Laura Kumin - All Stirred Up: Suffrage Cookbooks, Food, and the Battle for Womens Right to Vote

ALL STIRRED UP

Pegasus Books Ltd.

148 W. 37th Street, 13th Floor

New York, NY 10018

Copyright 2020 by Laura Kumin

First Pegasus Books edition August 2020

Interior design by Maria Fernandez

Front Cover Images Shutterstock Author Photograph by Julia Rochelle

Jacket Design Studio Gearbox

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-64313-452-9

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-64313-453-6

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

For three of the most important women in my life: my grandmother, Stella; my mother Selma; and my daughter, Eleanor. You have been my inspiration in this project and so much else.

1848

SUFFRAGE MILESTONES

• The first womens rights gathering in the United States, the Seneca Falls Convention, happens in New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton calls for womens equality and suffrage.

ALSO HAPPENING IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD

• The US population is approximately 22 million people.
• The Gold Rush starts.
• Wisconsin joins the Union.
• The Mexican-American War ends.
• A Canadian geologist and a British chemist invent kerosene. Before then, home lighting was generally from candles and lamps using fuels such as lard and whale oil.
• Revolutions occur throughout Europe.
• Ireland is in the midst of a potato famine (with other food being exported for profit by merchants), resulting in Irish diaspora/immigration to United States.

FOOD

• Antoine Zerega opens the first pasta factory in the US. A. Zeregas & Sons still manufactures pasta (commercially) today.

18501859

SUFFRAGE MILESTONES

• Except for 1857, womens rights conventions occur in every year of the decade.
• 1851: At an 1851 womens rights convention in Ohio, Sojourner Truth delivers her Aint I A Woman speech.

ALSO HAPPENING IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD

• 1851: Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones found the New York Times.
• 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Toms Cabin.
• 1854: The Republican Party is founded by antislavery expansion activists.
• 1859: John Brown leads the raid on Harpers Ferry.
• The Crimean War occurs (185356)Russia loses to alliance of Ottoman Empire, Britain, and France. Florence Nightingale revolutionizes battlefield medicine.

FOOD

• 1853: George Crum, an African American/Native American chef, invents potato chips. Gail Borden invents condensed milk, helping to revolutionize milk production and the dairy industry.
• 1856: The Parker House Hotel serves what it claims is the first Boston Cream Pie.

18601869

SUFFRAGE MILESTONES

• 1861: Kansas becomes a state and gives women the right to vote in school elections.
• 1866: A group forms the Equal Rights Association with Lucretia Mott as president. Its goal is universal suffrage rights, regardless of race, color, or sex, including all women and African American men. Elizabeth Cady Stanton runs for a New York congressional seat, receiving fewer than 100 votes.
• 1867: A suffrage amendment to the Kansas state constitution is defeated, the first time suffrage is presented to a direct vote.
• 1868: A Kansas senator introduces the first womens suffrage amendment to the US Constitution, proposing to base suffrage on citizenship. (An amendment must be passed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress and then goes to the states for ratification.) The amendment is tabled in the Senate. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Parker Pillsbury publish The Revolution. Its motto is Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less!
• 1869: Colorado and Wyoming territories guarantee women full voting rights. The suffrage movement splits into two factions: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony form the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), while Lucy Stone and others form the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA).

ALSO HAPPENING IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD

• 1860: Abraham Lincoln is elected president and South Carolina secedes from the Union.
• 1861: The Civil War begins.
• 1862: President Lincoln signs legislation establishing the US Department of Agriculture.
• 1863: President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.
• 1865: The Civil War ends. The Thirteenth Amendment is ratified, ending slavery. The Ku Klux Klan is formed. The New York Stock Exchange opens.
• 1866: Alfred Nobel invents dynamite.
• 1867: The United States purchases Alaska from Russia, for which the United States paid 2 cents per acre.
• 1868: The Fourteenth Amendment is ratified. It is the first time the word male appears in the Constitution. Gas lighting becomes common in cities and towns large enough to pay for the infrastructure necessary to run gas lines.
• 1869: The transcontinental railroad is completed, joining the Union and Central Pacific lines. The Suez Canal opens, linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.

FOOD

• Mrs. Beetons Book of Household Management, a popular British book about running a middle-class household, is published in 1861.
• Inventors patent several early rotary eggbeaters, the predecessors of the Dover eggbeater used to make the eggnog recipe in this book.

18701879

SUFFRAGE MILESTONES

• 1870: Utah territory guarantees women the right to vote.
• 1872: Susan B. Anthony and fifteen other women cast ballots in New York. She is arrested, tried, and found guilty of voting without having the legal right to do so.
• 1874: In Minor v. Happersett, the Supreme Court rules that citizenship does not give women the right to vote and that political rights are subject to the laws of each state.
• 1875: Michigan and Minnesota women get the vote in school board elections.
• 1876: Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage disrupt a centennial program in Philadelphia to present the vice president with a Declaration of Rights for Women.
• 1877: Colorado suffrage referendum goes down to defeat.
• 1878: A California senator introduces a federal womens suffrage amendment with the wording (known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, after its author) that eventually passed in 1920. The day after it is introduced, women testify before the Senate in support of suffrage for the first time. The amendment is referred to the Committee on Privileges and Elections, where it dies.

ALSO HAPPENING IN THE US AND THE WORLD

• 1870: Fifteenth Amendment is ratified, extending the vote to black men, but not to women. John D. Rockefeller forms Standard Oil.
• 1872: Twenty-eight years after Samuel Morse transmitted a message over the first telegraph line built in the United States, the Burlington Railroad hires Americas first female telegraph operator. The United States establishes Yellowstone as the nations first national park. Montgomery Ward begins its first catalog.