[CULINARY MANUSCRIPT] Memphis Receipts & Remedies

1876-1900. Hardcover. 114 pages. 20 x 13 cm. This extraordinary Southern culinary manuscript gathers the work of over fifty contributors whose recipes and remedies together form a vivid community portrait of post–Civil War life. Many of the women represented here were wives, daughters, and mothers of Confederate soldiers, and several came from families that once enslaved others. The names credited throughout—traditionally listed under their husbands’ identities, such as “Mrs. James Bradley”—required extensive genealogical research to trace back to the women themselves.

Most contributors hailed from Memphis and Knoxville, Tennessee, and Huntsville, Tennesee, and Huntsville, Alabama, with several families later settling in Texas to continue their agricultural pursuits during and after the war. The manuscript contains recipes written in five distinct hands, suggesting a shared circle of kinship. Repeated attributions to “Mama’s Recipes” and references to “Half Mom” Ann E. Parsons further hint at familial collaboration across generations.

Identified contributors include:
• Ann E. (Reed) Parsons, daughter of Col. John Reed of Huntsville, Tenn.; wife of Judge Silas Parsons, Travis, Texas.
• Adeline S. Bibb Bradley, wife of James Bradley; mother of William B. Bradley, who fought with the Fourth Alabama Regiment.
• Sarah Towles Gardiner, wife of Richard Hannibal Gardner.
• Mollie Claiborne Stahlman, wife of Edward B. Stahlman, publisher of the Nashville Banner.
• Ellen Christy McClung Marshall, wife of John Marshall; great-granddaughter of Gen. James White, founder of Knoxville.
• Martha Louise “Mattie” Patterson, wife of George Washington Patterson; born in Tennessee, later of Texas; Confederate soldier and member of the Twentieth Legislature.

Representative recipes: pickled beef, ham cures, cream candy, cucumber pickles (eight variations), Brunswick stew, fried oyster pie and salad, rice bread, pecan candy, salt-rising yeast, fruit cake, black cake, railroad cake, horse “cholick” remedy, and whitewash recipes, among others.

Dated entries span 1876–1900, with one faint notation from 1788 on the endpaper—now nearly illegible. Among the textual additions is a hand-copied version of George Linnaeus Banks’ poem “What I Live For” (dated January 18, 1877), its moral call for justice strikingly recorded in a women’s cookbook of the Reconstruction South. The lyrics to “The Raggle Taggle Gypsy” also appear in manuscript form. Some handwritten recipes have been pasted in with notes such as: "Taken from Mama's Recipe Book and written by her" - signaling some of these recipes may be from the late 1700's.

This compilation likely originated within circles tied to women’s Confederate organizations, such as early chapters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, reflecting their role in shaping the “Lost Cause” narrative while preserving domestic traditions.

Condition: Professionally conserved. Textblock cleaned, repaired, and resewn; laid back into original boards with original endpapers and accompanying ephemera intact. New cloth spine added. Item #4787

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