Manuscript Location

Colorado College, Tutt Library, Special Collections

Place of Origin

United States ➔ Massachusetts ➔ Amherst

Date of Composition

ca. 1828

Description

This collection consists of three cookbooks written in notebooks measuring approximately 4 X 6 inches. The three cookbooks contain approximately 200 recipes written on 180 pages altogether. The front pastedown of one of the books is inscribed: D. W. Vinal 1828. She was Deborah Waterman Vinal (ca. 1807-1844). Around 1828, she married, Nathan Welby Fiske (1798-1847), a Unitarian minister and a professor at Amherst College. The couple had four children, two sons who died soon after birth, and two daughters, Helen (1830-1885) and Ann (1835-1915). Helen became the poet, author, and American Indian rights activist Helen Hunt Jackson, two of whose works, the polemic Century of Dishonor (1881) and the novel Ramona (1884), are still widely read today. 

The cookbooks are part of the Helen Hunt Jackson papers, which were donated to Colorado College by descendants of William Sharpless Jackson, Helen Hunt Jackson's second husband, who was a resident of Colorado Springs.