When I traveled to Michigan to view cookbooks, I was overwhelmed with some of the options at both the University of Michigan AND Michigan State University. While my default priority is by the date of the cookbook, I factor in other things such as geographic and demographic representation of Maryland. Sometimes, my interest is personal. I knew I had to view the 1929 “Favorite Recipes” of the Ladies Guild of St. Andrews Church in College Park not only because I grew up near College Park, but because I attended a whole lot of (assorted hardcore and rock music) shows at that church in the late 90s.
None of the names in the book meant anything to me, but a friend from College Park pointed out that she recognized the name of Mrs. H.J. Patterson, who has nearly 80 recipes in the book.
Michigan State University Special Collections
H. J. Patterson Hall, on the University of Maryland campus, is named for Harry Jacob Patterson, who served as president of the school from 1913-1917. Patterson was born in Yellow Spring PA in 1866 and came to Maryland in 1888 as a chemist to work at the Agricultural Experiment Station, which he directed from 1898-1937. During his tenure there, he helped successful advances in milk sanitation, fruit tree disease resistance, and the development of new varieties of strawberries and tobacco.
Patterson was reluctant to serve as president of U.M. but got pressured into it. During his time, the school transformed from a military-style institution with uniforms and mandatory exercises into a more modern university complete with college life and fraternities. Patterson didn’t take much direct action to bring this about – it was partially brought on by the dormitory burning down, which allegedly destroyed the uniforms and forced students to reside in town.
According to University of Maryland historian George H. Calcott, “the military spirit, with its inspections and calisthenics, gave way to a collegiate spirit, to ideas and gaiety. Students were in charge of their own destiny as never before.”
When the college became a state school, the name was changed from “Maryland Agricultural College” to “Maryland State College.” Mr. Patterson attempted to have them tack on “of Agriculture” to the new name but everyone ignored this.
Callcott wrote that Patterson “preferred research to administration” and was happy to return to research in 1917.
Harry J. Patterson, University of Maryland
But this recipe comes from Mrs. H. J. Patterson. What about her? She was born Elizabeth Hayward Hutchinson in New York in 1871. The Pattersons married in 1895, suggesting she may have already been in Maryland when they met – she resided in Baltimore at the time. Elizabeth Patterson was also interested in agriculture, and was a lecturer and committee member with the Maryland State Grange.
She lobbied to introduce Domestic Science courses for women to Maryland State College, which began admitting women in 1916. Mrs. Patterson’s view on domestic science encompassed nutrition, as she pointed out by using agricultural studies as a comparison:
“Home economy does not mean cooking any more than agriculture means the raising of poultry. That is one very narrow subject of home economics… It includes every science and every study that will go toward making better homes for us… We study the life of plants, and we know that plants require different conditions and different foods, and that we have to supply certain things to the soil to make right conditions, and yet a large number of mothers… do not recognize the fact that there are certain foods that… have to be given in certain proportions to produce right physical conditions in their children.” – Hearings Before the Committee on Agriculture, 1913
Elizabeth was heavily involved with the League of Women Voters and she riled a lot of people by her strong stance against horse-track gambling. It wasn’t the horse-racing she opposed, simply the gambling. At the time, gamblers would arrive by train from New York and New Jersey to visit the tracks: “Havre de Grace, on the Pennsylvania Railroad; Laurel, on the B. & O. R. R.; Bowie, on the W., B. & A. Electric Road; and Pimlico, on the edge of Baltimore, and easily reached by all roads,” Mrs. Patterson wrote in 1919 letter to the Midland Journal in Rising Sun, Maryland. In response to her impassioned letter, some racehorse owners threatened to sue Mrs. Patterson for libel.
Elizabeth Patterson may not have had much impact on the track gambling front, but another pet cause of hers was a little more prescient: conserving the Chesapeake Bay, and the seafood in it. She even met with state Conservation Commissioner Swepson Earle. Elizabeth died in 1963.
These “jam buns” didn’t quite turn out how I’d expected. I couldn’t properly enclose the jam as instructed and I ended up kind of using it as a topping. The ‘buns’ ended up like not-too-sweet cookies or scones. Who knows what I did wrong. I feel like I can’t blame such a prolific home-economics lecturer as Elizabeth H. Patterson.
Recipe:
“Sift together three cupfuls flour, one-half teaspoon-ful of soda, one level teaspoonful cream of tartar. Rub into this one-half cupful of butter, one-half cupful of sugar. Add two well-beaten eggs and enough milk to make stiff dough. Mould into buns, making a hole in center. Fill with jam and draw dough up over top of jam to cover it. Bake in moderate oven about fifteen minutes.”
Recipe from Favorite recipes, [Ladies of] Saint Andrews Guild, College Park, Md., c. 1929
lol.