Sprigged & Spotted

Tag: Series

  • What is Apple Butter? Part 2: History, Evolution, & the Making of a Beloved Pantry Staple

    What is Apple Butter? Part 2: History, Evolution, & the Making of a Beloved Pantry Staple

    If you haven’t read What is Apple Butter? Part 1, I recommend you start there.

    In Part 1, we talked about the essence of the substance, what apple butter is and how it is made. Now, it’s time to look into where apple butter came from and how it remains relevant today. No matter where you begin, I welcome you to explore with me the down-home culinary delight that is apple butter.

    History of Apple Butter

    Where Does Apple Butter Originate?

    Like American sunbonnets, the history of apple butter can be challenging to research because of the homespun nature of the product. Families, like my own, have passed down the methods mostly informally from generation to generation. But, with some effort, we can find evidence of the roots of apple butter in humble, tucked-away places.

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  • What is Apple Butter? Part 1: Ordinary Abundance & Comfort in a Jar

    What is Apple Butter? Part 1: Ordinary Abundance & Comfort in a Jar

    Apple Butter: My Family’s Beloved Historic Tradition

    I can speak with some authority on the subject of apple butter. I am part of the 5th generation (at minimum) in my family to carry on making the stuff the old fashioned way. My grandfather recorded memories of making apple butter with his grandmother in the 1930’s, and making apple butter the same way our ancestors have made it in centuries past is a prized part of my family’s culture. To me, apple butter is made gallons at a time in a copper kettle (a 2 ft or larger diameter pot) over an open fire using a 19th century style method which was conveyed by word of mouth until it was recorded on paper by my late grandmother in the 1990s.

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  • 6 Reasons Why This Historic Photo of St. Louis is Amazing [Mid-19th Century Sunbonnets, Part 3]

    6 Reasons Why This Historic Photo of St. Louis is Amazing [Mid-19th Century Sunbonnets, Part 3]

    In Part 2 of this series, I concluded that despite scarce photographic evidence, American women who participated in the movement West in the early to mid-19th century really did wear sunbonnets on a regular basis. Surviving physical examples, newspaper references, and written recollections help to paint a picture of the frequency with which sunbonnets would have been in use. While researching the topic, I came across a rare and unusual photo taken in St. Louis, Missouri in 1848, showing a large group of women and girls wearing sunbonnets. After looking at thousands of daguerreotypes in online collections, this photograph stood out as unique and compelling.

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  • Romanticized Myth or Pioneering Reality? [Mid-19th Century Sunbonnets, Part 2]

    Romanticized Myth or Pioneering Reality? [Mid-19th Century Sunbonnets, Part 2]

    If you haven’t read Part 1, start there.

    The Sunbonnet: Genuine frontier clothing, or inaccurate cliché?

    Picture in your mind a woman of the 1800’s living on the American frontier. What do you see? She is probably riding in a covered wagon or hanging laundry nearby a log cabin. This woman is likely wearing a printed cotton “calico” dress, an apron, and a sunbonnet.

    Perhaps the enduring popularity of iconic stories written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Mark Twain, including Little House on the Prairie and Huckleberry Finn, have aided in the perpetuation of this image. Surely other pop-culture touchstones, such as the TV version of “Little House” and the Oregon Trail computer game of the 1990’s, have contributed as well.

    Many generations after falling from use, the pioneer woman’s headwear has nevertheless remained intact in our imaginations. But, is this durable image of the bonnet-wearing American woman leading a life of hardship on the edge of civilization based in truth? Or, like the iconic double-horned helmet which we erroneously associate with Viking warriors, is the sunbonnet merely a persistent modern myth? I had to find out for myself whether the cliché of a pioneer woman in a sunbonnet is based in reality or fiction.

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  • Snarky skincare advice for backwoods women [Mid-19th Century Sunbonnets, Part 1]

    Snarky skincare advice for backwoods women [Mid-19th Century Sunbonnets, Part 1]

    Why did 19th century women wear their sun bonnets, or not?

    Women who don’t wear bonnets…

    • make themselves “as rough and coarse as ever [they] can, by way of being independent.”
    • look– at age 26– “like a runnet* bag that had hung six weeks in the chimney corner”
    • make themselves “too ugly for any use except scaring the crows off the corn”

    …according to a Missouri newspaper column published in 1849.

    * A rennet-bag is the fourth stomach of a ruminant (cow), a traditional natural source of enzymes for making cheese.

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