Manuscript Location

Winterthur Library, Quaker and Special Collections

Place of Origin

United States ➔ Pennsylvania ➔ Philadelphia

Date of Composition

ca. 1828

Description

This book contains recipes, remedies, and other information useful for running a household. Much of the material was clipped from newspapers, but some is handwritten. The entries are grouped by letter, so that, for instance, under the letter C, one finds recipes for toasted cheese and fried veal cutlets; information on how "to preserve stair carpets" and how "to destroy cockroaches"; various recipes for household cements; and cures for chapped hands, croup, corns, cramps, and cholera.

This recipe book is part of the library's collection of three volumes that descended in the Sharpless-Townsend-Stackhouse family of Philadelphia. It was started by Mira Sharpless Townsend, in a notebook originally used to record the names of women, probably Quakers, apparently for a fund-raising event (a recipe has been pasted over of the name of the fund). A slip of paper with Mira Townsend's name has been pasted over a name originally written on a printed bookplate on the front cover of the volume. Mira later gave the recipe book to her daughter Emily Sharpless Stackhouse, whose name, "Emily S. Stackhouse," is printed on another piece of paper that is also pasted to the bookplate. The Sharpless family (also spelled Sharples) were Quakers who resided in Chester County and then in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mira Sharpless was born in 1798 to Jesse Sharpless (1759-1832), a saddle and harness maker in Philadelphia, and Joanna Townsend (1762 or 1763-1843), who were married in 1784. Mira married Samuel Townsend in 1828. Her daughter Emily was born in 1829 and later married Powell Stackhouse (1827-1900). Mira died in 1859, her daughter Emily in 1890.