on a political poster announcing a candidate for governor.

This post is not about Tom Smith; not really. But I can’t write about John Weaver, who tended bar at Smith’s Hotel for twenty-six years and called his boss “Chief,” without writing about Smith himself.

How could I not include the fact that Smith, according to the Afro-American “maintained his dominion by aid of an elaborate set-up which prevented any illegal business being conducted without his knowledge or consent,” or that he influenced Baltimore’s Black citizens to vote Democrat in a time when that was unheard of?

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