Place of Origin

United States ➔ Mississippi

Date of Composition

1850s-1880s and 1880s-1890s

Description

The library’s collection of the Minor Family Papers includes two recipe books, one dated 1850s-1880s, and one dated 1880s-1890s by the library. The library record describes both books as “fragments.” The Minor family were wealthy planters who lived in the vicinity of Natchez, Mississippi. The recipe books may have been compiled within the family of John Duncan Minor (1831-1869), a third generation descendant of the Minor family, and his wife Katherine (Kate) Surget Minor (1834-1926). John Minor’s decision to support the Union cause adversely affected the family’s economic and social standing during and after the Civil War. However, the family's plantation holdings remained more or less intact, and Kate Minor, who had a great deal of family wealth of her own, regained much of the Minor family’s former wealth and status by the 1880s. John and Kate Minor had five children, three of whom lived into adulthood.