Month: December 2018

Olney Inn Sweet Potatoes

Legend has it that Clara May Downey discovered the site of the Olney Inn when she got a flat tire near the 1875 Montgomery County farmhouse. It was the mid-1920s and Downey was considering following many women into the business of operating a tearoom.

Instead of a dainty tearoom catered towards women, Downey’s restaurant (it never operated as a true inn) would become a local institution that operated for 50 years. It is still fondly remembered today.

Baltimore certainly didn’t have a monopoly on the grandiose “Welcome to the South” style of dining that was fashionable in the early 20th century. Montgomery County, though once home to many abolitionist Quakers, also had many citizens who “did not forget their Southern Bonds.*” Downey’s restaurant offered up Southern-style hospitality – complete with house-cured hams and produce grown on the Inn’s sprawling grounds.

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Olney Inn Postcard

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Apple Toddy

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“Christmas passed over much as the day usually does. There was a glorious destruction of egg-nog, apple toddy, whiskey punch… turkeys, geese, ducks… mince pies, apple pies, pumpkin pies… dough nut, short cake, long cake, pound cake, ginger cake… Pleasure was the order of the day… There were a few rows, which was quite natural; not more, however, than was required to fill up the scene to the life.” – The Baltimore Sun, December 1838

In 1863, one frequent advertiser in the Sun specifically linked their December merchandise with two holiday beverages. “EGG-NOG AND APPLE TODDY”, read an ad advertising fine brandies, wines, “and a small quantity of the ‘Nations Pride,’ Monongahela Rye Whisky.” The availability of figs, nuts, canned fruits and the like is tacked on to the advertisement as an afterthought.

During the holiday season, apple toddy was most often mentioned alongside eggnog, enjoyed at the festivities of the social clubs, a requisite part of Christmas reverie (and sometimes mayhem.)

As the temperance movement gained traction, traditions began to change.

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Post-Prohibition Advertisement, 1935

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Jenny Lind Cakes, Emily Niernsee Cookbook

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Baltimore’s Front Street Theatre had undergone “extensive alterations and improvements” in 1850. Carpenters Carnan & Eckert built out a parquet for standing room theatergoers. “Skillful” painter John Delpher was hired to apply a fresh coat of paint. New curtains were hung, and 600 cushioned seats with spring-backs were installed.

A decade and a half later, Abraham Lincoln would be nominated as the republican presidential candidate in “the old Front Street Theatre”; through the years the theater was scene of the occasional theft or shooting. Those events would fade from memory long before the concerts that necessitated the 1850 renovations.

Hundreds of Baltimore citizens gathered in the rain on Monday December 9th, 1850 for a chance at tickets to see Jenny Lind, “The Swedish Nightingale,” live in concert. Front row tickets went for the modern equivalent of a few thousand dollars. Many would-be concertgoers were dismayed that many of the remaining tickets – about 1900 in all, were quickly bought up for resale.

For the next few days, ads appeared in the Baltimore Sun, offering tickets to see Jenny Lind. Businesses that didn’t have tickets to sell advertised hats to wear to the concert, “Jenny Lind Bouquets” for the concert, “Jenny Lind Candy” bearing “a perfect likeness of the divine songstress.”

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cigarcardpix on flickr

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