Tag: western maryland

Orange Carrot Cake, Anna D. Cannon

I imagine that Anna D. Cannon had some stories. After graduating high school in 1942, she became the first female school bus driver in Montgomery County, and worked the job for 30 years.

Unfortunately, Anna is another person whose stories I may never know. I know only that she was born in 1924 in Garrett County to Gilmore and Linna DeWitt. Anna and several of her eight siblings on the family farm were listed as “unpaid family worker” in the 1940 census.

Anna married Lawrence A. Winters, who died in 1960. Her second husband, Frank Cannon, died in 1994.

Anna Cannon lived to be 93, and her 2017 obituary lists many losses in her life aside from her two husbands. Two of her children preceded her in death, as did five sisters and four brothers.

She did leave two daughters and four sons.

She was from a large family and she had a large family, most of whom dispersed from their Oakland, Maryland roots.

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Banana Split Cake, Hancock Elementary

My Great Grandmother was born in Hancock in 1915. I guess that’s what drew me to pick up the 1970s or 80s era “Hancock Elementary School Cookbook.”

Hancock is a small town with one main road (Main Street), but it’s an important way stop in Western Maryland and has been for centuries.

In the 1730s, hunters and trappers began settling around the area, then known as the Northbend Crossing Settlement because it is on the northernmost bend in the Potomac Rover.

The town was later named for revolutionary warfighter Edward Joseph Hancock, Jr., whose family operated a ferry nearby.

The building of the C&O Canal brought a lot of workers to town, Welsh and Irish immigrants among them. According to Mike High in “The C&O Canal Companion,” “by the time the canal made it to Hancock in 1839, the painted signs hanging over the doorways on Main Street already showed the influence of the passenger trade” from the National Road. “Early taverns and hotels included the Sign of the Cross Keys, Sign of the Ship, Sign of the Green Tree Tavern, Sign of the Seven Stars Inn, the Bee Hive, and the Union Hotel.”

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Cinnamon Pie, Mrs. B. F. Selby

I made this pie weeks ago. Maybe months now? At the time, I was living in a lot of fear of exposing myself or others to the virus. Those fears are still there, but we’ve since adapted a little better.

As weeks went by without grocery shopping, I felt a more personal perspective on some of the stories I read and share. Eggs and butter became precious. I rationed my reserves of flour and sugar carefully. When I wanted a sweet treat, I had to weigh the benefits of using those ingredients.

Scarcity or preciousness could mean so many different things across time. I love these stories of course: an era when oysters were abundant and ordinary, a time when celery was a status symbol; nearly inconceivable differences in our relationship with familiar foods.

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Deviled Fish Sticks from Sabillasville

Sabillasville is a small town on the Pennsylvania border, north of Frederick. I forget where I got this cookbook but it seemed like a good one to learn about a new place and cover some more “Western” Maryland recipes. Alas, things did not pan out so well.

The town of Sabillasville was officially founded in 1813, and named for Savilla Zollinger, a wife of one of the early Swiss settlers to the area. I can’t find anything about when the St. John’s Church opened there. The cookbook, “The Best in Cooking in Sabillasville,” appears to be from the 1960s. I would have suspected the 1950s, but there is an ad for the Shamrock Restaurant in Thurmont. The Shamrock opened in 1963 (and closed in 2019.)

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“Lemon Cheese Cakes,” Ann Cadwalader Ringgold Schley

The Wikipedia entry for “Chess pie” offers up several possible explanations for the name – the pie is named for a piece of furniture called a pie chest, or for the town of Chester, England. Some theories are just silly. “It’s jes’ pie.” Okay… whatever.

The likely explanation is that “chess pie” evolved from recipes like this recipe for “cheese cakes” and that the “cheese” morphed into “chess,” possibly due to the confusing lack of cheese in the filling.

These are not quite like the “cheese cakes” Elizabeth Ellicott Lea included in her 1845 cookbook. Lea’s cheesecakes are made from curd and combined with pulverized almonds and flavorings. This recipe, on the other hand, contains no actual cheese and very little dairy- but it is easy to see the similarity. The basic formula was very popular in British cookbooks at the time.

Many “cheese cake” recipes contain pulverized almonds. Some recipes, such as the one in Hannah Glasse’s 1786 “The Art of Cookery,” include the peel of the lemon, cooked and blended into the custard. Others present the pie filling as a preserved product that you can keep in a jar for a year before baking into a pie. A second recipe included in Glasse’s book appears to be a direct antecedent to Mrs. Schley’s recipe – a very tasty recipe, I might add.

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