Dumbfunnies. Never heard of them. Can’t find a single reference to them as a food outside of this old cookbook out of the New Hampshire boondocks, 1954. Yet tucked inside the Whitefield Sesquicentennial Recipe Folder was a recipe for Dumbfunnies by Mrs. Bernice Placey from the Placey Rest Home. I was immediately intrigued by the idea of a dumbfunny, which judging by the instructions was a doughnut-esque treat doused in none other than my favorite condiment, maple syrup. I was equally curious about what a rest home might be. Was it an old folks home, a BnB? And as a person who grew up in the boondocks, I also was interested in what kind of life Bernice Placey had carved out for herself out amidst the trees.
As per usual, I started with the recipe.
I whipped up these Dumbfunnies on a Sunday morning in early October. We were well into our Sunday chores (Sunday is the only day we do chores, so as you can imagine, work abounds). This recipe was ideal because it was a very simple mix and then needed a good 2 and a half hour rest. The dough came together just as instructed and I put it upstairs in the warmest corner of the house–on my bedside table, just above the space heater. Two and half hours later my husband was mowing the lawn and the kid was cleaning his room and I rolled and sliced the dough, twisted them into what I imagined a dumbfunny to look like (rabbit ears?) and dropped them into some hot fat. They sank fast and then popped back to the surface, delightfully puffed to twice their original size.
A second later, I plated them up, popped the top off of a jar of maple syrup and we gathered around to taste.
It was bready.
It was dense. I can imagine Paul Hollywood calling them stodgy.
Then again, it was the perfect delivery mechanism for maple syrup. If I were eating it sans maple syrup, it would likely be too plain for this American palette, but soaked in syrup…sure! We had no problems clearing the plate with a lot of mmm, mmhhhmmm, ok, interesting, not bad!
Successful bready treat accomplished, I headed to the archives to see what I could find on Mrs. Placey and her rest home.
Mrs. Placey
I didn’t have much luck, if I’m being honest, but I was able to find a piece here and a piece there. And then a little bit more due to the help of local historical societies.
Mrs. Bernice Placey was born Bernice Tucker on 29 March 1911 in West Fairlee, Vermont, to Ezra Tucker and Lettie Rice. The Tucker’s were farmers, which was the primary industry in the area. By 1920, they had hopped the New Hampshire border and were Dairy Farmers in Coos County. They landed in a town that, even today, is barely scraping 1,000 in terms of population.
There isn’t much of a paper trail on Bernice as a youth, but we do know that when she was in her 20s, she was taking a route toward nursing. By the time Bernice was 24, in 1930, she was enumerated as a nurse at the Morrison Memorial Hospital in Whitefield, New Hampshire. The Morrison hospital was started by George Harvey Morrison, a local philanthropist. His wife, Mae Morrison, was administrator and head nurse who rigorously trained new nurses. Below, you can see the Morrison hospital. At that time, the hospital was on Terrace Ave. while the nurse’s home was just across the street. I don’t know about you, but to me this is Call the Midwife meets rural New England. I would stream the hell out of that Netflix series.
I’m not sure exactly what training she received or what nursing manuals were used during the 1930s, but I do know that at that time, Tuberculosis was still a rabid killer of Americans. She was almost surely taught about communicable diseases, stopping spread, how to aid the public in their TB education etc. I’d be interested in knowing if Bernice had a special interest. I thought perhaps finding out about the Placey Rest Home might help me figure out that interest, but up to that point, I saw no mention of the home.
On 14 May 1932, Bernice married Harold Placey, a Road Foreman in Dalton, NH.
They welcomed a daughter, Marjorie in 1939. In 1940, they lived on Jones River Road, just two houses down from Bernice’s parents. Her dad, according to the census, was still farming, and mom ran the grocery out of their house.
At that time, Harold was still working on the roads and Bernice did not have an occupation. She likely was caught up with parenting.
The the 1950s rolled around and the town prepared to celebrate it’s Sesquicentennial. A sesquicentennial is a complicated way to say a 150th anniversary– of settlement, in this case. The Abenaki were inhabitants of the area long before Whitefield was settled and I’ve been giving more and more care to acknowledging that a “settled” or “established” dates are almost never the beginning point of a place. Nevertheless, many towns carry on the tradition of celebrating the town founding or settlement. In this case, there were a variety of programs, see below, and they took care to create an anniversary book and recipe folder.
Bernice has other recipes in the Whitefield Sesquicentennial Recipe Folder (which happened to have been compiled by her sister-in-law, Ada Savage Tucker). Peanut Butter Bread and Shredded Wheat to name a few. And each one is attributed to Bernice Place of the Placey Rest Home. Yet, outreach to local historical societies found no reference to the place. And it wasn’t for lack of searching.
….but then we did find something.
In 1952, Bernice was recorded in the annual town report. She had been paid for care and board of the town poor.
I found a couple of things interesting about this. Bernice lead up the pack with a cost of $500.00, while Boylston Home, recorded with a much more official name, received far less money for similar services. While it doesn’t say Placey Rest Home, the timing (1950s) and the name, make me wonder if the rest home was one of those reliable, yet informal, institutions run out of the house. Bernice certainly would have been an ideal candidate to operate a home for the town poor with her nursing skills.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, so you’re trying to feed us poor house bread?
Well, maybe?
If I’m trying to bring us back to a time and place, to a life, through the avenue of food, then this trail just may lead back to a house that catered to the town poor at one point or another. It was likely a tried and true recipe that Bernice knew how to whip up without too much effort. That’s interesting. In fact, to me, it’s more interesting. The bread was rather plain, but it also was good. It would have been something delightfully sweet with the available maple syrup (which was local and easy to come by). I can tell you it didn’t take very many Dumbfunnies to make me full—and the ingredients were economical.
What do you think? Do you think that it’s likely that the Placey Rest Home was an informal spot for the town poor to find a roof, a good night’s rest and a belly full of food? Would you try Bernice Placey’s Dumbfunnies?
If you attempt Bernice Placey’s Dumbfunnies, I’d love to hear about it. Tag me on instagram @erinemoulton #soulspunkitchen.
Special thanks to both the Dalton Historical Society and the Whitefield Historical Society for the local assist on this research. Without local researchers, we’d be missing much of the story. Any errors are, of course, my own.