1854 – Letter from a student at Claverack Academy and Hudson River Institute describing school life including a delicious Thanksgiving feast
Claverack, New York: 1854. Envelope or Cover. This four-page letter on illustrated Claverack Academy and Hudson River Institute stationery from a student, Franklin Roys, to his sisters, Ellen and Carrie, back home in Sheffield, Massachusetts. The letter is datelined, “Nv 30th 1854.” The stationery features a large illustration of the four-story school building. It is enclosed in its original mailing envelope bearing a circular Claverack, New York postmark with a “Dec / 1” manuscript date. In nice shape.
In this family letter, Franklin describes life at the school, especially his recent Thanksgiving dinner.
“I imagine you are all . . . talking about that chicken pie you had for supper and also the pudding and mince pie mashed potatoes and so forth and pitying poor Frank. . ..
“But I’ll tell you . . . that you needn’t do any such thing. Maybe you’ll pity yourselves when I tell you what happened here. . .. Yesterday at Chape Proff. Bannister told us there would be no school tomorrow and in the forenoon we could do what we pleased that is if we pleased to do right . . . and at noon he did not know what would happen. . . . Hold on now . . . don’t be in to much of a hurry to know. . ..
“At noon didn’t we students . . . fall down 4 pair of stairs pretty quick [and] when we got down them, ‘Low and behold’ the tables were all set and . . . about 10 feet clear through the dining hall was a --- Turkey a whole turkey, now what do you think about ‘poor Frank.’ We had potatoes, turnips, bread and butter and for a dessert pumpkin pie and apples. So much for any Thanksgiving supper or dinner rather. But we live first rate here . . . have beef steak for dinner [and] boiled beef for dinner. . .. Yesterday noon we had our “Brown Joe” . . . pie [with] pieces of meat inside. It was first rate I can tell you. About once a week we have fried bread. . .. “Last Sat there was no school and a half a dozen of us took the railroad not the cars and went up to Mellenville about 4 miles from here. We had a very pleasant time of it. . ..
“One thing more there like to have been a fight between some of the students tonight and I guess there will be a war here before it is all over and the difficulty settled. . ..”
. Very good. Item #010819If Frank ate as well as he claimed, his school stood at the top of the educational culinary world. In even the best boarding schools of the time, meals were generally not very good. Food was monotonous, sparse, and unappetizing, in part due to medical though that dictated children should only eat plain, unseasoned food to keep them docile and prevent passions. The daily diet revolved around carbohydrates. Protein was minimal; vegetables and fruit almost nonexistent. Breakfast usually consisted of watery porridge, slightly sweetened with a little molasses and, perhaps, a slice of dry bread with a thin scraping of butter. Dinner (lunch, the big meal of the day) typically featured poor-grad mutton or beef boiled with potatoes and maybe a little bit of a seasonal vegetable. Supper was often only a slice of bread, a cup of milk, and small bowl of broth.
(For more information, see “Dining with the Grahamites” at the Restaurant-ing Through History website.)
.Price: $150.00