History Burgoo

Are you having ham, roast beef or turkey this Easter?

Well, it is that time of year again when the KHS staff find themselves looking at the atomic bunny picture in the Digital Collections and giggling.  This year we decided to look for other amusing images in the "DC" and came across the one below.  It made us wonder what culinary masterpieces will be gracing tables this weekend at homes across the state?

 

Does your family have Easter dinner traditions?  Ham and asparagus?  Fiddlefern salad?  Lamb with mint sauce?

 

And then there is the weather.  Seriously, hail, floods, tornadoes and more, and that was just last night!  Spring is supposed to be changeable but still!  Everyone has a memory of their favorite Easter hat or dress or suit.  As staff gathered at the reference desk today we were sharing memories of Easter outfits. 

 

I remember that my mother always bought my dress to be a size too big, so I could wear long underwear if the temperature was under 30 degrees.  And how about the year the Easter Egg hunt that got cancelled because we could not find ANY Easter candy due to the 6 inches of snow on the ground. 

 

Well, before you know it, it will be summer and we will be complaining about the heat and the drought.   In the meantime, family gatherings provide the perfect opportunity to get the family to tell stories about their favorite holiday memories and traditions. 

 --Louise Jones

Images:

Fred Trosch, butcher in the Willard Rouse Jillson Photo Collection, 1987PH08

Family gathering at dinner time, Frankfort, Ky. From the Community Memories: A Glimpse of African American Life in Frankfort, Ky., 1995PH02, contributed by Clara E. Hogan.

Children in Easter outfits. From the Ohio River Portrait Project, 1990PH02, contributed by John Strattan.

Easter Egg hunt for children and faculty at Paducah Community College., date ca. 1970.  From the Ohio River Portrait Project, 1990PH02, contributed by John E.L. Robertson.

 

Turkey and Tradition

 

Looking outside recently, the fact that autumn is here has hit me like a ton of bricks.  Even if all the stores are already putting out Christmas merchandise, I’m just now gearing up for Thanksgiving!  This of course got me to thinking about what my family would do this year, and the traditions that make up my holiday, as odd as they are. 

Supposedly, according to one of folklore’s big wigs, Roger Abrahams, the importance of Thanksgiving is the turkey meal and the accoutrements.  In this case, it’s quantity that matters.  Now, I can remember families talking about their turkey dinners, and goodness knows I’ve seen countless movies where the meal is sacrosanct.  By all that makes that family, there will be a turkey on that table Thanksgiving day, and they will sit down as a family, even if Aunt Marge has to drag Uncle Bill away from the game so that the family can have one meal together.  I’m pretty certain that everyone has a story like this, or at least can relate to it.

But what about those of us with non-traditional traditions?  Does it mean that our Thanksgivings are somehow less because we don’t have a turkey, big family gathering, or even celebrate on Thanksgiving?  As a folklorist and a non-traditional celebrant, I’d have to answer with a resounding NO!  It wasn’t until I was an adult that we even routinely celebrated Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Day, as my army father was often deployed during this time when I was a child.  Those occasions when he was home for the holiday, we often ate at the Army post’s mess hall (believe it or not, they have a particularly good spread at Thanksgiving).  I have to say, I enjoyed those occasions far more than the one time I was forced into going to my grandparent’s house and eating brussels sprouts.  I recently read an article on Slate about someone else who had unique Thanksgiving traditions, mainly eating dinner at her parents’ second home, the local country club. The holiday is based on the theme of thankfulness for a bountiful autumn harvest and not just pilgrims, so I really don’t think the turkey is that important beyond a symbol.

What makes our traditions important is that we can’t imagine our world without them, be it always having jellied cranberries on Thanksgiving, or eating with other soldiers and their families at a mess hall.  So, what are some Thanksgiving traditions that you can’t live without?

Enjoy your turkey, tofurkey or curry next Thursday,

-Alisha Martin

Image from the Kentucky Historical Society: http://205.204.134.47:2005/u?/ORP,2774, Thanksgiving dinner at Bernard Phillip's home, 1978

Kentucky Afar

  
The last time I did a blog, we talked about how the Kentucky Folklife Program’s mission was to help conserve Kentucky’s traditional cultures.  We spoke of how conservation in this sense means to encourage the continuity of traditions through research, public presentations, and community scholar trainings.  Grants like our Apprenticeship awards and the efforts of interested people throughout the state who spend time and money help spread the word about their local folklife.  We talked at length about the extraordinary efforts of Dr.  Middleton to conserve the Mammoth Cave basketmaking traditions in the region of Hart County.

Sometimes the traditions of Kentucky find homes outside of the Commonwealth and these too need to be conserved.  The influence of migrants from Kentucky can be seen throughout the nation but especially in the industrial cities a little ways north of us.  Dayton, Ohio and the neighborhoods of south Chicago are known for their bluegrass music offerings.  A few years ago while traveling along Highway 23 in Michigan I passed  a suburb of Detroit that the locals called “Little Kentucky” because of the large population of former Kentucky Residents who followed  others in their family to take auto industry jobs in the region.  These transplanted Kentuckians often form new communities where they share similar worldviews, aesthetics for art forms like music, crafts, and food, traditions, and culture.  It is important for us to document and share the stories of these communities.  With travel budgets being what they are, the prospect of my staff traveling to these communities is remote, but it seems that there are always other ways to skin a cat.

Early this summer a friend of the Kentucky Historical Society, Pat Adkins from Owen County stopped by to talk about a little town in Wisconsin where a relative of hers lived.  It seems that Crandon, Wisconsin made a concerted effort in the early 1900s to recruit residents of Eastern Kentucky to come up and work in the lumber industry of northern Wisconsin.  Thousands of Kentuckians made the trip, worked very hard and stayed.  Pat said that you can hardly walk the streets of Crandon without bumping in to somebody with ties to Kentucky.  She says the accent is a little different, but after a few words you can still tell they are from Kentucky.  Pat said that she would be visiting her relatives this summer around the time of Crandon’s annual “Kentuck Day” festival, a celebration of the town’s Kentucky roots. 

Well it didn’t take long for me to convince her to do some documenting for us.  I gave her a quick overview of how folklorists conduct ethnographic observations. I described how we immerse in a culture events by objectively watching the activities, describing the context of the action and conducting interviews with participants.  A former instructor described it as pretending you were from another planet and your job is to describe to the people (beings) back home the new and wondrous events you were witnessing.  It is sometimes hard to do if you are a insider to the event because you have to pull yourself back and look at things from an outsiders perspective.  Pat was going to be an outsider and her natural curiosity about folklife prepared her well for the task.  At least this is what I told her and she bought it and vowed to take her camera, note pad and enthusiasm to her trip to Crandon.

Well, mission accomplished.  She dropped by last week with an armful of pictures, books, pamphlets, posters (picture above) and notes on her experiences.  She told me about the friendly Kentucky expatriates who welcomed her to the town, accompanied her to the local historical society and  guided her to  the many events surrounding Kentuck Days.   She showed me reprints of the original recruiting books used in the early 1900s to lure Kentuckians to the area.  We looked through recent history books about the county that talked about the cultural contributions of these settlers to the region.  Finally she described some of the events of the annual festival and how it still connects to the community.  I asked her to write up her observations for us to include in our growing files about this Crandon and other similar communities and I will follow up by recording her observation for the collection.  Maybe we can present them in a future blog. The Folklife Program depends on the help of people like Pat Akins who help to conserve the cultural traditions of the Commomwealth.

If you know about any of these Kentucky Afar communities, I would be very interested in talking with you.  Please respond to this blog or give us a call at 502-564-1792.

-Bob Gates

Read Any New Cookery Books Lately?

KHS Collection: 1987ph5.29083.1 Jane Josephine Breent Cusick at iron cook stove, cooking. 1950

At long last, the Library of Congress has finally decided to take a giant leap of faith and change the subject heading Cookery to Cooking. Catalogers throughout the world have been celebrating and partying for the past 2 months following this bold decision by the Library of Congress. After all, we’ve only been waiting over one hundred years for this change to take place.  Since cookbooks are one of the top 5 requested books (which also curiously include diet books), it has been a particular thorn in our side. No wonder the public thinks libraries (and librarians) are strange, when we use such arcane terms.  At the Ky. Historical Society, even though we don’t generally have the latest hot cookbooks, we nonetheless have a diverse collection of regional and historical cookbooks.  Among them are:

The American Frugal Housewife: dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy, by Lydia Child ( Reprint of 1832 ed.)
The Blue Ribbon Cook Book, by Jennie Benedict (1904)
Cissy Gregg’s Cookbook (1959)
Civil War Recipes: receipts from the pages of Godey’s Lady’s book (1999)
Common Sense in the Household: a manual of practical housewifery (1899)
Cooking and Sewing Competition for Woodford County Girls, by the woman’s Home Welfare Association of Woodford County, Kentucky (1917)
The Epicure’s Companion, by Edward and Lorna Bunyard (1937)
Holly Hill Inn Cookbook, by Rex Lyons (1988)

Come to our library and search our collections. You just might find a favorite new recipe in some of our classic cookbooks.

- Shirley Ackerman

Community Scholars: Out and About

One of the programs here with the Folklife Program has been that of our Community Scholars.  Our Scholars tend to do some very interesting projects and report back to us on what they’ve found.  Recently Carol Shutt, one of our Scholars, did research on the funerary traditions of Harlan County.  Take a look at what her project entailed: 

Death and the dying process are tough subjects for many people to deal with.  As a nurse, later as a social worker and finally as the instructor of a university class on  Death, Dying and Bereavement, I’ve had a lot of experience with death.  The classes and students I taught educated me even more than my medical professional careers.

I learned from my students that many different funeral traditions exist in Appalachia.  I also learned that people continue to believe “everybody does it the same way.”  The students shared stories of a wide variety of customs practiced in their families and communities.  What was fascinating to me was that they all thought everyone had the same traditions.  Even people in the same county had vastly different customs and didn’t realize it.

The end result of my education from my students was a Community Scholar/Oral History Commission project researching the funerary traditions of Harlan County.  I chose to do my research in Harlan County because I believed that some of the long-standing traditions were still carried out there.  At one time, the county also had people from more than 30 different countries among its residents, recruited to work in the coal mines.  I hoped that some of the international traditions would still be carried on by the descendants of these earlier immigrants.

Wakes, digging graves, funerals themselves, burial rituals, music, food, art, flowers, memorials, superstitions and many other traditions were discussed with people from the area.  Everyone today says the customs are done out of respect but occasionally I would find someone who would share with me the reason the traditions began in the first place.

It became obvious that geography had a great deal to do with how our customs developed.  Indeed, Harlan County is divided by mountain ranges, water sheds and rivers that all influence customs.  As you move outward from the city, the older customs are more likely to be found. The economic situation and the season of the year also play a part in how things are handled.

Funeral and burial traditions in other parts of the South — New Orleans, LA; Winston-Salem and Cherokee, NC; Savannah, GA; and Cades Cove, TN; to name a few — show that every one has their own traditions.  Some are similar, others are not.  Cookbooks exist with area funeral information and recipes for funeral food.  Religious beliefs lead to different types of funerals.  Ethnicity brings special customs for members of those ethnic groups.  Membership in the military or in fraternal orders brings traditions related to those memberships.  Technology has made a great difference in our customs.  Even terrorism has brought changes to old ways of doing things.

Funerals and cemeteries are fascinating collections of history and give vast amounts of insight into human nature.  Some people believe that exploring a cemetery is disrespectful to the dead.  My feeling is that monuments are placed on graves so that others will know about your special loved one.  An understanding of death and dying traditions helps us to appreciate and respect the people whose graves we visit and helps us to understand why others do what they do, so that we may remain respectful of everyone’s traditions.

Shut has created an exhibit to accompany her project, and it is available for touring at your facility.  Please contact her at cashutt@earthlink.net to learn more.  We should have several more Community Scholars with stories to tell about their projects, so check back from time to time to see what they’ve been up to!

-Alisha Martin

Image 1: Flowers made a crepe paper and wax when fresh flowers were not available, courtesy of Chris Jones.
Image 2: "Someone still remembers," courtesy of Carol Shutt.
Image 3: Courtesy of Northcutt and Son Home for Funerals.

All Your Burgoo are Belong to Us*

 
Above: 2005 Kentucky Folklife Festival visitors gaze upon a hot kettle of bubbling burgoo.

Hello, I'm Mark Brown with the Kentucky Folklife Program, and this is my first History Burgoo blog post.  My friend and colleague Sarah Milligan suggested that someone write something about burgoo, the traditional stew for which this blog is named.  I accepted the opportunity to share some experiences, encounters, and thoughts related to burgoo.

Lest this post become a large block of uninterrupted text, here is a list of some facts about burgoo that I have learned while working as a folklorist in Kentucky: 

• No one is certain about the origins of the word burgoo.
• When saying the word, some people place emphasis on the first syllable, “bur-goo,” while others say “bur-goo.”
• Burgoo is almost exclusively a Kentucky food. It is similar in some ways to Brunswick Stew found elsewhere in the southern U.S.
• Early burgoo recipes called for whatever ingredients were available. Meats included beef, pork, and chicken as well as wild game like deer, possum, and squirrel. Vegetables like corn, beans, and potatoes were added, along with various seasonings and thickening agents.
• Today, many burgoo-makers keep their recipes secret, but most burgoos made for the public do not include wild game anymore.
• Burgoo is cooked for long periods of time, often overnight, and it is considered ready to eat only after the stirring stick can be released to stand on its own in the pot.
• Historically, burgoo was linked to celebrations like abundant harvest and successful hunt. Still a celebratory food, today burgoo is sold at many social, political, charitable, and religious gatherings.

State folklorist Bob Gates asserts that Everyone Likes Food, especially folklorists.  Foodways is a major topic of study by folklorists and anthropologists because it is something every group of people, or folk group, has.  Almost every human consumes some type of food.  Foodways includes not only ingredients and recipes, but the context surrounding foods, which includes when, where, why, how, for whom, and by whom food is prepared and eaten. 

One way to learn about someone’s cultural background, aesthetics, and identity is to ask about food.  Sometimes food questions trigger fervent responses that reflect deep-seated beliefs.  Here is an example:  sweet cornbread – manna from heaven, or impious abomination? 

When engaged in such lively conversations, most folklorists try to adhere to an ethic of cultural relativism, meaning no culture is superior or inferior to another.  We are trained to recognize our own beliefs and practices, and be aware of how they affect our work. 

Now is a good time to disclose that I’ve been a vegetarian since 1996.  Before that time, though, I ate burgoo on at least two occasions at the famous Moonlite Bar-B-Q Inn in Owensboro, and I remember it clearly.  Its unique aroma, color, texture, and flavor made a lasting impression.  Moonlite’s website includes their version of the Burgoo Soup Story and a Burgoo Recipe.

Besides Moonlite, burgoo is available in many other Kentucky locations.  Downtown Lawrenceburg, Kentucky is home to the Anderson County Burgoo Festival.  Every year in late September, this festival is a popular pilgrimage to what some recognize as “the burgoo capital of the world.”  I attended one evening in 2004 when vendors, shocked to have underestimated the demand, were entirely sold out of burgoo. 

The Kentucky Folklife Program has documented several burgoo specialists, and presented some of them at the Kentucky Folklife Festival.  These include Russ Kennedy of Frankfort, David New of Owenton, and the green-and-yellow-clad burgoo team from St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church in Owensboro. 

In 2005, filmmaker Stan Woodward received a Kentucky Arts Council Folk Arts Project grant to support research on his film Burgoo! which aired on KET.  Woodward teamed up with folklorist Saddler Taylor to present an exciting exploration of burgoo and the culture surrounding it, including ingredients, implements, techniques, differences in burgoos made in western and central Kentucky, and enlightening interviews with burgoo masters. 

Whether you love burgoo or can’t stand being near it, I hope you have enjoyed reading about this quintessential Kentucky food phenomenon.  These days, I don’t miss eating burgoo or any other carnivore delights, but I love vegetarian foods that are supposed to taste like meat (not-dogs, tofurkey, facon, etc.).  What to you think, readers?  Is there a market for vegetarian burgoo?  If so, by what clever name would it be known?

* The post title is not a typo, but a reference to the classic Internet meme “All your base are belong to us.”