Manuscript Location

Place of Origin

Date of Composition

Description

This book contains approximately 25 pages of culinary recipes, many of which were originally written on loose sheets and then pasted into the notebook.  The recipes include custards, puddings, risotto, deviled turkey legs, and timbale.  A few recipes are written on stationary bearing the Fairchilds’ New York City address, where they moved 1889, so the book may have been begun around that date. It was continued until nearly the end of Mrs. Fairchild’s life, for it contains a newspaper article pertaining to President Herbert Hoover’s tenure from 1929 to 1931.

Now operated as a Lorenzo State Historic Site, the estate known as Lorenzo was built by John Lincklaen and his wife, Helen Ledyard Lincklaen, in 1807. Upon the death of Mrs. Lincklaen, in 1847, Lorenzo was inherited by her nephew, Lincklaen Ledyard (1820-1864), who legally reversed his name to Ledyard Lincklaen. Ledyard Lincklaen and his wife, his second cousin Helen Clarissa Seymour (1818-1894), had one daughter, Helen Krumbhaar Lincklaen, who married Charles S. Fairchild in 1871 and who became the third owner of Lorenzo when her mother died in 1894. A Harvard graduate and an attorney, Charles Fairchild was elected Attorney General of New York in 1875, and served as Secretary of the Treasury under President Grover Cleveland from 1887 to 1889, after which he went into the banking and investment business in New York City. For most of their marriage, the Fairchilds summered at Lorenzo and spent their winters in Albany, Washington, DC, or New York City, depending on Mr. Fairchild’s professional positions.  The couple had no children.