I should like to call you all by name,
But they have lost the lists...
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To all those who suffered through this with me:
I should like to call you all by name,
But they have lost the lists...
Sophie Smith Weaver,
Susannah Smith's great-granddaughter, 1993.
Only sensational or rare doings of the fairer sex were recorded in newspapers and in the annals of history. I thus turned to the diaries and letters the quiet sex left behind. While these artifacts have been largely ignored by scholars until recently, they bestow a wealth of information about the women's attitudes and conditions. Minority women, however, were usually illiterate and below the attention of society, thus closing off practically all avenues of information.
The staffs at the fine libraries above deluged me with books about the area and era and graciously permitted me access to the diaries and letters they hold. From these I gleaned the setting, the zeitgeist I needed to conjure up the lives of the women in Marble Springs.
Thanks also to the Everyday Cook Book and Cyclopedia of Practical Recipes, from which most of the recipes and hints come. This well-worn book obviously stems from the 1860-8's, but the front matter has long since disappeared, and I cannot properly acknowledge the work.