Thanksgiving is a time when good food and formal family meals come to mind. It is also a time that we experience a fascinating mix of food and history.

Over the years I have become a repository for family stories and old cookbooks. The earliest family cookbook that I have was passed down through the Govan then Billups families. It is an 1825 copy of “The Virginia Housewife.” Among my favorite food related family stories are the “Whitehall Mint Julep” and “an elegant sufficiency.”

I recall from my childhood an elderly cousin, Dr. William Richards. After a good meal he would often look up and announce that he had had an “elegant sufficiency.” Dr. Will not only knew history, he had lived it. He had been assistant surgeon to Dr. Walter Reed in the Cavalry at Fort Apache where he knew Geronimo, who he respected and would talk with. After retiring from the military was the doctor who delivered Tennessee Williams.

Dr. Will always enjoyed a good meal. To this day when I have eaten almost but not quite too much of an excellent meal, I think of his words “I have had an elegant sufficiency.”

The earliest local mention of Thanksgiving I have found is in the Nov. 30, 1838, Columbus Southern Argus, which reported that the governors of Massachusetts and New Hampshire set aside Nov. 29 as a day to be observed as “a day of public Thanksgiving.” Reading the old recipe books and researching the history of Columbus have left me amazed at just how diverse and sometimes elegant meals could be in the early 1800s. A writer for Harper’s Monthly Magazine in 1858 compared the meals on the Alabama steamboat, Henry J. King, as having “a quiet elegance nowhere equaled but in first-class restaurants of Paris.” However, an early cookbook used in Columbus had a recipe for gumbo that was to simply boil okra adding only salt and pepper.

The most elegant dinner fare in early Columbus probably was found in the “grand salon” of the Cabin on Tombigbee Steamboats. The range of foods served on a steamboat and the foods available in Columbus is shown by the “stores” purchased in Columbus in 1837 for the Steamer Tropic, a Tombigbee packet boat which was running between Columbus and Mobile. Those stores included:

Potatoes, rice, beans, onions, ham, pork, beef, dried beef, beef tongue, cheese, flour, sugar, oil, lard, coffee, tea, almonds, raisins, figs, dried apples, preserves, pickles, cod fish, salmon, mackerel, butter, catsup, mustard, bottles of cayenne pepper, table salt, pepper, vinegar, French cordial and whiskey.

A description of the evening meal aboard the steamboat Norma steaming from Columbus to Aberdeen in 1844 described the evening meal.

“The beauty of the evening, the beauty of the women, rosy wine, sparkling wit, thrilling music…when supper was announced. The door was thrown open, and a scene disclosed that would have gladdened the heart of an Apcius. (Apcius was an ancient Roman gourmet noted for his luxurious lifestyle) A table, extending half the length of the gentleman’s cabin, groaned with the rich array of viands, fruits, cakes, oysters and wine.”

The variety of foods available in antebellum Columbus is not that much different than today. Stands (roadside inns) and hotels generally advertised that breakfast was 7-10 a.m., lunch was 11 a.m.-1 p.m. when it was then called dinner. Dinner ran from 1 to 5 p.m. and supper was from 7 till midnight.

In 1838 S.H. Lester was operating Rogers Old Stand two miles from Columbus on the Military Road. There, “Parties of young gentlemen of town can be supplied with a good dinner or supper upon short notice. Near to the stand is a mineral spring, supposed to possess valuable medicinal qualities.” The fare served at such stands can be seen from the stocks advertised by stores.

In 1838 C.S. Aiken was selling at his store in Columbus items including: refined sugar, New Orleans brown sugar, coffee, molasses, cognac, peach and apple brandy, old rye, double rectified whiskey, eastern flour, bacon, hams, mess, prime pork, cheese, potatoes, Norfolk pickled oysters, ginger spices and port and sherry wines in casks and bottles. At the same time Clark & Co. was advertising they had 50 1/2 barrels of herring for sale and Green Hill had just gotten in 10,000 superior Spanish cigars. (Probably from Spanish Cuba). John Frances was a confectionery located on Main Street in Columbus in the 1850s. He offered for sale, sugar plums, sugar almonds, cordial drops, strawberry bunches, currant jelly, raisins, figs, prunes, oranges, lemons, apples, grapes, preserves, filberts, walnuts, cream walnuts, coca nuts, sardines, lemon syrup, ale and best London Porter. He also advertised fireworks, fresh oysters and even ice cream.

In December 1849 M.W. Peterson’s Oyster Saloon and Restaurant, which was on Market Street in Columbus, advertised their bill of fare. It included oysters, lobster. sardines, ham and eggs, venison, beef steak, pork chops and turtle soup. Candy was also offered for sale.

With the advent of steamboat travel between Columbus and Mobile, fresh oysters became very popular in Columbus. November was when it was usually cold enough to transport fresh oysters and the Tombigbee high enough for steamboats to travel from Mobile to Columbus. So, that’s when the first fresh oysters would arrive and start a food tradition that has survived today. A tradition of oyster dressing being served at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

By the late 1800s the quantity of oysters brought into Columbus by steamboat was so large that the city began using the discarded oyster shells to fill potholes in the city streets.

The earliest complete menu for a Thanksgiving meal in Columbus I have come across was in a well-used 1902 Billups’ family cookbook. There I found the suggested menu for Thanksgiving. For dinner (lunch) there should be oysters on the half shell, mutton broth, celery, turkey stuffed with oysters, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, baked squash, boiled onions with cream sauce and peach pickles.

I guess you could say that at Thanksgiving there has always been an elegant sufficiency of oysters served in Columbus.

Rufus Ward is a local historian.

Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].

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