I bought Mrs. Cornelius’ book, The Young Housekeepers’ Friend, last summer while in the White Mountains. I was out and about one afternoon without the kiddo and happened into an antique shop. They had a few receipt books and I was lucky enough to snag this one. It caught my eye because of the date on the cover, 1859. It was a second edition and had been originally published in 1849. I thumbed through it to find instructions on cleaning a calf’s head, how to make toast water for upset stomach and how to create a gelatin out of a certain type of moss. This is the most dated recipe book I had in my collection up until last weekend.
I was not interested in cleaning a calf’s head, but I thought the gingerbread would be a good one for the season, so I gave it a go.
New York Ginger Snaps
1/2 lb butter
1/2 lb sugar
2.5 lbs flour
1 pint molasses
1 tsp saleratus/baking soda
2 tsp ginger ground
Heat molasses. Pour molasses over butter and sugar and stir until melted. Add saleratus and ginger. Add flour until hard dough forms (I had flour left). Form into 3 disks to make amount more manageable. Roll thin. Cut out. Bake at 350 for 12 mins. Makes 4 dozen.
The gingerbread was perfectly snappy. Ultimately, it was light and more of a molasses cookie than the hot ginger cookies I’m used to, but it was delightful and delicate. No doubt, Mrs. Cornelius knew a thing or two about cooking, and based on the quantity, was used to feeding an army. From there, I headed into the archives.
Mrs. Cornelius
What a trip.
Mrs. Mary H. Cornelius was born Mary Ann Hooker in 1796. With research, especially when researching women, the farther you go back in time, the more you have to follow the male counterpart in order to locate the woman and her story– and friend, I nearly bailed out, because Mr. Elias Cornelius was a piece of work.
Mary married this Elias in 1818. He was a clergyman. To make a long story short, he was preaching in Salem, MA at the Tabernacle Church for a while. Then he felt called to turn Natives into Christians, so with a great degree of zealousness, he set off across the US to do just that. This is after saddling Mary with 6 kids. I say that he had a great deal of zealousness because he seemed to maniacally be traveling about on this “divine mission” and then keeled over at the age of 38 on his way back into New England. Someone –I don’t care enough to remember who–wrote an AUTOBIOGRAPHY on him. The bio is all about his great Christian spirit and deeds. I didn’t read it all because of how stomach turning it was. Also, I was looking for Mary.
Guess who is hardly mentioned. Mary.
Honestly, I think it’s safe to say she was better off without him. I’m quite sure she would not agree.
So, what do we know about her? I turned to the cookbook and found a lot of the typical mores of the time. She explained the importance of housework and cheerfulness and how it can be a bastion of light in the home, but also that if you’re a disorganized housekeeper, you can create upheaval and dismay for husband and family. I nearly bailed out for the second time because that sort of domestic labor and cheerfulness is not my vibe.
If you need anyone to bitterly do housework, I’m your gal.
Anyway, as research is more my thing, I went to the newspaper and the first item I found on her was that she created a tract and won a cash prize. This was in 1827, so she was already married to Mr. Cornelius and had most of her children by then, but somehow found time to write.
A tract, in case you’re not familiar, is a literary piece, typically on religion. The title of this first Tract was called Letters on Christian Education. I found it after a bit of searching and was flummoxed that though the title matched, the author was simply written as A Mother. Luckily, the Tracts were indexed with numbers and we can see hers was 197.
The letters are written to My Dear L and signed Yours. They’re basically anonymous unless you follow the little clues. Is L Elias? I’m not sure. It certainly could be. I think the sketch of mom and kiddo is beautiful. I read the tract. It is several letters on Mrs. Cornelius’ opinion of what makes a good Christian mother and how the mother should have the biggest influence on the young child. She discusses obedience and discipline and labor and God. It’s a very clear picture of her world, which from this distance, she seemed to be a master of — and adore.
She also wrote a second tract with a more adventurous tone which was about a wayward sailor who found a religious tract while at sea and was changed to a more Godly path. This one was called Joseph Archer, The Converted Sailor. Both the Cornelius’ were big into God and believed people should be converted into Christians, obviously.
Both tracts appeared to have been published prior to Mrs. Cornelius’ Young Housekeeper’s Friend and also prior to the death of Mr. Cornelius.
Mr. Cornelius, as I mentioned, was on a mission to convert the Native Americans, specifically of the Southwest, and while he was headed back home around 1832, he grew ill, stopped in Hartford, began to fail and was dead before returning home.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Cornelius was carrying on living a very devout life in Massachusetts. At some point between her husband’s death and raising her children, she put her energy to writing her cookbook. It came out to great praise in1849.
Her introduction is warm and lively:
If I succeed in affording it [instruction] through this little book, I shall esteem myself happy; and I have only to ask, in conclusion, that my numerous young friends, and all the youthful housekeepers into whose hands it may fall, will receive it as a token of my friendly interest and best wishes.
Mary H. Cornelius, A Young Housekeepers Friend.
It cites that she is living in Andover at the time. Maps!
We find her just north of the Andover Theological Seminary. This would be a fitting and comfortable spot for someone who was so invested in Divinity.
By 1860, Mary H. Cornelius was living with her daughter, Sarah Little (and her husband Rev. George B. Little) in Roxbury. They soon moved to Newton, but George passed away from a pulmonary disease in July of that year.
Interestingly, In 1862, an ad ran in The Congregationalist. It appears that many Congregational teachers were opening their doors to provide a Congregational Education to students. And here we see that Mrs. George B. Little (Sarah) and her sister, Mary Cornelius, were training up young girls to be Christian Women. Mrs. Mary H. Cornelius likely had a hand in bits and pieces of this enterprise as she was right there alongside her daughters for many years. And we know her wealth of knowledge on the subject, already.
Naturally, I’d burn upon the threshold of this school, but I’m sure that with the family background in theology and divinity, there were certain people who took up the offer.
While it’s not for me by any means, the Cornelius women seemed to find their people. There was another theological institution right in Newton Centre where they lived. This institution would later fuse with the Andover Theological Seminary and become the Newton Andover Theological Seminary. It still exists as part of Yale Divinity School.
Mary H. Cornelius passed away on October 17th, 1880 in Newton, Massachusetts. Her cause of death was old age.
Her cookies, her intensity about Christian Education, and her instructions for cleaning a calf’s head live on. As do her ginger snaps.