Manuscript Location

Place of Origin

Date of Composition

Description

This small book contains approximately 75 handwritten pages of culinary recipes, including fruitcake and other cakes, gingerbread, puddings, custards, and yeast. Medical recipes clipped from newspapers have been pasted onto six additional pages and the inside front and back covers.

Helen Ledyard Lincklaen, daughter of Major Benjamin and Catherine Forman Ledyard, was born in 1777 in Middletown Point, New Jersey.  In 1797, she married John Lincklaen, a Holland Land Company land agent and the founder of the town of Cazenovia, New York.  After a devastating fire destroyed the couple’s home and the majority of their belongings in 1806, they built an estate that came to be known as Lorenzo, in 1807. Lorenzo was occupied by descendants of the original family until 1968, when the family sold it to New York State and donated its contents, including furnishings, paintings, decorative arts, books, and manuscripts. Today it is operated as Lorenzo State Historic Site.