Piece of history recovered

Of all times to find myself without a pen and notebook.
It was about a year ago. I’d stopped by for one of my visits with Betty Starbuck at Crown Pointe, the assisted living center in Portland. Betty and I were second cousins; we shared a great-grandfather, Judge Haynes.
With her Starbuck relatives living in Wisconsin, Kansas, and Oregon, it only seemed logical that I should pop in for a visit every week or two to see how things were going. I’d gotten into a similar habit with my Uncle Jim Luginbill for several years while he was at Swiss Village.
Residents of places like that will tell you their biggest enemy is boredom, and a visitor helps break up the day. But I got at least as much out of the visits as those I visited.
On this particular day, Betty said she wanted to show me something. She rummaged through some papers and produced an aging school notebook. It said, “Laboratory Notes,” on the front.
It belonged to her mother, Betty explained. Her mother was Florence (Haynes) Starbuck, daughter of Walter and Elizabeth (Moore) Haynes. Betty’s grandfather, Walter, was the oldest of the Haynes brothers; my grandfather, Edward, was the youngest.
Betty turned the pages of the notebook. On yellowing paper, in a delicate hand, recipes had been recorded.
Her mother, Betty explained, had recorded recipes she had tried that she had received from her friends in Portland in a period from about 1900 to the 1920s.
She flipped through the pages, showing me some familiar Jay County family names: Gilpin, Holmes, Coldren, Stanton, Heister, Mills, Metz. Other recipes were attributed simply to “Mama,” or “Aunt Jose.”
Then she turned to the back of the notebook, where her mother had carefully indexed the whole thing. Betty pointed at the page. There, numbered 74, was “Mrs. Ronald’s Date Pudding.”
It was my Grandmother Ronald’s recipe, and there I was without a notebook or pen to copy it down.
It looked as if that bit of family history was lost for good.
Until last month.
Like hundreds of others, my family browsed through the preview before an auction of items from Betty’s estate. I saw plenty of items, but I didn’t see the notebook of recipes anywhere.
Finally, when I got a moment, I asked Doug Loy about it, describing the notebook and its contents. He’d been through everything, he said, and he hadn’t seen it.
She showed it to me last summer at Crowne Point, I said. Maybe it’s mixed in with something else.
I went home discouraged, but a few hours later there was a phone call. It was Doug. He’d found it with a pile of old papers that had come from Betty’s assisted living apartment.
I left what I hoped would be a sufficiently high bid with him and hoped that would be enough.
Turns out, it was.
So now the old collection of recipes is back in the family. I’ve already keystroked several and emailed them to members of the Starbuck and Ronald families. Not only did the collection include that recipe by my Grandmother Ronald, it also had two by my Grandmother Haynes.
I’ve also passed along recipes to John Coldren and John Young that belong in their families.
It’s going to take a while to go through the collection, but when I’m done, the little chemistry notebook will find a permanent home. It belongs with the Jay County Historical Society.[[In-content Ad]]