The Thanksgiving and soon Christmas holidays are upon us. Oysters and oyster dressing have long been a popular Thanksgiving and Christmas treat in Columbus, Aberdeen and other area towns. The reason for their popularity may not be what you think.
November was once the beginning of the winter season when steamboat traffic between Aberdeen, Columbus and Mobile plied the Tombigbee River. As strange as it may seem, some traditional holiday food items are linked to those early steamboats.
A 1902 Billups’ family cookbook from Columbus provided a 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, peach pickles, Waldorf salad, cheese wafers, mince pie, pudding, nuts, fruit and coffee.
That same cookbook suggested that the Christmas fare should be oysters on the half shell, cream chicken soup, boiled whitefish, sauce Maitre d’Hotel, roast goose, apple sauce, boiled potatoes, mashed turnips, sweet potatoes, Christmas plum pudding, lemon ice, squash pie, quince jelly, delicate cake, salted almonds, fruit and coffee.
Now what did steamboats have to do with all of this? It was usually mid to late November before the Tombigbee became high enough for steamboats to travel upstream from Mobile to Columbus and Aberdeen. It was also then when it usually became cool enough for the boats to bring up Croker sacks or barrels of fresh oysters from Mobile.
With fresh oysters beginning to arrive mid-November to December, they became a traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas food along the Tombigbee River. Just as oysters were the first course mentioned in both the 1902 Thanksgiving and Christmas menus, many people still think of oysters as a traditional holiday dish, especially oyster dressing.
In 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. It is also common to find lots of oyster shells on old Columbus house sites dating as far back as the 1820s.
Oysters, however, were not the only delicacy found on the old steamboats. A writer for Harper’s Monthly Magazine in 1858 described the meals on the Alabama steamboat, Henry J. King, as having “a quiet elegance nowhere equaled but in first-class restaurants of Paris. The most elegant dinner fare in early Columbus was probably served in the “grand saloon” of a Tombigbee Steamboat.
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.
The occasion of an evening meal aboard the steamboat Norma steaming from Columbus to Aberdeen in 1844 was described as, “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 Apicius. (Apicius 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, and cake … oysters and wine.”
It was in the late 1840s and early 1850s that local papers in late November through February began having an array of advertisements for oysters. It was announced in the Aberdeen Weekly Conservative on Dec. 9, 1848, that the steamboat Clara had arrived from Mobile on Dec. 2 and was the first boat in six months to reach Aberdeen. The oranges and oysters she brought were in great demand.
The following year, on Dec. 1, M.W. Peterson’s Oyster Saloon and Restaurant on Market Street in Columbus advertised that its Bill of Fare included “oysters, broiled, stewed, roasted, fried and raw; lobsters and sardines; ham and eggs; fried venison, beef steak and chicken; mutton chops, pork chops &c &c.; turtle soup &c.” The Exchange Hotel of Mobile advertised in Columbus papers in 1853 the “very best Artist Culinary Department are employed…” Their meals included wild game, oysters, fruits and green turtle soup. Breakfast was served from 7 to 10, hot lunch at 11, dinner 1 to 5, tea at 1 and supper at all hours till midnight. The price of dinner was 50 cents.
On Dec. 23, 1858, the Ladies’ Confectionery of Aberdeen announced in the Columbus Sunny South it had sardines, lobsters, oysters and salmon for sale and would soon be opening an oyster saloon and restaurant attached to its establishment. In 1883 The Gordon House hotel opened in Aberdeen. Its restaurant fare included oyster soup and Gulf snapper.
While the shipment of oysters and fresh Gulf fish to Columbus in cool weather was easy enough, how they were preserved for sale after arrival was explained by E.R. Hopkins, an 1800s, early 1900s resident of Columbus. “Sail and steam vessels from northern ports brought large cargoes of natural ice as ballast when they came to the Port of Mobile, Alabama, for return loads of cotton and other commodities. This ice was shipped on steamboats up the Alabama, Tombigbee and Warrior rivers during winter and spring boating season. Mr. James Blair, a progressive citizen and drug merchant of Columbus, built an ice house of brick on the Tombigbee River west of the Ira L. Gaston residence where ice from the steamboats was stored and sold.
“In a warehouse at the rear of the White Star Market, John Francis and Son kept a stock of lake ice for sale and for use in their restaurant where oysters and fish were sold or served to customers. Shell oysters were brought by steamboats from Mobile along with red snappers, sheephead, and other salt water fish. Oysters on half shell were in demand during their season. Barrels of shell oysters were kept in a cellar and fed with a gruel of cornmeal and salt water.”
Holiday oysters: Who would have thought that locally it’s a tradition dating to Tombigbee steamboats over 180 years ago? And the variety of foods available and served in Columbus during holidays in the mid-1850s is actually not that different than today.
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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