This belated Christmas Cookie recipe from the Lovely Lane Methodist Church in Old Goucher is inadvertently my third post in a row related to places I’ve lived. Lovely Lane has produced at least two cookbooks that I’m aware of – one from the 1990s and one from 1936. Both are called “Lovely Lane Cook Book.” The older book is a neat curiosity, full of advertisements from a time when the neighborhood where I live actually had more amenities. Sure, it was a streetcar ride to downtown, but groceries, bicycles, draperies, flowers and more were all available in the lower Charles Village area.
Lovely Lane Cookbook from 1936, Enoch Pratt Free Library
Christmas cookies as a tradition date back to Medieval Europe where they evolved to take on many forms such as New Year’s Cakes, Seed Cakes, Wiggs, Jumbles, Springerle and of course Gingerbread. Although there are countless types of Christmas cookies to be found in your typical cookie-swap tin today, it is likely that a few of them derive from these old ‘cakes.’
Mrs. Louis L. Shinnamon’s recipe doesn’t stray too far from the formula – plenty of fat, flavored with cinnamon, and decorated with almonds. The ingredients are very similar to a German cookie called Wainachsrollen, but the method is different – the butter and lard creamed with the sugar as opposed to melted.
There may be no German connection, at any rate. Although Louis L. Shinnamon’s parents had immigrated to Maryland from Germany (and eventually changed the family name from Schoneman), Mrs. Shinnamon had deep roots in St. Mary’s County. She was born Hallie Augusta Wrightson in 1891. Her parents, Ida Tennison and Vaughan Wrightson, were both raised on farms in the area of Ridge and St. Ingoes. By 1900, they’d moved to Baltimore, where Vaughan worked as a cabinet maker.
The Wrightson home on Calvin Avenue in Google Streetview, 2019
The Wrightson family lived at 421 Calvin Avenue and 402 Lorraine Avenue, so they may have been in the Lovely Lane Congregation. The Shinnamon family lived for a time at 2708 St. Paul Street in the same neighborhood.
Louis L. Shinnamon was born in 1888 to Louis L. and Mary Shinnamon. Until Louis Sr. died, young Louis was listed in newspapers and censuses as ‘Laurence’ Shinnamon. This made researching him very confusing! Anyway, he worked as an auditor for the IRS and when he died in 1950, an obituary in the Cumberland News said that he “was well known throughout Western Maryland and vicinity.”
Lovely Lane aside, the extended Shinnamon family ended up in the Catonsville area, where the elder Lewis Schoneman/Schineman/Shinaman/Shinnaman/Shinnamon had purchased land in the mid-1800s.
Hallie Shinnamon died in 1945. The Shinnamon’s most prominent son, Louis Vaughan Shinnamon, owned shoe stores in Baltimore and Cumberland, and eventually became Allegheny County commissioner. He died under mysterious circumstances in 1970.
Mrs. Shinnamon’s cookies were good – not too sweet, not overly difficult to make, traditional but not too old-fashioned.
Recipe:
- 1 Lb sugar
- 1.5 Lb flour
- .375 Lb butter
- .375 Lb lard
- 3 eggs
- .25 Cup milk
- 1 Teaspoon baking soda
- vanilla extract or lemon zest to taste
Cream butter and lard mixture. Add sugar gradually, then the beaten eggs, the flour, dissolved soda, flavoring and milk. Work all together until smooth. Break Into lumps and put in a cool place. Roll lumps out thin and cut out with cookie cutter. Place on greased pan. Bake in moderate on or fairly hot. For cinnamon cookies brush over with milk, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar mixed and placed blanched almonds on each.
Recipe from “Lovely Lane Cook Book,” First Methodist Episcopal Church (Baltimore, Md.). Women’s Guild., 1936
