Breitscheid Pottery

The ancestors who came from Breitscheid, Hesse-Nassau, Germany were potters, or topfers in German.  When we visited the area we stopped at the pottery museum there. We took a picture of a photo of the original building, as well as another showing workers in the factory in the past.

I purchased this small pitcher at the museum shop as a souvenir of our visit and as an example of the type of pottery that was made in Breitscheid.

* 52 Ancestors - "Craft"

Hazel's Recipe Book

Several years ago Jeanette sent me Hazel's recipe book, which also contained some old photographs that had always been stored in the book. Two of the old photos show Julia Staub Smith and her three sons on the lawn in front of the original Smith home.

Jeanette included several "sticky notes" to explain some of the recipes. Two of them were in her handwriting, and others had names of the original bakers who were relatives or neighbors. Ida's date cake, Mrs. A. Bemis' salad dressing, Ellen Larsen's filled oatmeal cookies, "Grandmother's Nut Bread" (Harriet Smith? Julia Smith?), Ida's cranberry cake, and Dorothy J.'s (Johnson) celery pickles. Grandma S.'s filled oatmeal cookie recipe was also included.

The back cover was quite interesting to a family researcher, because my grandmother had written relative's names with their birth and death dates.

This little recipe book will be passed along to Peg and eventually to her granddaughter Hazel, named after Hazel Rowe Smith.

* 52 Ancestors: "Handed Down"