Thursday, November 28, 2019
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Married on Thanksgiving Day 1908
Romance in This
Marriage
Miss Edna Melson,
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. U. Grant Melson, of Delmar, and Roscoe T. Powers,
stepson of U. G. Glick, of this city, were married at the home of the bride's
parents, in Delmar, on Thanksgiving Day, by the Rev. Zach H. Webster. The marriage
followed a courtship of less than a week. The groom is but 21 years or age, and
it was just after he was discharged from the army a fortnight ago that he met
Miss Melson, who was a guest of a friend in this city. Following the marriage
Mr. and Mr. Powers came to this city on Friday. They returned to Delmar on
Saturday, where they will spend their honeymoon.
Above from The
Evening Journal Wilmington Delaware 30 November 1908
as the article says Edna M Melson (1888 - 1966) married Roscoe A. Powers ( 1887-1957) on Thanksgiving. Her father was a house painter and yes he was named after Ulysses Grant. Her mother was Eliza Hannah Carmean. Roscoe was the son of Andrew Clifton Powers (1858-1934) and Monte Morelle Millard. Andrew and monte got a divorce and both remarried. Roscoe and Edna would have a son in 1910 named Millard Powers. They would end up in Rehoboth Beach Delaware where their son was in real estate. They would stay married until their death.
Thanksgiving at the Farm House Restaurant 1971
today this is the La Tolteca Restaurant and the Nachos cost twice as much as the price of the 1971 Thanksgiving Buffet
Sauerkraut For Thanksgiving
Even in Delmar there are some transplants from Baltimore that insists on serving sauerkraut with the Thanksgiving meal. Below is part of a November 27, 2013 article by Jonathan Pitts from the Baltimore Sun about this tradition.
"how did sauerkraut, with its heady international history, end up dolloped on the same plate as turkey, that richly bland mainstay of the traditional Thanksgiving meal in North America? And why in Baltimore?
The answer, historians tell us, lies in demographics.
Baltimore was a leading gateway for German immigration during the 1800s, so much so that by 1863, the year President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, one in four of the city's residents were transplanted Germans and spoke the tongue as their first language.
Most who ponder the subject say those immigrants were equally caught up in the traditions of their new country and interested in sprinkling them with the customs they brought with them.
One historian cites a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition that derives from the Eastern European custom of stuffing goose with fermented cabbage. William Woys Weaver, author of "Sauerkraut Yankees," a book of Pennsylvania recipes and food lore, says traders from the York and Chambersburg areas brought it to Baltimore, a frequent stop.
"That tradition was written about as early as 1840," he says.
Local lore has a slightly different twist.
"My wife and I think the immigrants from Germany and Poland settled in Highlandtown and the area around Broadway generations ago, and they celebrated Thanksgiving the way we did, but they also wanted to add a touch of home to their meals," said Nickolas Antonas, who with his wife, Mary, owned and ran the Eastern House restaurant for 44 years.
The pair always served a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but they didn't think to include sauerkraut when they first opened in 1966, said Nickolas, who is of Greek ancestry.
However, so many customers asked for the stuff during the holidays that the couple added it to the Thanksgiving menu and served it that day for more than 40 years — with bacon or sausage, with applesauce, with grated onion and carrots and even, at times, with ginger ale for "a kind of champagne taste."
Now retired, the Baltimore natives became converts long ago.
"You have the sweetness of the sweet potatoes, then you add the sauerkraut, which is a little tart. Then you add the turkey and country gravy, and it just becomes a nice combination," said Antonas, adding that he'll be whipping up a batch for the holiday meal at their Rosedale home.
Local residents of a certain age well remember versions of the lengthy pickling procedure. Marc Attman, who owns Attman's Delicatessen, said that when he was a boy, his father, Seymour, and uncles would pack hundreds of pounds of cabbage in wooden barrels and roll them up and down Lombard St. to agitate the contents.
Half a century or so ago, he said, the deli usually got sizable advance orders of the stuff as Thanksgiving loomed.
Today they're one of the few establishments in Baltimore that still cure their own sauerkraut. Most restaurants, like most consumers, rely on the packaged variety, which is more convenient but also offers much less flavor and texture, gourmands say.
Most of the deli's kraut, though, goes on sandwiches these days, making it a steadily popular condiment year-round. "For us it's like salt and pepper," Attman said.
Attman's does offer a day-after specialty, the Double T (Thanksgiving turkey) sandwich that features turkey, cranberry sauce and sauerkraut on pumpernickel.
Many locals tell stories of grandparents making batches of sauerkraut in the family basement in the weeks before Thanksgiving, creating an aroma that became associated in their minds with the holiday's comforting feel.
John Shields, a Baltimore native who grew up to become the proprietor and chef at Gertrude's restaurant at the Baltimore Museum of Art, speaks of his late grandmother Gertrude Cleary, who made a batch every year in the cellar of her rowhouse near St. Ann's Catholic Church on East 22nd Street.
The tradition meant so much to him, he told a Baltimore Sun reporter in 2007, that it sparked the idea of creating Kraut Fest, a celebration the restaurant will hold this January for the 10th straight year.
Restaurant staffers begin their work a few days before Thanksgiving, working in the basement to quarter, core and shred 300 pounds of white cabbage. They pack it into several sanitized, industrial-sized trash cans, add salt (three tablespoons for every five pounds of cabbage) to allow for extraction of water, and oversee a six- to eight-week fermenting process.
Doug Wetzel, the executive chef at Gertrude's, has become something of a keeper of the custom's flame.
He now oversees the restaurant's kraut-curing process and speaks lovingly of each step. They fill jars of water to weigh the kraut down inside the barrels. They lift the lids every two days to spoon bacteria-laden foam from the surface.
After several years at the helm, he has developed a routine: Wetzel, 30, transports the cans to the high-ceilinged basement of his early 20th-century single-family home in Brooklyn Park. There, he places the equipment near a vent (aromas start wafting from the containers within a couple of weeks) and lets it all sit in temperatures that are usually 10 to 15 degrees cooler than the outside.
The stuff is stewing there now, in fact — and even as it continues fermenting today, Wetzel and his wife will serve their Thanksgiving guests a separate batch of kraut.
"I love [sauerkraut] with turkey now. The flavor takes the edge off the [turkey] taste. It has to be there on the table or I get very upset," Wetzel said.
As early as 1907, an unnamed Baltimore Sun reporter waxed poetic about the kraut-and-turkey blend.
"Of all the multitude of duties that confront a public journal," he wrote, "none is more genuinely pleasant than that of noting, each autumn, the reappearance of sauerkraut upon the tables of the great plain people. … It is the first course in that gastronomic saturnalia which reaches a climax or culmination in roast turkey."
Seventy-seven years later, another reporter, Carleton Jones, complained that the tradition "shocked" him at first and that he'd never gotten over the feeling there was something distasteful about it.
"Turkey Joe" Trabert has no such concerns. He even adds his own Bawlmer touch every year, heaping gravy on the kraut. And he can't name one friend who doesn't serve the pickled stuff with his big bird.
"What the hell's unusual about something when everybody you know is doing it?" he said.
And on Turkey Day 2013, it isn't just old-timers carrying the banner.
Six months ago, when Meaghan and Shane Carpenter started their boutique foods company, Hex Ferments, they did so in the belief that fermented foods are as flavorful, healthy and relevant to the human diet today as they've been for centuries.
The married couple, 30-something transplants from the upper Midwest, cure their own sauerkraut in the old-fashioned way in a variety of flavors, including red beet and garlic. They create kimchi, Korea's breath-busting answer to sauerkraut, and kombucha, an effervescent fermented black tea drink.
They'll soon be selling their wares from a shop in Belvedere Square.
But they'd never heard of Baltimore's turkey-and-kraut habit — at least not until a friend filled them in a couple of weeks ago.
It was too late to work up a big new batch for today's holiday, but they're smelling opportunity.
"To find this as part of Baltimore culture is fascinating," said Meaghan, who expected to be cooking some kraut in vodka to go with a neighbor's turkey. "I wish we'd learned about it sooner. But next year, we'll have a lot made up. We'll be doing something special."
Baltimore Sun librarian Paul McCardell contributed to this article. "
Monday, November 25, 2019
When better meals are served Roy will cook them
The Esso restaurant was one of many restaurants Roy Thomas Cooper owned or managed.
above 1933 ad
Roy Cooper was the son of John William Freeney Cooper and Elizabeth Venables Cooper of Hebron. Born in 1892 one of about eight brothers and sisters. He spent most of his life as a cook.
above John and Elizabeth Cooper children. Roy Cooper is at the far right.
above 1942 ad and there is the phrase "When better meals are served Roy will cook them"
After the Esso restaurant Roy would go to work for the English Company Restaurant as a chef. He would spend 26 years with them before retiring. He would die in 1976 at age 83. He was well known in the local restaurant trade.
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Sunday Dinner At The Flagship
In the 1970s Delmar people might have had Sunday dinner at the Flagship in Seaford Delaware. The restaurant was originally the "McKeever Brothers." and was built in 1911 in Noank, Conn. She was 130' long and 22' wide and had served as a menhaden fishing boat out of Lewes Delaware. Originally owned by Steven W. McKeever and Edward J McKeever the ship was acquired by the Navy in WW1 and made into a mine sweeper. After the war she went back to fishing. About 1967 the Menhaden fishing fleet decided to get rid of the wooden fishing boats and offered to give them away. Six businessmen in Seaford took the 'Mckeever Bros. and had it towed up the Nanticoke to the bridge across RT13. there they converted the ship to a restaurant.
The restaurant opened to the public in 1969 and had a good business up until the late 1990s. I am sure there were fans of the restaurant that truly loved it but for the most part it was a novelty restaurant - it fell into the same category of coffee shops shaped like Coffee pots in the 1930s. You had to eat there at least once and take a friend later.
The ship arrives in Seaford
The restaurant had a number of nooks and crannies - the dinning rooms were called the "Engine Room", "Fish Hold", and the "Golden Anchor Room". Up top in what was called the "Wheel House" was a small bar, everything in the Wheel house was on a slight slant so after a few drinks you didn't know if you were tilting from the drinks or the wheel house. The eating area was cramped since the original ship was a little over 20 ft wide by the time you add in salad bar, lounge area, etc there wasn't much area left. Plus for all the decorating you felt like you were eating in a ship's hull.
They added a square shape building attached to the ship to try and overcome the disadvantage of the ship. The addition was popular with social and professional groups having their monthly meetings. I may have ate there more when attending meetings then as an individual customer. When it opened the food was about $7 per dinner. When it was auctioned off in 1981 it was advertised a having a seating capacity of 265
Gutted in a fire in 1977 it was rebuilt, sold at auction in 1981, and over the years it has had multiple owners. I think the last owner was Miguel Quecada who acquired it in 2000 and named it the Nautico. Today it sit rotting by the highway.
The restaurant had a number of nooks and crannies - the dinning rooms were called the "Engine Room", "Fish Hold", and the "Golden Anchor Room". Up top in what was called the "Wheel House" was a small bar, everything in the Wheel house was on a slight slant so after a few drinks you didn't know if you were tilting from the drinks or the wheel house. The eating area was cramped since the original ship was a little over 20 ft wide by the time you add in salad bar, lounge area, etc there wasn't much area left. Plus for all the decorating you felt like you were eating in a ship's hull.
They added a square shape building attached to the ship to try and overcome the disadvantage of the ship. The addition was popular with social and professional groups having their monthly meetings. I may have ate there more when attending meetings then as an individual customer. When it opened the food was about $7 per dinner. When it was auctioned off in 1981 it was advertised a having a seating capacity of 265
Gutted in a fire in 1977 it was rebuilt, sold at auction in 1981, and over the years it has had multiple owners. I think the last owner was Miguel Quecada who acquired it in 2000 and named it the Nautico. Today it sit rotting by the highway.
Howard "Toby" Gravenor
Steve Merritt found photos of Howard "Toby" Gravenor (from Delmar, Died in 1992) and would like to send them to a family member. Please send us an email if you are a relative and we will forward the email to him. delmarhas@yahoo.com
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Franklin Truitt 1932
DELMAR, Del., Nov. 2. A youthful clerk, with rare presence
of mind, prevented a Negro from getting the contents of a safe in the office of
the Delmar Union Store Company early yesterday morning. The clerk, Franklin
Truitt, son of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Truitt of this town, was leaning against the
door of the safe when the Negro entered, and demanded the money in the safe.
The youth, who is 16, managed to turn the combination on the dial with his feet
and informed the Negro that he had forgotten the combination and could not open
the safe. The man was not armed, according to Truitt, warned the boy not to
move from his position and escaped out the front door. The manager of the
store, Levater Hearn who had been out to get something to eat. believed that
the Negro had been watching his movement
for some time and had chosen the opportunity furnished by his absence to try
and intimidate the boy. Truitt reported the attempted hold-up to local police.
Above from The Evening Journal (Wilmington Del) November 2nd
1932
Thanksgiving 1940
Friday, November 22, 2019
Thanksgiving Nite At The Cozy Cabin Delmar 1943
Joseph Henry Gollner was a golden boy, great at high school athletics, drummer in a band, went into the Navy, attended the Naval academy, Became a Navy flyer. married the daughter of Congressman John Wood, transferred to a carrier "The Essex", and died in a plane crash in January 1952.
When the movie "Men of the Fighting Lady" came out in 1954 it was advertised in Salisbury as the Joe Gollner Story.
Callboy
When Harvey Sprague of Delmar retired from
railroad service in 1958 he mentioned that when he first started with the
Pennsylvania Railroad in 1904 he was a callboy in the office. In 1908 he became a fireman and in 1916 he
became an engineer.
The “callboy” or sometimes called the “Caller,” job was to round up the crew for the unscheduled train due to move out of the
yard. This was in the days before
telephones were common. They usually had
two hours to do it. Trainmen at that
time were required to live within easy walking distance of the round house and
the Callboy would walk, run or ride a bicycle around town and knock on Boarding
houses, residential houses, restaurants, churches etc to find his man to let
him know he was scheduled to work. He
would have to know every fireman, engineer brakeman and conductor in his
roundhouse and where they hung out so he could find them.
Usually three to four Callboys were in Delmar to
cover a 24-hour period, 7 days a week. The day shift was the best and the night shift was perhaps the worst. At night, carrying a
lantern to see by, they would knock on the side of house to awake the railroad
men and a light would come on in the house so he knew they were up. The wife packed a lunch for the railroad man
while he dressed.
above from Baltimore Sun 21 Feb 1906
The callboys were young men between 13 to 18 years
in age. They were always white. They were picked because they were sober, dependable
and knew railroading, plus they could keep their mouth shut and not talk about
where they found the railroad man in the event it was not with his wife.
The Callboy had other jobs to do besides rounding
up crews. He worked mainly as a message
boy and golfer and then filled in where needed, usually helping a fireman clean
the engines. He might be asked to run
out to pick up a fifth of liquor for one of the foremen or do the unpleasant task of
notifying a family of a railroad accident.
A Callboy would work his way up to the next step by
becoming a fireman then an engineer the same as Harvey Sprague did. Some callboys worked their way to high
positions; Chief Justice Earl Warren,
and William Martin Jeffers who became President of Union Pacific railroad are
two examples.
About 1900 the callboy made fifty cents a day, by
1911 they were up to $59 a month.
As the telephone came into increased use the
callboys were replaced by crew dispatchers or Callers who sit in an office in
front of a switchboard and called trainmen.
1951 ad
Thursday, November 21, 2019
2010 DHS Football
Nick Cooper, Mustafa Shauket, Kevin Veliz, Jared Campbell, Matt Waldman and Dakota Harmon
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Delmar Library Talk Nov 22
The Mason Dixon Line: The Story Behind the Boundary
Free History Program
Delmar Public Library
Friday, Nov. 22, 2019 @ 1 p.m.
A Delaware Humanities Program
by Mike Dixon
Free History Program
Delmar Public Library
Friday, Nov. 22, 2019 @ 1 p.m.
A Delaware Humanities Program
by Mike Dixon
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Cheryl Gordy 1969
1816 Tax Collection
Old records have a bit of quirkiness embedded in them! How about being a “Good for nothing!”
Reading old tax lists for Sussex DE from 1802-18. About 898 pgs. This is how they were taxed back in a day. A person called a collector, from each hundred, who could read & write, set out to inventory & tax the inhabitants in their 'hundred'. They'd go to the county seat to see the property transfers since the prior tax year, then tax the new owner.
They were taxed several ways: a pole tax, a poor tax, road tax, publick tax & personal property tax. Many were delinquent...Tough time period. Right after the Revolution & during War 1812. If you are lucky, you can glean alot info from these lists. Their personal belongings, land holdings, even notating when they died many times.
Some of the entries will make you laugh!!...John Coffin was noted as, "Good for nothing!" highlighted in yellow & other remarks highlighted!..If you died, only having no estate, would escape you from paying...
Sunday, November 17, 2019
The Purina Mill 1952 Cane
This give-a-way cane was up for auction tonight at the Wants n Needs thrift store auction
The canes were given away at the opening of the "new" Purina Mill in Delmar in 1952
Pin Money Pickles
In
the late 1800s and through the 1950s an
item that appeared on menus and in stores was Pin Money Pickles.
above part of the Hotel Antoinette Lunch Menu 1900
Pin
Money Pickles was a commercial product made by Ellen G. Tompkins Kidd.
Mrs. Kidd started making pickles at her
Richmond, Virginia home in 1868 when she was sixteen. She used her grandmother’s receipt (her
grandfather was Lt. Harry Tompkins of Revolutionary war fame) and it was such a
success that people begin to pay her for the pickles. Giving her a little money they referred to as
pin money. The term pin money is not
heard that often today but it refers to a small amount of money woman would be
given by their husband or they earn by sewing or selling eggs.
By
1926 she had developed the business into one that was doing a half million
dollars in sales, had a five story building in Richmond and employed over 60
workers. She also married in 1872 John
Boulware Kidd, a grocer, and had ten children by him.
She
was one of the first women to obtain a contract from the Pullman Company and
she insisted that her pickles be listed on the menu as “Pin Money Pickles.” She sold to the large New York City market
and her product was always sold by its trade name.
1900 Southern Railway Lunch menu featuring pin money pickles
She
incorporated her company and even though she died in 1932 the company lived
on. Stewart C Wilson became the owner
and moved the company to Gloucester Virginia and by the mid 1950s the pickle
plant closed down.
1936 December 4th ad from Baltimore Sun
you can come across the Pin Money Pickle jars at flea markets and bottle shows
Saturday, November 16, 2019
The Blue Moon and Smiling Dave
No ideal who Smiling Dave was.
Friday, November 15, 2019
Miss M. Jeannette Roswell 1941
above 7 Feb 1941 Salisbury Times
The Roswells lived out on Leonard Mill Road, Marion Jeannette Roswell father and mother were Paul Raymond Backus Roswell and Marion Edna Robbins Roswell. The family was originally from New York moving here about 1920. They had about ten children. Jeannette would marry Clemence Paul Tokarz and live over on the Western Shore of Maryland. Before marriage she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1933, served as an Army nurse and was stationed at the Honolulu Hospital when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
The Search For Bridey Murphy
In 1956, Delmar, along with the rest of the United States, was
talking about a book called “The Search For Bridey Murphy”.
Sixty-nine years ago on November 29, 1952 Morey
Bernstein placed Ruth Simmons (later identified as Virginia Tighe) into a deep
hypnotic trance. Bernstein, a businessman and an amateur hypnotist, had mean
Tighe at a party the previous month and convinced her to be the subject willing
to try what believers in reincarnation call “past-life regression.”
above Morey Bernstein
Through the
power of hypnosis, he believed, he could lead Tighe back through time and into
her previous life. Tighe who was a 27
year old housewife was instructed by Berstein to fall into a deeper and deeper
sleep he then regressed her to age 7 and after answering a couple of questions
moved on to age 5 and age 3 and age 1.
He then asked her search her mind for something further back.
It was at that point she developed an Irish brogue and begin
telling about her life in vivid detail as Bridget “Bridey” Murphy from 1806 to 1864. In several sessions with Tighe, Berstein
accumulated a wealth of information on Bridey and life in Ireland in the
1800s. In 1956 Doubleday the book publisher,
published Morey Berstein’s "The Search for Bridey Murphy” It set the United States on fire talking about the possibly of genetic memory. A rage of regression related hypnotist
cocktail parties spread everywhere. With
the book release newspapers set investigators out to find out what was really
going on. Long story short, the investigators found
Tighe had lived across the street from a house where Bridey Murphy Corkwell
lived and she had merely absorbed the stories Bridey told about growing up in
Ireland. Tighe under hypnosis thought
they were her own. It gave a plausible
answer to an event that had upset a great many.
A movie was released about the search for Bridey Murphy. The internet is full of information about
this event.
Now that was 1956, today DNA is taken at hard scientific
fact. The average person can buy a DNA
kit from ancestry.com and with no research on his part in a month’s time can show
his family tree back to Eric the Red in Greenland and he believes it. In truth DNA gives a lot of false or
misleading information when doing family trees and there is a lot still not
known about it. If you believe your DNA
is the reason why you have red hair and blue eyes and are a fisherman why would
you not believe that in addition to those traits a part of the memories of your
ancestors is not carried forward to you?
People who have received an organ transplant will have their DNA altered (that seems to be accepted). There has been a number of reports that after these transplants they begin to have memories of different people and events that they never had before the transplant. It is called cellular memory theory. Some believe others don't.
In the case of Bridey Murphy it was blurred by the fact Bridey was not a direct ancestor but instead someone who was not related, a reincarnation of a person or a past life (PL). Anyway it is something to rethink.
People who have received an organ transplant will have their DNA altered (that seems to be accepted). There has been a number of reports that after these transplants they begin to have memories of different people and events that they never had before the transplant. It is called cellular memory theory. Some believe others don't.
In the case of Bridey Murphy it was blurred by the fact Bridey was not a direct ancestor but instead someone who was not related, a reincarnation of a person or a past life (PL). Anyway it is something to rethink.
Today the Bridey Murphy story was nothing but a distant memory for
most Americans, a short-lived thrill that now resided alongside subsequent
“paranormal” fads like UFOs, Big Foot, killer bees, and the Bermuda Triangle.
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Domino Sugar
Today more than 40 ships a year deliver raw sugar to the Baltimore refinery. The larger ships take around 8-10 days to unload.
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