Before Covid-19 hit Santa Clara, Archives & Special Collections had been busy acquiring new items to add to our collections, and we’d like to take this opportunity to share some of them with you. The items featured in this blog post support the discipline of women’s studies and we look forward to using them in feminist classes in the fall.
We acknowledge that it may be cruel to discuss new acquisitions when we cannot host researchers, so please remember that we hope to soon offer virtual research appointments for remote users thanks to document cameras. Email SpecialCollections@scu.edu if you would like to set that up.
Recipe Book of an Anonymous Group of Women, with instructions for food and medicine. Uncat.
For an archives-themed foray into culinary adventure à la the Great British Bake Off’s Technical Challenge (round 2 in every episode), imagine Mary and Paul giving you this recipe for plum cake, then try to decipher and execute it:
While 7 hours would be too long for the segment on the hit television show, so begins your initiation to the cult of Cooking in the Archives and your introduction to this little guidebook of recipes collected by an anonymous group of women from 1822-1886. Held as an amazing testament to the company of women and the bonds formed within over many decades, this recipe book contains not only instructions for many sweet dessert concoctions and savory main dishes, but also medicines such as “specific cure for Cholera” and “cure for bugs,” indicating women’s age-old role at treating diseases found within their community.
If the numerous recipes for pudding aren’t a give away, one could deduce that the authors are of English nationality since printed fragments tipped in throughout the pages quote prices in Sterling. However, the women that contributed to this communal recipe book included recipes and ingredients from all over Europe—the Spanish Ham looks quite good!
Even if cooking isn’t your thing, this item is a rich source for the study of other disciplines, such as paleography, female communities, food chain supply, the rise of antisepsis, and the rise of modern medicine. We won’t tell anyone if you opt to not try your hand at any of the recipes.
An Introduction to Botany: In a Series of Familiar Letters, With Illustrative Engravings by Priscilla Wakefield.
This late 18th century textbook, written by the prolific author of children’s educational materials Priscilla Wakefield, equally prizes the education of young girls as much as young boys, which was groundbreaking for the time period. Wakefield writes in the introduction to the book, “The design of the following Introduction to Botany is to cultivate a taste in young persons for the study of nature… Children are endowed with curiosity and activity for the purpose of acquiring knowledge. Let us avail ourselves of these natural propensities and direct them to the pursuit of the most judicious objects: none can be better adapted to instruct, and at the same time amuse, than the beauties of nature by which they are continually surrounded.” The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Wakefield‘s books as having “a deliberate tone, are filled with information, and focus on real-life experiences in the present day. Characteristically they have a family setting and promote new-style progressive pedagogy based in domestic conversations.”
The copy acquired by Archives & Special Collections bears a contemporary ownership mark of Eliza Henry and is in near fine condition, still possessing its original endpapers and lacking other reader’s marks or inscriptions in general.
Literary commonplace book and friendship album of a 19th century California girl at an all women’s school. Owned by Carrie Benson.
Commonplace books are typically repositories of facts and information the owner copies by hand for later reference. This item, while also serving the purpose of an autograph book or friendship album, was owned and used by Carrie Benson from 1874-1882. It is full of handwritten notes from Benson’s classmates in the Girls’ High School of San Francisco and offers a window into the attitudes and emotions of schoolgirls at the time, individuals who often dare to envision futures for themselves outside of the gender roles of marriage and motherhood. Further interesting is the fact that this is a rare example of a commonplace book owned by a schoolgirl in a western state in the last quarter of the 19th century, potentially tying the subjects of the girls’ notes to the broad mindsets taught to girls in San Francisco at the time, mindsets that allowed them to value female community and consider futures outside of the traditional roles of women.
Diary of Lillian Avery. Uncat.
This dense diary, written in nearly daily by Lillian Avery from 1920-1930, documents the daily life of a schoolteacher in the midwest in the years following the suffragette movement. Avery describes accidents and deaths in her community of Chatfield, Minnesota, raising the idea that life was dangerous in the town. Avery herself suffers ill health often, finally revealing a diagnosis towards the end of the volume (no spoilers here!). Nonetheless she stays socially active, making trips to the nearby towns of Racine, Caledonia, and St. Paul to visit friends, attend bridge suppers, and hear operettas not available in Chatfield. She also reflects on news items of the day, for example the death of President Coolidge.
Diaries such as this provide a window into a life lived a century ago in the words of the person who experienced it, offering a great primary resource to aid the study of such topics as genealogy, the history of education, working women’s experiences post-suffrage, history of the Midwest and Midwestern women, the role of the Catholic church in the West, medical history and the spread and treatment of disease.
How six girls made money, or, Occupations for women by Marion Edmonds Roe
Author Marion Edmonds Roe opens the book with the dedication, “To the vast multitude of women, who desire to earn some money for themselves, this book is affectionately dedicated by their friend, The Author,” and continues on dispensing advice using the storytelling conceit of a specific family that consists of six girls and one boy. The problem the family faced, of course, was the father’s problem: “The Burbank girls were not greatly endowed with beauty; and all the father’s effort to get them married off and so transfer the burden of their support to someone else, had proved to no avail” (p. 7-8). Henceforward the chapters contain useful information from the perspective of the mother and daughters of this family, ranging from how to make jam from country currants for profits in the city to opening a kitchen restaurant based on the idea that all men need to eat regardless of any other characteristic he may have.
An early example of the self-help genre, this guide for women outside the upper class doesn’t stop at employment options sprung from the kitchen. It offers instructions on everything from being a laundress to being a lawyer. It also offers advice to women looking to make themselves professionally presentable even if they are homely, highlighting the fact that making money has as much to do with appearance as skills—a fact true for women and men of the year 2020 as much as it was true in 1887.
The copy of this early feminist work acquired by SCU Archives & Special Collections is in near fine condition and bears the inscription, “Marion Edmonds Roe—Mother of H.E. Roe.” If you just can’t wait to view our copy of the work, the full text (scanned from the copy held at the University of Wisconsin) is viewable at HathiTrust.
Commonplace Book. Owned by Susan Ann Clapp. Uncat.
The same year two Italian Jesuits founded Santa Clara College, Susan Ann Clapp was embroidering her commonplace book with “1851” in addition to some other decorative flourishes. So begins the first impression of this totally unique manuscript that represents the viewpoint and experience of a young woman in England in the mid-19th century. While most of the inscriptions are attributed to “S. A. Clapp” or “S. A. C.,” the item contains quotes and remarks by no less than four different hands and also includes a hand-embroidered bookmark that the owner presumably used to mark her place.
Header Image: Cover and recipe for pickled greengages from the Recipe Book of an Anonymous Group of Women. Photo courtesy of Nadia Nasr.