Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Rhubarb Cake Memories: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Favorite Recipe”

 

Summer Sweet Treat on the Farm: Rhubarb Cake

Ione Norene Macbeth Peterson: 1928-2019 (Mother)

 

My parents always had a big clump or two of rhubarb in the yard or garden, and one of my favorite summertime treats was mom’s rhubarb cake. Most people think of strawberry rhubarb pie when they think of rhubarb desserts, but in our family, we made rhubarb sauce—like applesauce with chopped rhubarb instead of apples, and a whole lot of sugar—and rhubarb cake.


The cake recipe called for buttermilk, but my mom was not a fan of buttermilk, so she just added some vinegar to whole milk to make sour milk, which provided a similar taste and texture to the cake. My favorite part was the cinnamon sugar sprinkled on the top of the cake. I loved cinnamon, and when baked on the cake, it became a crispy topping when the sugar started to melt a little—delicious.

My mother probably got this recipe from my grandmother, who also enjoyed rhubarb. Here it is:

 


Cinnamon Sugar Rhubarb Cake

½ cup butter softened

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk or sour milk

2 heaping cups finely chopped rhubarb

Topping

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

 Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9x13-inch cake pan.

 Stir together flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Cream butter, sugar and eggs in another bowl. Then add sour milk and vanilla. Add flour mixture. Mix until smooth, then fold in rhubarb. Pour into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 40-45 minutes until tester comes out clean.

My mom, Ione

Living in California for many years, and now living in southern Texas, I can’t grow rhubarb in my own yard--it needs cooler weather. As a result, I rarely have the chance to bake this cake, but whenever I do, I think of my mom and summers on the farm. I remember the sweet scent of the cake and see myself as a child, impatiently waiting as this cake rested on the stovetop until it was cool enough to cut and eat. Delicious!

 

Sources:

Photo of rhubarb. Carol Sacks, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Sunday, April 7, 2024

Pioneer of Professional Nursing: 52 Ancestors 2024 Prompt “Technology”

 

Malinda “Linda” A. J. Richards Builds American Nursing Programs

Malinda Ann Judson Richards: 1841-1930 (Maternal Second Cousin 3x Removed)
 

While the prompt “technology” may not, at first blush, seem to apply to someone who was born in 1841, Amy Johnson Crow noted that there have always been technological breakthroughs—just not the type of tech we think of today. The high-tech breakthroughs of past centuries might have been new designs for shovels or knitting needles, a new way of making shoes or hats, or a new field of study. When I looked at the prompt from that perspective, I thought of Linda A. J. Richards. While she is more my collateral ancestor than a direct ancestor (only a second cousin 3x removed), her technological breakthrough was, in my view, one of the most consequential of the late 19th century: she helped to create the entire nursing profession in America. And I’m not the only one who recognizes her importance. A simple Google search finds that she is the subject of several biographies and encyclopedia entries, and has been honored by everyone from the Smithsonian, the New York State Senate, the Florence Nightingale Museum, the Women’s Hall of Fame, and a variety of nursing groups.



Malinda Ann Judson Richards was the great-granddaughter of my fourth-great-grandparents Francis Dane and Abiah Burt. She was born July 27, 1841 in Potsdam, New York, to parents Sanford Richards and Betsey Sinclair (Betsey was the daughter of Sarah Dane, and granddaughter of Abiah and Francis Dane). She was the second of their four daughters.

Malinda, or Linda as she came to be called, watched as both her parents succumbed to tuberculosis. Her father died when she was only four years old. Linda, her mother, and her siblings then moved to Vermont to live with her grandfather. She helped to nurse her mother, who died when she was fourteen.

Linda gained a reputation as a “natural nurse” and tried to learn as much as possible from the doctor who treated her mother. At age fifteen, she enrolled in a one-year teaching training program at the St. Johnsbury Academy near her grandfather’s home. She taught school in Newbury, Vermont, and also worked at the Union Straw Works, a hat-making factory, in Foxboro, Massachusetts. She became engaged to a young man named George Poole, but he enlisted to serve in the Civil War before they married. He was seriously injured in the war, and Linda nursed him for several years until his death in 1869.

After his loss, Linda sought out a nursing program, enrolling in a new programs at New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. Linda described her training in her memoir:

“We rose at 5.30 a.m. and left the wards at 9 p.m. to go to our beds, which were in little rooms between the wards. Each nurse took care of her ward of six patients both day and night. Many a time I got up nine times in the night; often I did not get to sleep before the next call came. We had no evenings out, and no hours for study or recreation. Every second week we were off duty one afternoon from two to five o'clock. No monthly allowance was given for three months.”

She was the first of the students to complete her training in 1873, so was the first officially trained nurse in the United States. She took a position at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, where she created a charting system to keep individual patient records that could be consulted and updated by all the doctors and nurses caring for a patient.


Only a little over a year later, she was named the superintendent of the Boston Training School for Nurses. The school had been in danger of closing due to mismanagement, but her improvements led it to become one of the best nursing programs in the nation.

In 1877, Linda travelled to England to train under Florence Nightingale. When she returned to the United States, she set about incorporating her new knowledge in nursing programs. From 1886 to 1891, she lived in Japan where she served as a missionary and opened the first nursing training school in the country.

Linda in Japan

Linda’s health began to fail after she returned to the United States. She briefly led nursing programs in Philadelphia and Boston, and then turned her energy to developing nursing programs for mental hospitals in Massachusetts and Michigan, and improving the ways mental patients were treated. She also served as the first president of the American Society of Superintendents of Training Schools.

Linda retired from nursing in 1911 at the age of seventy. She went to live on a farm in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1923, she suffered a stroke and was hospitalized until her death on April 16, 1930 at the age of 88.

Linda A. J. Richards was a true pioneer in the field of nursing, helping to develop it as a profession in the United States and establishing patient charting systems and standards of care for the mentally ill. Her determination, creativity and perseverance are to be admired and remembered.

Sources:

American Association for the History of Nursing. “Linda A. J. Richards.” https://www.aahn.org/richards

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Richards

https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2006/11/linda-richards.html#google_vignette

https://www.workingnurse.com/articles/linda-richards-1841-1930-the-first-graduate-of-americas-first-nursing-school/

https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/linda-richards/

https://www.si.edu/object/miss-linda-richards-americas-first-trained-nurse%3Anmah_1444535

http://www.potsdampublicmuseum.org/documents/Linda_Richards_text_apr24.pdf

Reminiscences of America's First Trained Nurse. Linda Richards. Boston, Whitcomb & Barrows, 1911.

“Linda Richards at the Kalamazoo State Hospital”. R. C. Gordon. Journal of  Psychosocial Nursing,  Ment Health Serv. 1999 Nov;37(11):35-9. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10572854/