Mourning Abraham Lincoln

Massasoit House
Springfield, Mass., 1865

President Abraham Lincoln died at 7:22 A.M. on April 15, 1865—nine hours after being struck by an assassin’s bullet. The historian Jay Winik paints the scene in his book April 1865: The Month That Saved America: “‘It is all over,’ the doctors told Mary, ‘the President is no more.’ With this commenced a spontaneous ritual: a doctor laid silver half-dollars on Lincoln’s eyelids. The surgeon general slipped a sheet over his face, and the pastor of New York Presbyterian Church mouthed a soothing prayer. Fighting back his own tears, (Secretary of War Edwin) Stanton, who had in effect become acting president, extended his right arm as in a salute, raised his hat, and placed it for an instant on his head, and then in the same precise manner took it away. Gazing deeply at his fallen chief, he pronounced a private epitaph, ‘Now,’ he concluded, ‘he belongs to the angels.’”¹

Andersonville Beans

Union Ex-Prisoners of War
Lackawanna County, 1886-1890

It was startling to find “Andersonville Beans” on the menu for a Union Ex-Prisoners of War Association banquet in 1889. Andersonville, the largest Confederate prison during the Civil War, was a nightmarish site in Georgia, where nearly a third of the prisoners died of starvation or disease. A quarter of a century later, this local veteran’s group in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania had the curious idea of naming a bean dish after the infamous place.

Taft is Notified; Cincinnati Joyful

Cincinnati, 1908

On July 28, 1908, when William Howard Taft accepted the Republican nomination for president from the portico of his Federalist mansion in Cincinnati, he launched into a one hour and eleven minute speech outlining his principles. Feeling the intense heat that hot summer day, the 300-pound Taft passed over large sections of his manuscript, explaining to the crowd that they could read his entire oration in the newspapers.

Oriental Hospitalities

San Simeon, 
1940 

Newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst sent to San Francisco for the good linens and china, preparing his enormous estate called “La Cuesta Encantada” (The Enchanted Hill) for an upcoming visit of British politician Winston Churchill in 1929.  Although Churchill appreciated the gracious hospitality, he also understood the temperament of his host, writing to his wife Clementine: “Hearst was most interesting to meet, & I got (sic) like him - a grave simple child - with no doubt a nasty temper - playing with the most costly toys. A vast income always overspent: Ceaseless building & collecting not very discriminatingly works of art: two magnificent establishments, two charming wives; complete indifference to public opinion, a strong liberal & democratic outlook, a 15 million daily circulation, oriental hospitalities, extreme personal courtesy (to us at any rate)...”1

The Battle Creek Idea

The Sanitarium
Battle Creek, 1895-1903

Eating out is usually more about pleasure and diversion than subsistence. However, for those who checked into the Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan to restore their health, it was more about diversion and subsistence, for they would take little pleasure in the meals that they would be served there. Four menus dating from 1895 to 1903 show what  foods then constituted a nutritious diet, including the addition of a new food group to the menu around the turn of the last century.