My Great Great Grandmother's Recipe for a Very Good Sponge Cake

·        Three eggs

·        One and One-half cups sugar

·        Two cups flour

·        Two cups cold water

·        One teaspoonful cream tartar

·        One-half teaspoon Bird's soda

·        Salt

·        Flavor to taste

·        Take one cup of flour and sift the cream tartar well into it

·        Beat the eggs lightly and stir in sugar

·        Add flour and cream tartar mixture

·        Dissolve the soda into the water

·        Add water/soda, and salt and flavoring

·        Add the other one cup of flour

·        Bake slowly

·        Sprinkle sugar over the top when the cake has been in the over a minute or two

·        When done, the cake will have a light color and a sugary crust

This 1913 recipe is thanks to:

Emily Jane Pendleton Beach, my great great grandmother whose husband was Orin Utley Beach, Jr..   Emily was Esther Beach Eaton Bennett Homer's grandmother!

 

This is my great great grandmother's recipe.  It was published in the Knyvetta Cookbook in 1913, four years before she passed away in 1917 in Searsport. 

My mother used to talk about Emily' Jane's son, Capt. James Hervey Beach who worked for Standard Oil Company as a Captain and later a pilot on the rivers in China.  When Jim was 27, he married Eugenie Ella Staples who was born in Havre, France in 1875 and died in 1914 in Shanghai, China.  Their children were well liked by my mom. The three daughters were Ella, Doris and Helen, all of whom never married! My mom, Marjorie Emma Bennett, was named after Doris “Marjorie” Beach!

This photo is of my grandmother, Esther (Nana) being held by her mom, Emily Prudence, sister of Capt. Jim.  Looks like Capt. Jim's photo on the wall may be the one on the left.  This picture was taken on the family farm on Turnpike Road in Searsport.  Interesting.

  

Sears Island, Maine, and my Mom, Marjorie Bennett

This two-mile long and one-mile wide island is close to the mainland of Searsport Maine. The Wabanaki American Indians called it Wassumkeag which means shining beach or bright sand beach. When the island was discovered by European explorers before 1775 they named it Brigadier's Island. Regardless of its moniker, this land has historically been an uninhabited or sparsely populated island.  

The island, today and in the days when my mom lived in Searsport, was separated from the mainland as a barrier island due to its tidal bar.  When the tide came off  Penobscot Bay, it was an island; when the tide rolled out, she could walk or stroll to the island but, of course, had to be alert to the tides and the daylight so as not to get marooned overnight. 

I don't believe there were any farmhouses there when my mother was, but were in generations before her time in Maine. Actually, in the first 1790 census six families lived or squatted here among the birch and maples of Maine. Now visitors can find stones marking the cellars of long gone homes.  In 1917 a gas-powered piece of farm equipment created a fire that destroyed the few Sears Island farm buildings. 

During prohibition, the island was a secluded way to the smuggle liquor off the waters of the Bay. Perhaps this even occurred when mom played on the island - in the daytime, thank goodness - when she was still under the age of 10.

Mom and her brothers used to love to go to Sears Island to camp, swim, gather shells, picnic, snowshoe and horseback ride.  Hiking might be an adventure to people today, but in mom's day hiking was a mode of transportation - her mode, a means to an end. I believe the island is about 2 miles from her home on Turnpike Road in Searsport.  Since she walked to neighboring towns often, such as Stockton Springs to roller skate, the trek to Sears Island was a fairly short half-hour walk for her. Today there is a causeway to and from Sears Island, but no further.  Once on the island, people walk, bike or ride horseback to see more. 

LtoR: Albert, Gerry and Marjorie Bennett

Some sounds mom would hear were the waves lapping along the shoreline, whispering and swirling winds and leaves, and the unique bantering of sea gulls...and silence, blessed silence. 

The island waters in her day were known for abundances in lobsters, clams, scallops and such. No wonder I like seafood (but not fish particularly). Although I have been very near to Sears Island, I did not walk in her footprints of long ago. My grandmother and my great grandmother also walked and played on this island. I should have.

Love you Mom!