Family recipe Friday: Sarah Nixon Boles’s custard supreme

Edward and Sarah (Nixon) Boles

This handwritten recipe came from my mother’s grandmother Sarah Nixon Boles about whom I have written previously. Whether she wrote this out for my grandparents Boles during their 1935 visit to Ireland or sent it to them in the mail at their Elizabeth, NJ, address, I don’t know, but this is her handwriting, and the recipe must have been a family favorite for it to get such special treatment.

Custard Supreme recipe, 1930s

I like custard; I know some people are not fond of it; but I find it to be great comfort food. Before publishing the recipe here, I felt compelled to give it a try, and I must say it came out very well and was so delicious my husband came back for more. I’m sure this is probably meant to be served in a somewhat warm and runny state over cake/with fruit, etc., but this is SW Florida, and it seemed more fitting to chill it for several hours to serve with fresh strawberries.

As for recipe tips, when it says to cook until spoon is coated, basically just insert a metal spoon and see if a film gathers on it. It does not have to be thick. And it takes quite a bit of time to completely fold in the egg whites at the end, so maintain your patience there.

Custard supreme with strawberries

As an aside, several years ago, I made a request on the Find a Grave website (which sadly (IMO) was taken over by Ancestry) for someone to photograph the graves of Sarah Nixon Boles (1855-1938) and her husband Edward Boles (1855-1940), and finally someone managed to do it in late 2016, right before my annus horriblis (2017) got underway so I never managed to mention it here until now. They are buried in the Kentstown Churchyard Cemetery, Balrath, County Meath, Ireland, alongside their son John who died in a road accident in December 1935. Here is a link if you are interested in “visiting” their final resting place.

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“Walking” around the 1870s and “bumping into” two amazing sisters

Business card from the Chiropodal Institute, operating at 208 Broadway, at the corner of Fulton Street, New York City

I found Dr. W. E. Rice’s business card on the floor of my mom’s garage when I was clearing it out last spring. I have no idea whose it was or why they chose to keep it, or why nobody in the last 149 threw it out. And, seeing as how it’s been “here” so long, I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to do it. Besides, it’s kind of fun to look at, warts and all. Imagine all the feet shuffling along Broadway in agony in the 1870s only to enter No. 208 to have their “lives” transformed.

As you can see, I managed to trace this podiatry business back to the 1870s. It was not hard to do (but what came next was a big surprise). My quick Google search brought up two copies of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, a publication I’d never heard of. One issue from February 14, 1874, and the other from September 13, 1873. Expecting it to be an average, mild-mannered magazine from that period, I quickly realized this was an entirely different animal, for along with the masthead’s proclamation:

P R O G R E S S ! F R E E  T H O U G H T ! U N T R A M M E L E D  L I V E S !

BREAKING THE WAY FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS.

…my visit to the ad pages at the end of each issue turned up ads for the services of clairvoyants and mystics, and an illustrated mail-order book about sexual physiology, mentioning words one never would expect to find on the pages of any Victorian-Era publication.

Dr. Rice’s ad in the September, 13, 1873, issue of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly

My first thought was: why did Dr. W. E. Rice decide this was a good place to advertise?! Assuming there was method to his madness, I decided to do a bit of research on Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, initially thinking, of course (given the time), that this was a paper named after two gentlemen. Two eccentric gentlemen? Perhaps, my mind wandering, this Woodhull was some descendant of Abraham Woodhull, the Washington spy…? (Watch the AMC TURN series, if you have not already.) But, no, what I found was something even more interesting: amazingly this was a publication, a highly controversial one, produced by two sisters: Victoria California Woodhull and her younger sister Tennessee Celeste Claflin.

From the February 14, 1874 issue; the sisters had many followers and no doubt made a small fortune from these sales.

Way ahead of their time, and perhaps even ahead of our time in some ways, the two tackled all sorts of subject matter, including women’s suffrage, free love, supposed scandals (some of their own invention), vegetarianism, and spirituality, and made their mark in some then men-only careers. They were among the first women to run a publication; they were the first women to operate a brokerage firm on Wall Street; they were leaders of the women’s suffrage movement, and Victoria even ran in the presidential election of 1872. The running mate she named? Frederick Douglass!  Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly did not last too long; at its height, 20,000 issues were sold, but over time, the controversies associated with its content (mostly written by the two sisters, Victoria’s husband Colonel Blood, and an anarchist by the name of Stephen Pearl) and its own scandals dragged it down. Advertisers fled. By 1876, it was breathing its last.

Cabinet photograph of Victoria C. Woodhull. Albumen silver print on card. Date between 1866-1873. Source: Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum, Historical Photographs and Special Visual Collections Department, Fine Arts Library; Author Mathew Brady (1822-1896). US PUBLIC DOMAIN – Wikimedia Commons

Fortunately for me (and you, if you are interested in learning more), the Museum of the City of New York has a blog that has published a two-part story about these Ohio-born sisters, the children of a snake oil salesman father and a religious fanatic mother, and how they ended up in Manhattan befriending Cornelius Vanderbilt, and I encourage you to give it a look when you have time. Their lives were truly fascinating. (For Part I, click here, and for Part II, here.)

When I come upon such interesting historical figures, whether I agree with their thoughts and views or not, I wonder why I’ve never heard of them before and realize, in the overall scheme of things, I know very little about American history beyond what I learned in school. Discoveries like this always make me want to learn more.

Tennessee Celeste Claflin. Author Geo. Stinson & Co., publishers, Portland, ME. Source: Wikimedia Commons – US PUBLIC DOMAIN

I was somewhat surprised to learn that later in life these two firebrands walked back and even reversed many of their positions, and that they eventually moved to England and lived out their lives there…  I was expecting a much more fiery finish in this country for these ladies. But, nonetheless, they made their mark, and are worth knowing about in this 21st century of ours.

Anyway, I hope you’ve learned something new by stopping here today.

I am now tucking Dr. Rice’s business card away for one of the younger crowd to find some day.

A Florida Friday: Relax and watch some manatees float by…

For a little Friday relaxation, you may enjoy watching some manatees floating down the springs at Blue Spring State Park on their way to the St. John’s River. On cold winter days, manatees are typically abundant here as the springs remain a constant 72 degrees year round. Blue Springs State Park is in Orange City, Florida, an easy drive from Orlando, if you ever happen to visit the area. We did not see many on the day we were there, even though it was very chilly, but the sight of these three floating by made our trip especially worthwhile.

To see what’s happening right now, check out the live webcams! In 2018, 485 manatees spent the winter here–imagine that!

Dr. Charles B. Jaques, son of Isaac Jaques and Wealthy Ann Cushman, and brother of my second-great-grandmother Wealthy Ann Jaques Angus

On a family history note, these springs (of which there are many in central and northern Florida) are not far from Enterprise, FL, the place my second-great-grandmother’s nephew, Charles Jaques Jr., passed away on May 10, 1886, at age 22. He was the son of Dr. Charles Jaques and Katherine Louise De Forrest.

Enterprise is just 7.5 miles from Orange City, and I can’t help but wonder whether Charles came upon these springs in his travels around this area, which back then (mid-1880s) would have been frontier land and just starting to get populated.

From the 1850s – 1880s, the St. John’s River was an important transportation route, and steamboats would have landed regularly at Blue Springs Landing. It seems possible that Charles would have made his way here via a St. John’s River steamboat, and I’d like to think that he saw manatees in the springs and the river along the way, sightings he would surely have reported back to friends and loved ones, and hopefully he had a chance to do that.

There is something very special and memorable about manatees, and if you ever get a chance to visit Florida in the winter, do your best to try to see some.

Memories of the Woodruff farm, “sugar bread,” and picking daisies…

Wealthy Ann Angus Woodruff (5 August 1850 – 27 May 1927) with grandsons Dick Brown and Charles Brodhead, circa 1924, at the old Woodruff Farm on Conant Street in Hillside, NJ. The house still stands, but the barn and fields are no more.

The old wooden bucket used in my great grandmother’s kitchen to hold sugar

Last year I came upon the above photo of my great-grandmother Wealthy Ann Angus Woodruff. She is pictured outside the barn of the old Woodruff farmhouse in Hillside, NJ. The house still stands, but the barn and surrounding fields were eventually lost to development. This is the only old photo I’ve seen of the premises there, and the fact that it includes my father and his cousin Dick Brown makes it even more special.

When my late Dad retired in the late 1980s, he set out to write down his recollections of the years in his life leading up to his marriage to my Mom; his logic for stopping there was that we all knew what came next. At the time that bothered me, but all these years later, I can see his point. Why potentially ruffle the feathers of your kids and other family members by writing something they may read some day and take the wrong way?

Wm Earl Woodruff & Wealthy Ann Angus on the occasion of their 50th wedding anniversary

Of course, I am exceedingly grateful for the details he left us about his growing up years. Here are some recollections of 1927 that pertain to the old Woodruff family farm house and the wooden sugar bucket (photo, right):

…Grandma Woodruff died. A real blow to everyone. I remember seeing her in her casket in the living room of the old farmhouse on Conant Street in Hillside, NJ. I remember going into the field and picking some daisies and bringing them in the house and placing them in her stone cold hands. I remember the old barn. One day the young hired hand dared me to eat horse feed. I did and got sick as a dog. I remember an old horse-drawn wagon in the yard. Dick Brown (my cousin) and I used to play on it and pretend we were driving. Grandma used to make me ‘sugar bread’. Homemade bread, home-churned butter with lots of sugar on it. She also fed me lots of sweet tea. Nothing not from scratch!…

My Dad’s Grandma Woodruff had six daughters with her husband William Earl Woodruff. I have no contact with descendants of the sisters of my grandmother but, of course, would be pleased to hear from any of them at any time.

2018: A year of extraordinary discoveries thanks, in part, to DNA testing

Early December 2018 in a Daegu, South Korea, restaurant, the evening before meeting my husband’s biological family. We were excited but incredibly nervous!

The year 2019 is almost upon us, and I am sorry to have been AWOL for a good chunk of 2018. Too many distractions came my way. As some of you know the previous year (2017) was a non-stop marathon of crises, but I am pleased to report that 2018 was a really busy but very healthy, happy, and POSITIVE year. For my husband, who was adopted as a baby from South Korea to the US and who until this past year had no knowledge of any biological family, it was a year of astounding discoveries—one that was partly made possible by DNA testing. It started last spring with the discovery (via Ancestry DNA) of an older biological half-sister who was also adopted as a baby to the US from post-war South Korea. They met for the first time in August. That discovery was the spark that ignited my husband’s search for biological family in South Korea. Very methodical and thorough in his approach, he sought out and found a remarkable team of helpers on the ground there. Suffice it to say, it was an amazing year. The whole story is his to tell, however; so I am only including a few photos here from our trip to South Korea in early December. Once my husband has managed to put his whole experience into words, something he is aiming to do, I am hoping he will let me share some more of his story here with you.

Apart from acquiring at least some basic Korean conversational skills in time for a hoped-for repeat visit to South Korea in late 2019, I do plan to get back to this blog even if only to post at least on a monthly basis. Meanwhile, I’m delighted that my husband’s biological family tree finally has some leaves on it for him to enjoy and admire. It’s been a year full of blessings, and we are so incredibly thankful.

Happy New Year, everyone! Best wishes for a happy, healthy, productive, enlightening, and peaceful 2019.

Posing outside the Catholic-run White Lily orphanage (Deagu, South Korea) which is now a daycare center for underprivileged children. (In Korea they like to make a little heart shape with their thumbs and forefingers in case you were wondering 😉 ). My husband’s new-found aunt is in the middle in red, and her son is second from the left. Between them is my husband’s newly discovered biological half-sister, who is also related to the aunt and her son. Sister Teresa stands behind me (pink scarf) — she preserved White Lily records, making it possible for many of White Lily’s past orphan residents to get clues about their origins—clues their agency records don’t necessarily have. The gentleman on the far left is my husband’s half-sister’s boyfriend. The two gentlemen on the far right are the Daegu detectives who helped crack the case and connect my husband to his Korean next of kin.

With my husband’s father’s cousins at their village southeast of Daegu

 

 

Reunion news — De Puy and Brodhead families

The Stroud Mansion. Built by Jacob Stroud, city’s founder and Revolutionary War Colonel, for his eldest son John in 1795. The Stroud Family lived in it until 1893, and in 1921 it became the Historical Society’s headquarters. Image and caption from: Wikimedia Commons. Photo taken and uploaded by User Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD, on 19 February 2008.

The next annual reunion of the DePuy and Brodhead families is scheduled for 9AM, Saturday, August 25, at the Monroe County (PA) Historical Association (a.k.a. the Stroud Mansion).

According to the De Puy / Brodhead Family Association, which is holding the event, as many as four guest speakers will address attendees. The Monroe County Historical Association Curator will take guests on a private tour that will include a Special Collections Presentation of General Daniel Brodhead’s uniform. Other activities are hoped for/being planned. An optional activity may be on offer for the day before (Friday).

For full information, please contact: depuy dot brodhead dot family dot assoc @ gmail dot com.

 

New book offers life stories of Russian Centenarians

Like many of you, I am fascinated by stories of centenarians and have even devoted a post or two to the topic. And here I go again! (I’m sure this won’t be the last time.)

Люлка. Дореволюционная Россия. (Cradle. Pre-Revolutionary Russia); author unknown; created before 1917. Wikimedia Commons, uploaded by user Лобачев Владимир (Vladimir Lobachev)

An important (IMO) book was just released by Russian Life, a non-profit based in Montpelier, Vermont, that publishes books, magazines, and other items of interest for Russophiles around the world. I mention it here because it has everything to do with family history, the subject to which this blog is devoted. For anyone who is interested, here are the details:
RESILIENCE: Life Stories of Centenarians Born in the Year of Revolution

Authors: Paul E. Richardson & Nadya Grebennikova

Photographer: Mikhail Mordasov

From the website:

Call it resilience, grit, or just perseverance – it takes a special sort of person to have survived the last 100 years of Russian and Soviet history.

The 22 heroes in this volume were all born in 1917 – Russia’s year of revolution – somewhere within the bounds of the Russian empire as it then existed. They lived through Civil War, Collectivization, World War II, the Cold War, and the collapse of the USSR. Indeed, their lives are a living reflection of the past Russian century, and their stories show us a side of history not available in any other resource.

The authors of this project sought out these centenarians for months, then traveled over 20,000 kilometers across Russia and Eastern Europe, from sprawling metropolises to tiny villages, capturing poignant images, moving life stories, and stunning video. This book is the fruit of those efforts.

“Each of these stories is different, but all of them are tales of survival… of heart and courage… of family and community… of resilience.” –From the authors’ introduction

At $40 plus shipping, the book (soft cover) is not cheap, but as you can imagine, traveling around such a vast country searching out these stories was an expensive (and remarkable) endeavor—the result is truly priceless.

Note: A film is also available; you can pay $9.99 to stream it via your device.

Hon. Albert Gallatin Brodhead house in Jim Thorpe, PA

Albert Gallatin Brodhead portrait, *between p. 260 and p. 261 of Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of the Lehigh Valley, PA – published in 1905

Coincidentally, I came upon this house while looking for another: the Jim Thorpe (previously known as Mauch Chunk) home of the Honorable Albert Gallatin Brodhead (1815-1891). It’s a beautiful three-story Victorian brick home that has a wonderful tiered rear garden. The verbiage written by the realtor mentions that the home was initially in the possession of the Lockhart family; a Lockhart daughter married a son of Asa Packer.

To view the home, click here.

For more about Albert, please see this post.

I don’t know how long the photos will linger online. The house was sold so the listing is inactive. If you want to save copies for your own personal use, better to do so sooner rather than later.

 

 

 

Inside the house Francis Woodruff built, circa 1845

Francois Gignoux, View near Elizabethtown, New Jersey, 1847

If you’re like me, you occasionally look up the addresses of ancestors to see if their homes are still standing; and if they are and they happen to be for sale or have sold in the not-too-distant past, you can get a glimpse inside, thanks to all those online realtor photos, many of which seem to linger long after the sale has been made.

Last fall I found a listing for the house my second-great-grandfather Francis Woodruff built circa 1845 in Elizabethtown, NJ, on what was then farmland and in what is now the town of Hillside. Frenchman Régis François Gignoux (1816–1882) painted the above scene around that time. As you can see, it must have been a very bucolic setting in the summertime; Francis and his family made a living off the land, something many living in that part of New Jersey today might find hard to imagine.

I contemplated flying up to NJ to take a look inside but scrapped that idea after all of us in the family contracted type A flu, an event we did not rebound from quickly. Of course, now I regret not getting up there—who knows when the house will be for sale again?

In any case, the house was sold, but many photos remain on Realtor dot com. To look inside, visit this link: Conant Street house. I wrote about this house once before in a post about my grandmother’s wedding in which I included this information from the six-page PDF Eight Colonial Homes, an undated publication put out by the staff of the Hillside National Bank:

A third Woodruff house, while appearing to be the same vintage as the others, was erected about 1845. […] …it is frequently the subject of artists’ paint brushes because of its picturesque setting. It was built by Francis Woodruff, a descendant of Enos Woodruff. A letter from Mathias Woodruff in 1843 to his brother, another Enos Woodruff, comments that he is planning to return from Louisiana to help his cousin, Ezra Woodruff, erect a house for Frank. The letter jokingly said in part: “Frank will want him to put up a house next summer. I have advised him to find out from the neighbors what kind of house he wants, sort of architecture, on which side to put the kitchen, dog house, pig pens. If all parties are satisfied, it will save a great deal of talk.” Oddly enough it was constructed sideways to the road, but when the Westminster section was developed by Edward Grassman in the 1930’s, Revere Drive was placed in front of it, so today it faces a street.

Having seen the interior photos, I can try to picture the family members living there and going about their daily lives. This is where Francis and Mary Jane Trowbridge raised their four children: William, Matthias, Emma, and Phebe. This is where William, who took over the farm, raised his six daughters with wife Wealthy Ann Angus. The house remained in the family until 1928, the year William (b. 1848) died. (Wealthy predeceased him.) By then the six daughters were married with children and living elsewhere. Farmland in Elizabethtown was becoming non-existent as the county’s towns expanded. The Woodruff farm was swallowed up and became part of a housing development in Hillside.

I now read some of my old posts in a slightly new light, better able to imagine the happenings inside the home—this is where Mary Jane got her small children up and dressed in the morning; these are the stairs the Woodruff children, grand-children and great-grandchildren ran up and down through the years; this in the fireplace Francis sat down next to to write his grown children letters while they temporarily lived elsewhere or where he retired to to read their letters—letters to and from William when he was out West sheep farming or letters to and from Matthias when he farming wheat in the Dakota Territory; this is the home in which a teen-aged William wrote letters to his uncles Trowbridge while they were serving in the Union Army; this is the parlor in which the family entertained guests and marked my grandmother’s wedding in 1908 and William and Wealthy’s golden anniversary in 1922, etc.

Of course, the house has been altered through the years, there’s no denying that, but original features remain as you can see in the photos—the wood flooring, the beams, the fireplaces, and the windows, including the diamond-shaped window in the attic.

It’s wonderful to see this house still standing after 170+ years. For that I thank all of its past and present occupants and all of those local citizens who through the decades have appreciated its important heritage.

Mystery photo – Brodhead line?

Greetings, “Chips” Followers;

I hope you’ve been keeping well. Not long ago I received an email (contents below) from Virginia O’Neill, asking for help identifying the couple in an old electrograph. I was unable to help, but offered to post it here so that others could have a chance to weigh in with their opinions. I think the woman looks somewhat like Andrew Jackson Brodhead, but he had no sisters. Perhaps a cousin? Let’s see if we can get this photo identified. Perhaps one of you holds the key!

3//12/18 – Check the comments section below for responses.

I have in my possession an unidentified electrograph/painted tintype portrait of a man and woman side-by-side. It is decoratively matted, and framed in dark wood. Its overall size is 14″x12.” SEE: attached photo.

Unfortunately, it was given to me without any provenance. I am writing to inquire if you are familiar with this portrait and if the subjects could be BRODHEAD ancestors on my father’s maternal line. My father is Richard Brodhead ARNOLD, grandson of Richard Henry BRODHEAD, youngest son of Andrew Jackson BRODHEAD and Ophelia EASTON.

I have compared photographs of Garret BRODHEAD (1793-1872) and wife Cornelia DINGMAN (1797-1885) SEE: your post of 5 May 2014 “Brodhead family descendants repair Cornelia D. Brodhead headstone.”

I have also compared the photographs of Andrew and Ophelia as a young couple from the personal family collection of James & Barbara BRODHEAD. SEE: your post of 1 January 2016 “A Brodhead family New Year’s Eve wedding 170 years ago.”

I would appreciate any help you might provide identifying the portrait.