Manuscript Location

Michigan State University Libraries, Special Collections

Place of Origin

United States ➔ Maryland

Date of Composition

circa 1853-1870

Description

This cookbook, which comprises approximately 74 written pages, seems to have been written by Alice (Alie) Austen McMurran and one of her daughters, Caroline (Carrie) or Alice (Alie).  Alie Austen, a Baltimore belle, married John McMurren, Jr. in 1856 and moved with her husband to Riverside, a plantation in Natchez, Mississippi, that was owned by her father-in-law, John T. McMurran, Sr. (1801-1866). A lawyer and a state senator as well as a wealthy planter, McMurran, Sr. subsequently lived with his wife, the former Mary Louise Turner, in Melrose, a Greek Revival mansion in Natchez that he built around 1845. (The house is now a National Historic Landmark.) McMurran sold Melrose in 1865, a year before he died; his wife died in 1891.
 
While John McMurran, Jr. was serving in the Civil War, Alie Austen McMurran moved with their two daughters from Natchez to her family home, Filston Farm, in Maryland. Most of the recipes in this book appear to have originated at two unincorporated places in northern Maryland, Old Fields and Glencoe, the latter the location of Filston Farm. These recipes, some dated 1862-1863, seem to have been written by Alie Austen McMurran and include "Rebel Sugar Cake" (page 23), "Rebel Wine" (pages 24 and 58), and "Rebel Toilette Soap" (page 31). An additional recipe, marked as handed down from the writer’s 'grandmother who lived at Melrose,’ was presumably written by one of the McMurran daughters and originated with Mary Louise Turner McMurran.
 
According to a 2002 article in the Natchez Democrat, John McMurran Jr. switched allegiances during the Civil War, first serving with a southern regiment, and later with the federal war department in Washington, D. C. After the war, Alie Austen McMurran presented herself as a widow, although her husband was still living and corresponded both with his wife and his mother. Where John McMurran Jr. lived after the war and when he died are unknown. Alie Austen McMurran died in 1899. The McMurran-Austen family papers as well as a journal kept by Alie Austen McMurran from 1856 to 1879 are at the library of Louisiana State University.