Local Cookbooks Have Always Been Popular

Title page from The Ladies of Brevard
Baptist Church cookbook, published circa 1930.

Culinary arts have boomed in popularity over the last several years.  Whether watching the latest cooking program on television; reading popular fiction, such as Diane Mott Davidson’s culinary mysteries; browsing through cookbooks; or looking for recipes online people enjoy food and cooking.

A look at the 641.5 section in the Local History Room at the Library indicates that the popularity of cooking and recipe collecting is not new.  The collection includes more than 50 cookbooks created by local groups.

The oldest local cookbook in this collection is “Brevard Cook Book” edited by The Ladies of Brevard Baptist Church.  The book is undated, however advertisements within it indicate it was published between 1924 and 1931.

Recipes in this early cook book include breads, cakes, candies, deserts, egg & cheese dishes, fritters, meats, pickled & preserved foods, pies & custards, puddings, salads, sandwiches, soups, and vegetables.  The Pork Cake and Butterfly Salad recipes here are from “Brevard Cook Book.”

Pork Cake—Two pounds fat pork, chopped fine; one pound raisins, chopped fine; one and one-half pounds English walnuts, chopped fine; seven cups flour; one pint black coffee; four cups brown sugar; one spoon cinnamon; one spoon allspice; one spoon soda.  Mix pork, raisins, nuts, then add coffee; mix thoroughly.  Stir in flour to which the spice and soda has been added.  Bake in moderate oven four hours.  Mrs. S. F. Allison.

Butterfly Salad—Split banana lengthwise and cut in half.  Place on a crisp lettuce leaf; on each side, place a half ring of sliced pineapple, to form the butterfly wings.  Garnish with fruits or cherries.  Mrs. Leonard Simpson.

The Wesleyan Methodist Church published,
"What's Cookin' in Brevard, North Carolina" in 1948.

There are currently a total of 21 cook books from churches throughout the county in the Local History Room.   The most from one congregation is three from Brevard-Davidson River Presbyterian Church, published in 1947, 1950, and 2002.   There are two from First United Methodist and one from Rosman United Methodist.  There are cookbooks from the Wesleyan Methodist Church, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Sacred Heart Catholic Church and from eleven different Baptist churches in Transylvania County.

Household tips and recipes for cleaning products, first aid, and personnel products are also included in many of these books.

In 1951 Calvary Baptist Church published “Your Household Guide” which goes beyond baking, cooking and canning to include tips for gardening, arranging flowers, sewing, painting, and doing laundry.  In addition it lists postal rates, state capitals, U.S. Presidents, holidays and much more.

Brevard-Davidson River Presbyterian Church's 1950 cookbook.

Next week Picturing the Past will feature cook books from other groups and organizations within the community, including the “Balsam Grove Community Development Club Cook Book” published in 1959.  If you have cook books published by a Transylvania County church or organization that you would like to donated please contact Marcy.

Photographs and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library.  Visit the NC Room during regular library hours (Monday-Friday) to learn more about our history and see additional photographs.  For more information, comments or suggestions contact Marcy at marcy.thompson@transylvaniacounty.org or 828-884-3151 X242.

Early Doctors Resided on West Probart

This week Picturing the Past is returning to West Probart Street for a look at the homes of two of Brevard’s early doctors, Dr. Mitchell King and Dr. Charles Hunt, located on the north side of the street beyond Railroad Avenue.

Home of Dr. Mitchell and Essie King.

Mitchell Malachi King was born in what is today Transylvania County in 1852 to Samuel and Charlotte King.  He attended medical school in Louisville, Kentucky and Atlanta, Georgia, graduating in 1878.  His first practice was in Pickens County, South Carolina.  Within a few years King had married and moved back to Brevard.  The Kings, along with their only son, lived in a small one-story cottage on West Probart. 

Later home of Dr. Mitchell and Cordelia King.

After Essie King’s death Dr. King remarried.  Mitchell and Cordelia King had three more children and soon built a larger home next door to the cottage.  This house is a two-story Victorian with a two-tier wrap porch on the front and east sides.  The home had a mix of exterior finishes including weather-board siding, beaded-board gable-end sheathing, patterned wood shingles, stained-glass windows, and decorative corner brackets.

Dr. King’s father, and later his brother, operated King’s Mill.  Dr. King, his brothers and some cousins also ran a gold mine on King’s Creek in the early 1900s.  Dr. King died on March 4, 1923.

Postcard of Hunt Cottages on West Probart Street.

Charles Washington Hunt was born in Wake County in 1854.  He graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Baltimore in 1880 and soon came to Brevard.  For a short time he practiced medicine in Asheville and Greenville, SC before settling permanently in Brevard.  

In addition to being a doctor, Dr. Hunt was a strong promoter of Transylvania County as a destination for summer residents and tourists.

The Hunt Cottages, operated by Hunt’s wife Henrietta, were popular with summer visitors.  Early tourism brochures advertised the Hunt Cottages as being conveniently located, just 5 minutes’ walk from the depot and downtown.  A large lawn with walkways and shade-trees surrounded the modern cottages, which had electricity and telephones.  Fresh home-grown vegetables, poultry, eggs, butter and milk were included at meals.  The Hunt Cottages could accommodate about 50 guests.  Rates were $7-10 per week.

Dr. Hunt was also responsible for the first Pisgah National Forest entrance gate which was constructed as a memorial to Transylvania’s World War I soldiers.  Dr. Hunt died on July 20, 1924.

Numerous other cottages were located along the west end of Probart Street and its side streets.  In contrast to the homes on the east end, which were larger and mainly inhabited by year-round residents, most of these houses were small and served as summer residences.

Photographs and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library.  Visit the NC Room during regular library hours (Monday-Friday) to learn more about our history and see additional photographs.  For more information, comments or suggestions contact Marcy at marcy.thompson@transylvaniacounty.org or 828-884-3151 X242.

Gash Worked For Prestigious Metropolitan Museum Of Art

Margaret Avery Gash was born to Thomas Lenoir and Dovie Ann Deaver Gash near Brevard in 1873. The Gash and Deaver families were instrumental in the early development of Transylvania County of Brevard. Her father, a Confederate Veteran, served as mayor of Brevard and later represented the area in the North Carolina Legislature.

Margaret claimed to be the second person to enroll in what is now UNCG. According to family lore she was "sitting on the steps" when the doors opened.  She was dismayed to learn that the first student had enrolled by mail which she didn't think was an appropriate way to enroll.  

She would go on to have a very successful career in library science as Chief Cataloguer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Museum policy mandated retirement after 35 years of employment. Annually, for five years, Miss Gash received a special request from the Board of Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to work an additional year. She politely declined the fifth request.

Margaret Gash returned to her childhood home, Underhill, where she lived with her two brothers (Robert L. Gash and Will D. Gash), her sister (Annie Jean Gash), and her nephew (Robert T. “Bob” Gash).  She is buried with her parents, siblings, and generations of forebears at the Davidson River Cemetery. 

She also served as mentor in the library world to her younger sister, Annie Jean Gash, who was the librarian of Brevard's old UDC Library.    From 1912 until her she retired in 1960 Miss Annie Jean Gash worked at the library. 

Emory Gash, great-nephew of the Gash sisters, provided the information above.

Margaret Gash at work, Metropolitan Museum of Art, early 1940s.
Photo courtesy of UNCG University Archives.

During National Library Week (April 10-16, 2016) the following story, “Margaret Gash (Class of 1895): Chief Cataloguer, Metropolitan Museum of Art” written by Scott Hinshaw is being reprinted.  It was originally published on the blog Spartan Stories, uncghistory.blogspot.com, a product of the UNCG University Archives.  Hinshaw is an archivist in the University Libraries at UNCG.

This week's story focuses on an early graduate of the North Carolina State Normal and Industrial School (now UNCG), Ms. Margaret Gash. Margaret Avery Gash of Pisgah Forest, North Carolina, was one of State Normal's earliest graduates, having earned her degree in 1895. According to the Graduation Exercises booklet from 1895, her graduate thesis was titled, "The Development of Woman's Educational Ideals." Indeed, Ms. Gash tried to form a career in teaching after graduating from the State Normal, but she did not find much success in her first career choice. In an article published in the 1943 edition of Alumnae News, Gash states humbly, "...the teaching profession, for some reason unknown to me, seemed perfectly able to dispense with my services." Fortunately for Ms. Gash, "the Library world to which I next turned was kinder." After she left the teaching profession, she attended Pratt Institute Library School in Brooklyn, New York and gained her Certificate in 1900. At some point she also attended Melvil Dewey's Albany Library School. If that name sounds familiar, it's because he's the inventor of the Dewey Decimal System! Thereafter she worked in public libraries until she got a job offer at an institution at which she would serve for the rest of her career.

Ms. Gash began working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1906. She was tasked with organizing, cataloging, and indexing a mountain of correspondence, reports, minute books, wills, and contracts connected both with the history of the institution and its collections of art. She helped to devise a system of cataloging objects which would prove helpful to the museum in the same way a catalog of books is to a library. This "experiment" as Gash called it, began with her working on it part time, then full time, then she gained an assistant, and then finally she ended up with a group of five to six assistants working under her. With the years, her experience grew, and her final title when she retired was Chief Cataloguer. Ms. Gash retired in 1945, having worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 39 years.

Ms. Gash's work has been cited in articles on librarianship and museum collections, ranging in date from 1970 to 2014. The work she performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was part of a ground-breaking effort to systematically record holdings and information related to objects in museum-like settings. All this occurred at a time when modern library science was in its early years, as Melvil Dewey had opened the first library science school in America at Columbia University in 1887. Margaret Avery Gash passed away on September 9, 1950 in Pisgah Forest, North Carolina.

Photographs and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library.  Visit the NC Room during regular library hours (Monday-Friday) to learn more about our history and see additional photographs.  For more information, comments or suggestions contact Marcy at marcy.thompson@transylvaniacounty.org or 828-884-3151 X242.

Kilpatrick's Were Leading Brevard Builders

Branson’s North Carolina Business Directory, 1896 lists Kilpatrick Brothers Building in Brevard.  Chester Columbus and Robert Porter Kilpatrick were sons of Benjamin and Mary Kilpatrick.  Both worked in the construction business.  C.C. Kilpatrick also operated Kilpatrick Funeral Home for over 40 years and served as Transylvania County Sheriff for three 2-year terms.

Robert Kilpatrick’s obituary states that he “built a majority of the business buildings of Brevard and hundreds of homes.”  Several of the large homes on West Probart Street, including his own, were constructed by Kilpatrick.

Kilpatrick House

Bob and Alie Kilpatrick’s two-story brick home was built around 1905 on the north side of the street where Oaklawn Avenue meets West Probart.  The full front porch was supported by heavy square columns of brick.  Both the house and the porch had a low hip roof with deep eaves.  The home is no longer standing.

Other Probart Street homes built by Kilpatrick include the Mack Allison House, the Miller-McMahan House and the Rogers House.

Mack Allison House

The Allison and Miller-McMahan houses were originally quite similar to each other and to Kilpatrick’s home.  A 1910 Brevard Board of Trade brochure includes photographs of the two homes.  The Allison house was built on speculation and originally owned by R.H. Zachary.  The exterior had wood shingle siding which has been replaced by vinyl except on the gables.

Kilpatrick built a home for J.A. Miller, founder of Camp Transylvania for Boys, around the same time.  In the 1930s the McMahans significantly altered the original appearance of the house by replacing the one-story porch with a large two-story portico featuring fluted columns and pilasters.  The exterior was pebbledash on the first floor and wood shingle on the upper level.  The front façade is all pebbledash today.

Miller-McMahan House

The Miller-McMahan House and the Mack Allison House are on the north side of the street, just east of where Kilpatrick’s home was located.

The Rogers house, located further down Probart Street is completely different in style.  It was constructed in 1913 from a sketch drawn by the property owner, Ida Ellerby Rogers of Bennettsville, South Carolina provided Kilpatrick.  The two-and-one-half story clapboard "summer house" is much larger than traditional summer homes.    It has a large front gable dormer above a polygonal bay window.

Rogers House

Photographs and information for this column are provided by the Rowell Bosse North Carolina Room, Transylvania County Library.  Visit the NC Room during regular library hours (Monday-Friday) to learn more about our history and see additional photographs.  For more information, comments or suggestions contact Marcy at marcy.thompson@
transylvaniacounty.org or 828-884-3151 X242.