More Remedies & Recipes

More remedies* & recipes from the scrapbook.  This book appears to date from the late 1800s to the early 1900s and may have belonged to Clara Wilson, Margaret Hodges Hood's mother.  The Home Circle Magazine that many of the articles appear to have been clipped from was in circulation from about the 1850s until at least the 1930s.

*I do not recommend that anyone try these at home.

For Hoarseness

A flannel dipped in boiling water and sprinkled with turpentine and placed on the chest at beginning of cold or hoarseness will give relief.

For Disinfectant

Iodine is a poison and for external use only.  Diluted with an equal quantity of alcohol it makes an excellent disinfectant for wounds and sores.

For Cramps

For cramps in leg, wring a cloth out of hot water and rub well with toilet or laundry soap.  Tie around leg at knee and cover with another cloth.  Texas Girl, Brownfield, Texas.

For Tonsillitis

Dissolve two teaspoons of table salt in one glass of vinegar and use as a gargle for throat.  If vinegar is too strong, dilute with a little water. Use every fifteen or twenty minutes and gargle at least twice each time.  Sulphur is also very good to put in the throat after gargling.  A Sister, Lansing, Mich.

For Head Aches, Deafness, etc...

Will the sister who is troubled with head aches and others who are beginning to get deaf try this.  Five drops of tincture of iodine in a glass of lukewarm water to which one-half teaspoon of salt has been added.  Use as a gargle and to inhale through nostrils.  This is a cure for all nasal troubles, sore throats and colds.  For sore throats use as a gargle only.  If it causes a smarting sensation, too much salt has been used.  Edna O. Baker, Wales, Mass.

Sores on Mouth

Use polk berries as a wash.  Mrs. T.B McClure, Neola, Mo.

For Tired Eyes

Lay on eyes a cloth that has been wet in hot solution of boric acid water.

For Kidney Troubles

Make a strong tea of button willow and drink several times during the day.

For Bruise or Insect Bite

Mix clay with egg and vinegar to a paste, place on thin cloth and apply to injured part.  When poultice gets dry, moisten with vinegar.

For Ear-Ache

 Fill a medicine dropper with fresh warm milk and drop into affected ear.  Hold head to one side a minute, then throw back to opposite side.  Wrap head or put cotton in ear and lie down a few minutes.  Soon the buzzing sound and ear-ache will be gone.  Mrs. Harry Torrenga, Hebron, Ill.

How to Remove Ink from Woollens

Mrs. S.J., Guilford Co., N.C.--Please tell me how to remove ink from woolens.  Diluted acids do not injure the fiber so lemon juice, dilute oxalic or dilute hydrochloric acids may be used for ink and iron rusts.  

Furniture Polish

G.F., Putnam Co., Tenn.--Please give me a tried and true recipe for home-made furniture polish.  A very simple polish is made by mixing 1 part raw linseed oil with two parts turpentine and adding a little melted beeswax if desired.

To Remove Cataract of Eye*

Take fresh unsalted butter, melt and use just warm.  Lie on one side, the affected eye downward, let some one drop the melted butter into the upper most ear.  Lie still a few minutes until the oil has a chance to sink in. Begin with 3 drops first nigh, 4 drops second night, 5 drops the third night then miss 3 nights and continue for the next three nights, with 6-7-8 drops, again miss 3 nights, then go on with 9-10-11 drops.  If necessary to repeat performance, wait a week and then begin again.  It should be a sure cure.  In severe cases, it requires longer.

Red-Pepper Hash

15 medium-size onions; 24 sweet red peppers; 3 hot peppers; 2 small heads cabbage; 3 tablespoons salt; 2 tablespoons celery seed; 2 tablespoons white mustard seed; 1 1/2 cups sugar; 2 1/2 pints vinegar.  Remove seeds from peppers, and chop or run through grinder along with onions and cabbage.  Add other ingredients, mix well together, and heat until mixture boils.  Seal in sterile jars.  Miss L.H.

*This cataract remedy appears at least twice in the scrapbook.  I wonder if she ever tried it?  It sounds messy.  In another clipping, a reader asks:  "I am very anxious and have several friends who also wish to see repeated that old-time remedy for eye-film or cataract--the one containing unsalted butter I mean, especially, but shall be most grateful for any aid in overcoming this complaint.  Will you not do this?  I shall be most grateful, and will be careful not to lose the precious paper containing the reproduction as I did this one.  Sister Helena.  Altoona, Pennsylvania."

Remedies & Recipes

We have in our collection a fabulous scrapbook with all kinds of newspaper clippings mostly pertaining to remedies and recipies.  This could have belonged Margaret Hodges' mother, Clara Idella Wilson (1832-1945).   Some of the clippings come from Home Circle Magazine, which was in print from the 1850s until at least the 1930s.   A few eno means do I endorse trying them out.  Brace yourself for a few posts on this scrapbook.  I am completely fascinated!  A few examples* follow, all from the first two pages of the book.  

*I share these remedies out of historical interest and by no means do I endorse trying them out.  

For Diptheria

Roast an onion with sulphur in it, squeeze out juice, give the juice, bind onion on the throat and give sage tea made into syrup with honey and give honey and salts often.  I would like letters as I am lonely, my husband died three years ago and I live with my two boys on a small farm.  I wish those who are successful with chickens would write:  Mrs. Rettie Garman, Cork, KY

For Cataract of the Eye & Asthma

Dear Mrs. Helm:  Here are two simple and harmless remedies for cataract of the eye.  The Mexican remedy is put a drop of the milk from the cocoanut in the eye.  It cuts the cataract.  The other is 1 drop of honey three times a day, and that also cuts the cataract.  Will you please publish these, as I see by the magazine some one is looking for a remedy.  Wild plum bark, made into a tea and drinking three cups a day will cure asthma.  Take it for 6 weeks.  Mrs. H. Heide, San Francisco, Cal.

Seed Beer

One-half cupful of pearl barley and one-half cup of molasses or dark brown sugar to each part water.  Put these into a jar and cork tightly.  Set in a warm place for twenty-four hours and it will be ready for use.  The seed multiply rapidly.  After the seed are formed you need only the syrup and water to make a new supply.  It should be strained before drinking.

For Tonsillitis

Here is a sure cure for tonsillitis.  I was given up and went to an Herb Doctor who gave me a handful of Sage and some Sumach Berries.  I made a strong tea of these and gargled the throat with it, making two teas and using one an hour after the other.  After using this 10 hours, bathe the throat with Sassafrass Oil to take the swelling down.  I have told several about it, and they laughed and through it foolish but it did work.  Writes J.E.G., Redlands, Calif.

For Hair-Restorer

Here is a formula for hair-restorer which has been used for more than fifty years.  Three ounces each of glycerine and bay-rum, one-half ounce of lac sulphur, five drops of bergamot and one quart of boiled water.  Use as a hair-dressing every day until the hair is restored to former color, and then about twice a week.  This is not a dye, but restores the hair to the original color, and used as directed will keep it that way.  Mrs. L.N., Maiden, Missouri.

For Warts

To Sister Mollie, who asked about those willow-ashes for warts, let me offer another simple remedy which I have proved good.  I had a wart the size of a dime on my thumb and every time I bumped it against something, or played the piano, or did typing it hurt so that I wanted to cry.  I tried everything I could learn of to no avail.  I tried every doctor who put nitric acid on it, and all used the electric needle, but it just wouldn't go away.  Finally, in accordance with my aunt's suggestion, I cut a hole in a lemon and would put my thumb in every few minutes for a few days.  In a week the wart disappeared and has never returned:  this was nearly two years ago.  If the wart is where you cannot treat it in just this way, cut a piece of lemon, apply to the wart and tie up for two or three nights, or until the cure is effected.  Mrs. E.H.B., Omaha, Neb.

For Corns

Have any of you ever suffered with corns on, or between toes, a good relief for that is to make a grease with salicylic acid, and apply twice a day on the corn until you kill it, then it will come off when you soak your feet.  Miss Amelia Vidrine, Ville Platte, Louisiana.

For Rheumatism of the Bone

Dear Mrs. Helm:  I have read Home Circle for years and find the Homemakers Club the best ever.  I want to pass on a tried and true remedy for rheumatism of the bone.  My husband suffered for years with his right arm and is as free of pain now as ever, due to this remedy alone.  Dig a large polk root and wash, put in the stove and bake till soft.  Cut it open down one side and mash the inside until it is smooth and soft.  Then bind to the palm (inside) of the hand where the pain is in the arm; this will draw very hard and soon relieve the most severe case of rheumatism in a short time.  If the pain is in the leg apply the same poultice to the bottom of the foot.  Mrs. Melvina Presnell, Matney, North Carolina.

Grandmother's Ginger Cookies

One-half cup shortening; 1 cup brown sugar; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 cup molasses; 1 teaspoon ginger; 1 egg, 1 teaspoon soda; 1 cup sour milk; 4 1/2 cups pastry flour.  Cream shortening, sugar and salt.  Add other ingredients in order given with soda dissolved in sour milk.  Mix thoroughly; drop by spoonfuls on baking pan and bake in a medium oven. (50 cookies). 

Crisps Butter Cookies

1 cup butter; 1 cup granulated sugar; 2 eggs; 1 teaspoon Watkins Cream of Tartar; 2 1/4 cups flour; 1/2 teaspoon soda; 1/2 teaspoon Watkins Vanilla; 1/2 teaspoon Watkins Lemon Extract 

Ante-Bellum Tallahassee

From Ante-Bellum Tallahassee, published in 1971, by Bertram Groene:

Tallahassee's existence depended upon its official status as capital of the territory and later the state.  Its prosperity rested upon its merchants and the fortunes of the surrounding plantations and farms, and the labor of their slaves.  By 1860 there were over 300 farms and plantations and over 9,000 slaves.  The 3,000 white people of the Tallahassee country were to be outnumbered three to one by Negroes by the beginning of the Civil War...

In this year before the great war Tallahassee had only 997 white persons, 889 slaves and 46 free Negroes.  About one white family in 10 in town had slaves.  The county on the other hand had 2,197 white persons and 8,200 slaves.  The statistics show without much question that the great majority of the people in the Tallahassee country were farmers who lived in the county and not the town, and that they were massively outnumbered by the thousands of black slaves on the great plantations.  Tallahassee was the political center of the territory and state, but to her merchants and planters it was a cotton town and a cotton country first, last and always...

In the last 10 years before the Civil War the city grew little... A list of the more important 1860 general store merchants included liveryman P.B. Brokaw, D.C. Wilson, wealthy Arvah Hopkins, old pioneers G. and J. Meginnis, George W. Scott who later endowed Agnes Scott College, D.B. Maxwell, Alex Gallie, R.A. Shine and M.F. Papy, A.F. Hayward, and Charles West...

During the whole ante-bellum period, Tallahassee business was never to emerge from the small merchant class.  Manufacturing was never successful.  Business was still centered about plantations and politics from the great fire* to the great war. 

*Just twenty years after the founding of the Florida state capital, Tallahassee, a fire that began in the Washington Hall boarding house destroyed more than half of the city. Although volunteers saved the new capitol building under construction, and miraculously no one was killed, every downtown business burned in the great fire of 1843. 

Martha Dykes

This is a detail from a 1911 postcard and is thought to
be Martha Dykes (left) and Elizabeth Arrowsmith (right).
The are standing in front of the Goodwood main house.

Despite the fact that she lived at Goodwood for 26 years, Martha Dykes receives little mention.  The photograph above, a detail from a 1911 postcard, is thought to be Elizabeth Arrowsmith (right) and Martha Dykes (left).  If this is so, it is only known image of Martha.

Martha was born in Beverly, a small town in Yorkshire, England, on May 10, 1855.  She was the sixth of ten children.  Her father, William Dykes, was a civil engineer, as Dr. Arrowsmith had been earlier in his career.  Martha witnessed Dr. Arrowsmith's daughter Lucy's wedding in London in 1877.  In the 1881 census, while the Arrowsmiths were living in Wateringbury, Kent, she is listed as their companion.

Martha moved with the Arrowsmiths to Tallahassee, living first in the Byrd Mansion, and then at Goodwood in 1885.  Dr. Arrowsmith died that same year of heart disease.  Martha and Elizabeth continued on at Goodwood until 1911, when they moved to a house in town.

Martha never married, but was reported to have had an offer of engagement from a man in Tallahassee.  The Arrowsmiths, it is told, did not approve and blocked the engagement.  The man then committed suicide.  Martha's reaction is not recorded.

In 1915, Elizabeth and Martha spent a pleasant summer with several friends.  During the trip home, Elizabeth died on the train just before it reached Jacksonville.  According to her October obituary in the Tallahassee newspaper, "her many friends were at the train to escort the body to the city cemetery where the funeral service was conducted by the Rev. D. Garnall of St. Johns Episcopal Church."  She was just shy of eighty.

Elizabeth's only child Lucy had died in 1902.  Of Dr. Arrowsmith's children from his first marriage, Caroline Annie died in 1898 and Horace died in 1893.  It is unknown when Alice Harriet died;  Alice's husband, George William Mackey, died in 1893.   Martha Dykes was listed as Elizabeth's sole heir.

When Martha died of a stroke in 1916, she was attending a gathering at the home of John W. Henderson.  Martha was described in her obituary as a "well known and popular young woman".  She was sixty-three-years-old at the time!  

The John W. Henderson Home. 
This home was moved in 1939 to
become the main house for the Southwood Plantation.
In 1916, it was located at the corner of Adams and St. Augustine.

Political Craftsman in the White House

Yesterday, we made an interesting find while cataloguing books.  Tucked inside an autographed 1939 copy of Collected Poems of Robert Frost, was article about Robert Frost clipped from the New York Times Magazine dated January 15, 1961.  The backside of the clipped article is also interesting.  It is the beginning of an article on John F. Kennedy by Pulitzer Prize winner, James MacGregor Burns. The biographical note on Burns included in the article reads:  "James MacGregor Burns, a member of the political science department at Williams, wrote 'John Kennedy:  A Political Profile.'"

POLITICAL CRAFTSMAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Mr. Kennedy, it is suggested, has both the talent and the inclination for Presidential politics--and he will need them to sustain continuous leadership in the years lying ahead.

By JAMES MacGREGOR BURNS

In the long sweep of history the decisive mark of the man entering the White House Friday will not be his age, or his religion, or his Senatorial background, or the other matters so much discussed this past year.  What is vital is that once again America will have a political craftsman as President.

Born of a political family in one of the most political cities, Mr. Kennedy has spent all his adult life, aside from the war years, in the scuffle of legislative and electoral combat.  The key difference between the outgoing and incoming President is that Dwight D. Eisenhower dislikes this kind of politics and that John F. Kennedy consideres it indispensable to the operation of a great democracy, even inevitable.  "No President," he says, "can escape politics."

The great test of Mr. Kennedy's Presidency will be the test he himself would be the first to apply:  not whether he will be a politician--he will--but what kind of politician he will be and whether  his kind of political craftmanship will be enough for the staggering job ahead.  What are the prospects?  The answer turns on the nature of the Presidential office and not on the nature of the man.

Most of the time the Presidency is not a command post from which clear and concerted orders are issued to troops waiting to spring into action.  Most of the time it is a fulcrum of maneuver and bargaining, with the President seeking to convert a limited amount of power into governmental action.  It is a place where he must deal with hundreds of other powerful men in the outside the Government with their separate sources of power.  Most of the time the Presidency calls less for a master leader than for a master broker.

By experience and by temperament, Mr. Kennedy should qualify as a master broker.  The Boston brand of politics in which he was schooled is a kind of institute of advanced training in political manipulation.  For fourteen years in the Congressional labyrinth he has learned to negotiate with pround legislative leaders and party factions.  In two hears of pre-convention delegate hunting, he had ot bargain with state officials and city bosses whose political interests were far different from those of a junior Senator on the make.

Like a good poker player, a master broker must be cool-headed and clear-minded, utterly realistic about his own hand and that of his opponents, unflustered and unwilling to be hurried.  These, again, are keynotes of the President-elect's political style.  Observers have noted again and again his detached attitute toward himself, his cold insight into the balance of power, and his capacity to move quickly or slowly as conditions demanded.  His Cabinet-making was a case in point.  Despite pressure to hurry on with the job, he took his time as he sorted and measured and cut to fit.

Skill in bargaining is vital not only in negotiation with foot-dragging Congressmen and Governors.  A President must also bargain with Cabinet members and agency heads "supposedly" under him.  "I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them," said Harry S. Truman.  "That is all the powers of the President amount to."

A new President soon finds that the neat lines of authority on the organization chart are actually snarled and broken by the political tempests that rage around the White House.  

"When it comes to power," says Prof. Richard E. Neustadt of Columbia, a former Truman aide, "nobody is expert but the President;  if he, too, acts as layman, it goes hard with him."  Mr. Kennedy can be reated as a professional in the care and nourishment of political power.  A President, he said to a visitor recently, must be careful not to use up his credit too quickly.  He nees the best people around him, but in the end he must depend on himself.  And, he added, he has only four years to make good.

To be effective, a master broker must operate at the center of the political cobweb.  (and here our portion ends...)

Documentary Featuring Crooms Family

This is a UCF documentary, "Goldsborough: An American Story."  It includes information about the Crooms family.  Moses and Daphne Crooms were slaves on the Goodwood Plantation who moved to Sanford, Florida, after the Civil War.  Since this is long--11:15 is where it actually begins (there is an introductory interview segment).  At 16:20 (or so) there is a reference to the importance of education.  The first Crooms reference is at 20:10.  At 26:26, Moses Crooms is discussed briefly.  At 32:32 the Crooms School is discussed. And at 34:54 (and this is fabulous) Daphne Crooms, granddaughter of Moses and Daphne Crooms, has her 100th birthday celebration.  She talks about her grandmother.

Paris at Dawn

From one of Hodges' scrapbooks, with the inscription "after years of World wandering I paste this in my book.  WCH.  1923."  The author of this poem is unknown.

Paris at Dawn

Paris at dawn; Egypt beneath the stars;

And spring in Tuscany!

Where, through ruined temples of old avatars,

The young moon peers,

White with the silver of forgotten tears;

Still, down the years,

New Aprils move eternally,

In rhapsodies of almond bloom.

And poets loved this beauty, too,

Who walked the secret way they knew.

Down to a shadowy tomb.

And other splendors--on the sea,

Set like a jewel--Sicily,

Crown with the light of Etna.  On her breast,

Her ruins like a decoration, rest.

Marbles of Greece, that knew immortal hours;

Gardens of far Japan, steeped in a wine of flowers;

Faint temple bells, the nightingale,

And palace, mosque, and minaret;

The burning stars upon a desert trail--

An ancient symbol--lest our hearts forget.

After all splendors--if the South--

My South, still knows

And gives some word of beauty for a sign;

The waxen marvel of camellias, white and rose;

A wide-winged heron's cloudy flight;

A thrush's mouth,

Brimming with starry music, through a night

Where pine-tree shadows stir,

And lily-troubled waters shine--

I shall return!  Ah, not to call it lovelier--

This land--than all the rest

My pilgrim feet have pressed,

But only that these things are mine--are wholly mine!

Local Names: Live Oak Plantation Road

Florida's last territorial governor:  John Branch,
Father-in-law of Arvah Hopkins

From a March, 2004, Tallahassee Democrat article by Gerald Ensley:

Live Oak Plantation Road, between Thomasville Road and Meridian Road, is named for the plantation established on its western end in the 19th century.  Most of the plantation, which once stretched all the way to Lake Jackson, has been subdivided into homesites since the 1950s.  Originally, Live Oak was the 10,000-acre plantation of John Branch, a governor and U.S. Senator from North Carolina.  Branch moved to Tallahassee in the mid-1830s and served as the sixth and last territorial governor before statehood in 1845.  Branch's daughter married planter and merchant Arvah Hopkins, owner of Goodwood Plantation (and grandfather of the late longtime city manager Arvah Hopkins).  After Branch, it passed through many owners, including Dr. Tennent Ronalds, a native of Scotland, who built one of Tallahassee's first golf courses on the property in 1903.

On His Record of Service

A paid political advertisement from one of Senator Hodges' scrapbooks from March 1936:

On His Record of Service

Not a Platform of Promises

We Recommend

Senator Wm. C. Hodges

for Governor of Florida

Of Carolina parentage, schooled in Jeffersonian Democracy.  For 20 years member of the Florida Legislature.  President of the Senate the last term.

1. Twenty years ago Senator Hodges introduced the first bill to exempt homes from taxation.  The bill received two votes.  But he carried the fight on continuously, and in 1934 the people exempted the homes.
2. Twenty years ago he began the fight for pensions for the aged, dependent mothers and crippled children.  Today all America demands pensions for the aged.
3. At every session of the Legislature Senator Hodges has labored for a nine-months term for schools and prompt payment of teachers' salaries.  He had passed the Senatorial Scholarship Bill.
4. He has successfully opposed every form of sales tax unless all ad valorem was removed from real estate, and has assisted in defeating the nuisance taxes on the theory that grits and bacon of the poor should not be taxed for government.

Senator Hodges by his experience, his sound judgement and leadership is the man who has a record for a platform, not a platform of promises.

(Paid political advertisement of friends of Wm. C. Hodges)

Arvah Hopkins III

Arvah Hopkins III

Arvah Hopkins III, grandson of Arvah and Susan Hopkins, served as Tallahassee City Manager from 1952-1974.  The Arvah B. Hopkins Power Plant on Geddie Road is named after him.

From My Garden

Margaret Hodges Hood in the gardens of Goodwood, April, 1962:

In front of large oak on lawn

This passage by Margaret E. Sangster (1838-1912) was found in one of the Hodges' scrapbooks.  This scrapbook was assembled by both Senator Hodges and Margaret.

From My Garden

by Margaret E. Sangster

I have learned many truths from my garden.  I have grown, with my flowers, in tact and gentleness, in laughter and in religion.  For a garden holds the essence of life and tells the story of life's loveliness. 

I have learned that growing things, no matter where they are placed, will lean eagerly toward the light of day.  I have learned that the dancing shadow of a leaf will change a grim brick wall to a thing of beauty. 

I have learned that weeds may be entirely charming, and I have learned that the sturdy green of those plants that do not bear blossoms is needed to lend leaven to a riot of color.

I have learned that thinning out is often necessary if one would have a garden grow in health.  And I have learned also that the process of thinning out may be accomplished in all tenderness and compassion. 

I honestly believe that it would be hard to own a garden and at the same time be an atheist.  For God's presence is in every breath of fragrance and His touch is on the petal of each flower. 

The most fragile blade of grass that pushes its way through the prison of the earth is one of His miracles.  His enduring mercy is in the courage of each perennial that has slept beneath the snow and has dared waken to the call of a new springtime. 

Every person in the world, I think, should have a garden, even if that garden is only a window box set on a sunny ledge, or a flat bowl of lily bulbs on a table.  Every person in the world should have the splendor and peace of a garden to fill the hours with living music and lyric verse. 

Some luxuries are beyond our grasp--and it is better, perhaps, that they should be.  But the luxury of owning a garden is beyond the grasp of no one. 

I have seen a scarlet geranium growing in glory upon a tenement windowsill.  And I have seen the pinched face of a slum child, bending above it, take on a reflection of its radiance.