There aren’t many recipes specifically for blackberry pie. Usually, older recipes for “berry pie” will specify that blackberries, blueberries, or raspberries can be used.
Blackberry pie has been a longtime favorite of mine. I grew up making them with my grandmother so I wanted to make one for her birthday in September. I have also been falling behind on blog posts so I searched the newspapers for ‘blackberry pie.’
The recipe was shared in the Afro-American in 1938 by Mrs. Ida Reid. Mrs. Reid said that she enjoyed housework – and blackberry pie – and that she was heavily involved in her husband G. B. Reid’s Washington, DC department store.
The store was a longtime fixture at 11th and U (often stylized as “You”) streets in Northwest DC.
Mrs. Ida Reid’s blackberry pie in the Afro-American women’s pages, 1938
In the 1920′s, “Reid’s” was primarily known as a music store, and did a lot of mail-order business. Customers could call the store and ask to hear the music over the phone. A clerk would hold the receiver up to a phonograph player and sell and ship the record. According to a 1928 profile of the business in the Afro-American:
“The phone company laughed when Mr. Reid purposed his novel method, but while an AFRO [reporter] stood talking with him, he received three calls to hear records over the wire.”
It is possible that callers who did not live close to a black cultural scene like the one in DC got a sense of connection from such a transaction.
Ida was born Ida G. Proctor in 1889, in DC. She married Graham Brigg Reid in 1908. Censuses list his birthplace alternately as Trinidad, Barbados, the West Indies, and Canada.
Although their primary address was 11th & U streets in DC, the couple also owned a home in Highland Beach, a town where prominent African-Americans from DC and Baltimore could vacation on the Chesapeake.
Ida Reid as president of the Business and Professional Women’s League. On the left. 1935.
I had a hard time with Mrs. Reid’s pie crust, but I don’t put the blame on her. It was humid, I was in a rush, the crust kept coming apart. I got no complaints and the results were not unpleasant.
I can’t determine when either of the Reids passed away or when the store closed. It is now “Lee’s Flower Shop.” According to the Afro-American, Mrs. Reid had been an active charity worker, president of a women’s business league and a vice president of the industrial council of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA. She enjoyed golf, bridge, and swimming. My favorite personal fact about Ida Reid is that her favorite color was “heavenly blue.” “This special shade,” wrote the Afro, was worn “persistently in her daily dress.”
Recipe:
“One-and-a-quarter cups of flour, half cup shortening, one teaspoon baking powder, one tablespoon sugar, one-eighth teaspoon salt, and two tablespoons cold water.
Mix dry ingredients in sieve together, adding shortening, and mixing with hands rather than fork, for the mixture will be more flaky by doing this.
Lift fro mixing bowl and roll out on a well-floured board, making sure to flatten about two inches wider than pan. This is for the purpose of having sufficient dough to trim edges.
One quart of blackberries, one-and-a-half cups of sugar and one-half cup flour. Place in bowl, mix well, then place in pan which is well covered with pastry.
Add bits of butter and cover with dough.”
Recipe from the Afro-American, July 2, 1938
