Manuscript Cookbook

During the Civil War, an eighteenth-century manuscript cookbook was found in the house of Dr. John G. Lumpkin (1830-1901) near Mechanicsville, Virginia. The manuscript may have been the work of Dr. Lumpkin’s wife’s grandmother, Eleanor Parks Shelton. Eleanor was the daughter of the William Parks (d.1750), the founder of the Virginia Gazette and printer of the first cookbook in America, an edition of Smith’s The Compleat Housewife revised to include only “such suitable Things as this Country affords.” Eleanor married John Shelton (1713-1777) and moved from Williamsburg, Virginia, to his home, Rural Plains, in Hanover County, Virginia. Her manuscript cookbook contains dozens of recipes for alcoholic beverages: from Jane Randolph’s recipes for making ale to instructions for seventeen different kinds of wine. Eleanor Parks Shelton’s inclusion of alcoholic instruction is not unique; making fermented beverages at home – ciders, wines, and ales – was a standard part of Chesapeake housewifery during the eighteenth century.