It’s time to take a look at a pioneer-style, 1800’s Thanksgiving–just as the holiday would have been in the Home to Osceola series. Be prepared for a bit of history, lots of recipes, and a healthy dose of pioneer wisdom.
Thanksgiving and the 1880s
Thanksgiving was first proclaimed as a national holiday in 1863 as a time to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.”
That means its a holiday the character in the Home to Osceola series can celebrate! The series is set between the 1870s-80s, so Thanksgiving would have been a well established holiday by then with each family having its own traditions in place.
Hymns for a 1800’s Thanksgiving
What exactly classifies a hymn as specifically fitting for Thanksgiving? That’s my dilemma in putting this list together. So many hymns are appropriate for Thanksgiving, but below, I’ve listed just a few that the Home to Osceola characters would have been singing at the Mission Church this month:
- Rejoice, The Lord is King (Charles Wesley 1774)
- To God Be the Glory (Fanny Crosby and William Howard Doane c. 1870)
- Praise Him, Praise Him! (Fanny Crosby 1869)
- Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow (Thomas Ken 1674)
- A Mighty Fortress is Our God (Martin Luther 1529)
- Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing (Robert Robinson 1758)
- O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing (Charles Wesley 1739)
- Amazing Grace (John Newton 1779)
Pioneer Thanksgiving Recipes
Food has always been closely associated with Thanksgiving, even in the 1800s.
No matter what you’re cooking this Thanksgiving, these recipes are sure to give you some handy tips (or gratitude for easy-to-follow recipes). All come straight out of the 1800s Midwest, so it’s authentic Home to Osceola fare.
Roast Goose Dinner (And More)
As I sorted through my old books of reminisces from pioneers, I found recipes galore for all kinds of treats, but failed to find much about Thanksgiving turkeys. As an alternative, here’s a recipe for goose dinner. This one is an Osceola recipe, taken from an old book my brother discovered in my great-grandma’s house:
“Kill a fat goose and dress it. Wash it well in a dishpan of soapy water. Rinse in a milk pail of cold water. Dry it and hang it up in woodshed overnight. Early next morning mash a kettle of potatoes with cream and butter, salt, pepper, and a cup of chopped onions. Stuff the goose and sew it shut. Rub the skin with salt, pepper, and sage and put it in not too hot an oven. Dip the grease off every hour and save for a cold-on-the-lungs or to grease your boots and shoes.”
Recipe taken from the book Early Days in Polk County
But Mrs. Robert L. McNiel from Bondourant, Wyoming does have a word of advise about geese:
“I never could cook a wild goose tender and finally found out why. One of the big problems in cooking wild geese is that it is impossible for the average person to tell their ages. History shows that there have been cases where Canadian geese have lived to be 70 years old. They frequently reach an age of 25 years. Naturally, those are not going to be very tender, on the other hand, you might get one that is only a year or 2 old, and edible.
And some mallard ducks have proved to be 8 years old. So naturally it takes longer cooking old birds and they never can be served rare or medium.”
From the book, Cooking in Wyoming. (Naturally, that must be all she believes you need to know about cooking geese, because that’s the entire recipe from the entry “Wild Geese.”
1800’s Thanksgiving Pumpkin Pie
A subtitle on this recipe says “Mr. and Mrs. J.J. Bleshe came to Crook County in 1887. This was one of the recipes she brought with her.”
1 cup pumpkin
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Pinch salt
Butter, the size of egg
1/2 cup thick cream
Dash ginger
Mix well and heat before putting in unbaked crust. Bake until knife inserted comes out clean.
Bernice Chatfield, Sundance, Wyoming
From Cooking in Wyoming
Webster Cake
This recipe is quoted in all its rambling glory, but sadly, it never explains where the “Webster” part of the cake comes from. Maybe because you’ll need Webster’s dictionary for a couple of the words in the recipe?
This cake calls for a gill of milk. This measurement is as follows:
8 ounces = 2 gills
4 ounces = 1 gill (1/2 cup)
Webster cake is a very old southern cake that has been made through many generations at Thanksgiving and Christmas time. It is, however, being forgotten and this recipe is a reminder of how good a thing is being let slip into oblivion. To make the cake, take 1 cup of butter, 3/4 cup molasses, 1 gill of milk, 3/4 cup of sugar, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon soda, 3 cups flour, 1/2 pound citron, 1 1/2 cups raisins and currants and spices to taste, 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon.
Mrs. Paul Sherard, Rozet, Wyoming
From Cooking in Wyoming
Advice for the Clean Up
After all the cooking is done and only the cleaning remains to be done, the pioneer chefs have tips for even this:
- “Save the water in which potatoes have been boiled and use it for washing silver. It will make spoons and forks bright and remove stains.”
- “Rinse all dishes having eggs, flour, or milk first in cold water, then wash in hot water.”
- “Go put on clean dress, smooth hair with side combs, brew cup of tee, set and rest and rock a spell and count blessins.”
A Blessing for the Dinner Table
“God bless us all and make us able,
To eat this stuff what’s on the table.”
Mrs. Charles Carey from Cheyenne
Final Words of Wisdom from a Pioneer Woman
Here are some final words of deep wisdom that I found at the back of a pioneer cookbook. Mrs. Cecil Bon gave this advice to her daughter on her wedding day:
“A man may love a woman though he hates her cooking. But somehow, no man can love a woman’s cooking without feeling some sort of tenderness toward her.”
I don’t know about you, but I can definitely see the truth in that. If there’s anything the men in my family love, it’s food and lots of it. It makes sense that some of the sentiment would transfer to the cook.
May all your Thanksgiving treats turn out well and all your family be gathered around the table just as families did long ago. Happy Thanksgiving!