first edition
1890 · Attleboro, Mass
by [Second Congregational Church (Attleboro, Mass.);Ladies' Sewing Society]
Attleboro, Mass: The Daily Sun Electric Power Print, 1890. Octavo (22 x 14.5), [iv], 66, [vi] pages. Cover title: May Day Cook Book. Table of contents and index. Advertisement. FIRST EDITION. A church cookbook with two hundred fifty recipes, attributed, if often only by initials. With multiple versions of corn cakes and brown breads, nut cakes and gingerbreads, fritters and fruit puddings, a number identified with regional names (e.g., Trenton Falls Pudding). Of special interest is the Red Currant Pie. The Second Congregational Society of what is now East Attleboro was, like many early Protestant communities, born of tensions and rifts and disputes, a sense of which can be gained from Hamilton Hurd's History of Bristol County, Massachusetts of 1883. It was in fact the town's founding church, established in 1748, second only to the mother church in the Old Town of North Attleborough (which retains the original spelling). Very likely the undertaking to replace the wooden White Church on the common with a red brick building supplied the impetus for The May Day Cook Book. A landmark now, admired for its great bell tower, it has served an ever mutating urban center since its dedication in 1904. This books has clearly seen service in the kitchen. Pages are splatter-stained and loosening; edges darkened, some fore-edges chipping; one annotation in pencil. Bound in gilt-lettered, blue publisher's cloth, soiled and fraying; corners and spine rubbed and bumped. GOOD ONLY. On the flyleaf is the ownership signature of "L. P. Beers", under an older signature, likely that of a relative, "Mrs. H. W. Beers". An early owner of the present exemplar, Leonora P. Beers (1850-1922) was a grammar school teacher who also taught Sunday School at Second Congregational and served on the Woman's Board of Missions. Handwritten recipes on three leaves appended. Unrecorded. [OCLC reports no copies; not in Cook, Brown, or Cagle]. (Inventory #: 5360)
