Cinnamon Cake, Zelma T. Cole (a personal essay)

Fairly early in the pandemic, I moved to a new house.

I felt conflicted, leaving the 1880s rowhouse on Howard Street that I’d bought in 2009. But it had some issues that were becoming bothersome. The dining room was cramped and dark, and the kitchen small and awkward, making the increasing Old Line Plate-related press requests to film or photograph me there unfeasible. We’d filmed the 2019 Baltimore Sun bit in my cousin’s Medfield kitchen. Plus… I really wanted a porch.

When we went to view the house that would become our new home, we were nervous if it was even ethical to do so, but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Masked and gloved, we toured a spacious place not far from our own and we made an offer.

Real-estate boringness ensued. Suspenseful for us, dull to read about. Through luck, privilege, a little of my own savvy and diligence (if I do say so myself), and the help of our excellent real estate agent, we somehow ended up moving in May of 2020. We carried half our things on foot.

I soon learned that the model we bought was called a “Daylight Rowhouse.” Built to be wider rather than deeper, there was a window in each room. Many of these houses didn’t even require skylights. Builders began advertising this style to Baltimore’s upwardly mobile around 1915. “Why buy an old house with small dark and ill-ventilated rooms, when a house 20 feet wide, 7 rooms and bath… can be had for the same money?,” read one ad in the Sun. Hey! That’s how I felt, over a century later! Suffice it to say, we love it here.

from The Baltimore Rowhouse by Mary Ellen Hayward and Charles Belfoure

Social Distancing turned into a months-long affair and I became more and more depressed. Our good fortune felt wrong – incompatible with everything else going on.

Meanwhile, I researched the house.

I found that our block was built in 1924 by Hopkins graduate John Dubblede, who took up residence in one of the newly-built houses and proceeded to sell the others throughout the year. In September, Edward G Cole, an insurance agent, bought the house that I now live in.

Twelve years prior, Cole had married Zelma Teal at the Jefferson Street Methodist Episcopal Church on Jefferson & Bond Streets. The church has since been demolished to make way for the Johns Hopkins Hospital complex, but at the time it was just a few blocks away from Zelma’s family home at 941 North Broadway.

This rowhouse might seem like a lateral move for the Coles, by square footage alone. In 1920 they lived at 2713 Guilford Ave. Like me, the Coles moved just a few blocks —in their case from an older Charles Village porch-front house with a bay window. But as I’ve come to appreciate myself, the “daylight” makes all the difference.

The family must have liked the house as much as I do, because they stayed here for many years, with their daughter Evelyn (born in 1918), and Edward’s sister Bessie.

Evelyn went on to be highly involved with the nearby Baltimore Museum of Art as a docent and with the Women’s Committee. She was frequently in the Baltimore Sun because of this and other volunteer activities. Her 2001 obituary said that her passion for volunteering began when she was a teenager.

Images from a 1953 Baltimore Sun photo spread of Evelyn Dell née Cole in her home at 4 Bellemore Road.

Zelma Cole, on the other hand, lived a more quiet life and appeared in the paper far less frequently. After Edward died in 1953, she remained in the house until selling it in 1967. She moved to the nearby 3333 N. Charles Street and died in 1969. She is buried with her husband in Greenmount Cemetery.

At some point, I began to jokingly fantasize about disturbing Zelma’s grave so that she would haunt me. I was so lonely and sad. I wanted company in my beautiful new house.

Zelma’s biggest brush with the local news was in 1955 when she was quoted in an article about haircuts. “I’ll keep my hair short this year because I like it that way,” she told the Evening Sun, “but I will admit that during the winter it looks nice just a little bit longer than in the summer. I also think younger people look better with long hair.”

What if Zelma came to haunt me and she was completely superficial? What if my only company during awful isolated times was a ghost who only cared about hair and clothes? I contemplated writing a comedic short story but I wasn’t feeling hilarious enough to make it happen.

Eventually, I’d found all there was to find about Zelma and the Cole family. Life continued to trudge onward. I took solace in the airy rooms, ample porch, and tidy small yard of my “daylight rowhome.”

A year and a day after we moved, I was starting to dig back into the things that I love. I was cooking for the website again, and taking joy in research. I finally got around to mapping the recipes from that Baltimore Sun contest. I began researching the contributors to the 1936 Lovely Lane Cook Book. I was interested in this one because of all the time I’ve lived in Charles Village, Remington, and Waverly. I loved seeing all the familiar old houses as I listed the addresses; envisioning the old kitchens.

And then suddenly I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Nut Bread; Cinnamon Cake; Punch; Peach Fritters; Seven Minute Icing”… Mrs. Edward G. Cole.

I reached over and grabbed the arm of my husband, who was sitting beside me on the couch. Zelma Cole’s recipes had been in my database this entire time. I’d data-entered them on May 22, 2019, just over one year before we moved.

It never would have occurred to me to search in my own database for Zelma T. Cole. It seemed too improbable. My database, especially the “people” component, is not that big.

But there she was. I pulled up further documents. I looked for other Edward G. Coles. The first results were the familiar censuses I’d viewed months before. Then came the 1940s Draft documents. The other Baltimore ‘Edward Coles’: unmarried men, without their middle names listed. The Edward at my address: Edward Greenlee Cole. It had to be a match.

It wasn’t until the fall that I finally tried one of the recipes, for this quick Cinnamon Cake. It was nice and simple, a good showcase for special cinnamon or other spices. I may make it again. It belongs to my kitchen, after all.

Now it’s the season for me to try Zelma’s peach fritters recipe. One by one I’ll get to them all. I have the rest of my life to do so.

Finding a recipe from a past resident of my own house, already in my database, will always remain one of my most wild and most exhilarating research moments.

I doubt I will experience that kind of coincidence again. But now I have a way to taste the results whenever I want. In doing so, I fulfill my wish from some of my lowest, strangest moments of a desperate time: befriending the ghost of Zelma Teal Cole.