Here’s another recipe memoir. Lucinda was my grandmother’s grandmother, so her recipe for ginger cookies is probably the oldest family heirloom we have. I made these cookies one Thanksgiving. In spite of the fact that they are not as rich as the cookies we are used to eating today, the high school kids gobbled them up. Lucinda Frances (Locke) Mock lived from 1846 to 1940.
Helen Jewett's Quick Chocolate Cookies
April 2, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Recipe memoirs are fun to share. I wrote one about my Grandmother Jewett and her Quick Chocolate Cookies. Grandmother Jewett used to pick up my cousins Clay and Kurt after school in Sonoita, AZ, in her Chevy Coupe, and take them to choir practice at the Patagonia Methodist Church, about 12 miles away. Grandmother Jewett was the church choir director and accompanist. The boys were allowed to each have just one cookie when they got off the bus. They always tried to pick the biggest one in the tin. The rest of the cookies were for the choir. I made the cookies for Clay and his partner, Joyce Bilodea, when they came to visit. Clay said they were true to the taste he remembered from childhood.
Take a look and get some ideas. Let me know how your recipe memoir works out.
Women’s History Month
March 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Mary Jewett Telford (1839-1906)
In honor of Women’s History Month, Civil War historian Vicki Profitt and I are working together to honor Mary Jewett Telford (my great-great-great aunt). My husband, Evan Marshall, and I attended Vicki’s talk Illuminated History: The Civil War Soldiers of Perinton, which included a profile of Mary Jewett Telford.
Mary Jewett Telford lived the fullest life possible for an aspiring white woman in 19th-century America. She was a Civil War nurse, wife of Jacob Telford, adoptive mother of Civil War orphan girls, post-Civil War veterans’ humanitarian as charter member of the Woman’s Relief Corps (WRC), suffragette, magazine editor and writer, and speaker on the national temperance circuit. Her parents, Dr. Lester Jewett and Hannah Southwick Jewett, a Quaker, were progressives who believed in the education and achievements of women. The Jewett family were abolitionists and their farm in Seneca, New York, was the second-to-last stop before Canada on the Underground Railway, according to Mary.
This month, we are asking you to share a minibio about a female ancestor. We would like to interview you about your female ancestor and share your stories on our blogs. Please contact us below.
Thank you for honoring the important contributions of women.
Review of Ben Yagoda’s “Memoir…
November 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Review of Ben Yagoda’s “Memoir” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/25/AR2009112502870.html
Just subscribed to ancestry.co…
November 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Just subscribed to ancestry.com. Do you write memoir stories there?
RT @tweetmeme Personal Stories…
November 12, 2009 By Leave a Comment
RT @tweetmeme Personal Stories, Recipes, and Memoir Writing Combine in this Memoir Vignette — Women’s Memoir Writing http://bit.ly/KWXH9
Nice Day for a White Wedding
July 24, 2009 By 3 Comments
An email about Lilly Friedman’s parachute wedding dress is making the rounds again. The email is un-credited, or I would attribute the source, but I can confirm that Lilly Friedman’s wedding dress is for real and is exhibited at The Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
Over 60 years ago, Lilly (Lax) Friedman was a DP (displaced person) in Bergen Belsen Displaced Person’s camp. Lilly had survived Auschwitz, a forced labor camp, a death march, and Bergen Belsen itself. In 1946, when Lilly Lax and Ludwig Friedman decided to marry, Ludwig bartered two pounds of coffee beans and a couple of packs of cigarettes for a German parachute. With the help of a seamstress, Lilly created the white wedding gown she was determined to have when she and Ludwig stood under the chuppah (wedding canopy). Many other DP brides borrowed Lilly’s dress. How many? “I stopped counting after 17,” says Lilly. For these women, the dress symbolized a return to normalcy after the Holocaust. Lilly’s father and her two brothers were exterminated immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. Lilly and two sisters survived and live near each other now in Brooklyn, NY.
As a friend of mine said, “Amazing that she kept the dress.” That’s something I would have done. I still have the kippah (yarmulke) from the first bar mitzvah I ever went to. Do you have a beloved object you’ve kept all these years because of what it means to you? Perhaps an item of clothing, a watch, a medal, or a souvenir? Why not write a memoir about it? Write down “who, what, when, where, why, and how.” Where did you get it? Who made it? What does it mean to you? Tell its story. Lilly’s parachute wedding dress is a great example of an object with a story to tell. What is your parachute wedding dress?
My parachute wedding dress is an apron that belonged to my paternal great-great grandmother, Martha Anne (Moore) Gott (born 12-25-1834 died 3-9-1917, age 82). A few years ago, I was given Martha's apron on a family visit to the Gotts in Montrose, Colorado (my late father’s cousin, the late Max Gott, and wife, Darlene Gott). Darlene gave it to me and said, “Her name was Martha. You should have this.”
I want to preserve the apron and possible display it, but don’t know how. Any ideas? Let me know.
Saying “No” to a One-Act Existence
July 20, 2009 By 2 Comments
Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes, died over the weekend. Our friend, Robert Siegel, M.D., studied English with McCourt in a New York City public high school. I remember Robert saying McCourt was supportive, engaging, and fun. As a teacher, he spent time to give a little extra to his students, took them out, got to know them. As Hillel Italie said of Angela’s Ashes in today’s AP obituary, the 1996 book was “perhaps the ultimate case of the non-celebrity memoir.” But underneath its Irish charm, Angela’s Ashes was an expression of defiance. ”I refused to settle for a one-act existence,” said McCourt. He set out to write about his past, but would not let himself be bound by it. He went on–after 30 years of teaching–to describe his childhood in a book that has been published in 25 languages, in 30 countries, selling millions of copies, winning the Pulitzer Prize. Angela’s Ashes was the beginning of a long and successful second act. An ordinary man, an extraordinary memoir.
My passion is helping everyday people write their personal memoirs. I expect most of these memoirs will be self-published, distributed to family and friends. Unfortunately, times have changed since McCourt published Angela’s Ashes and unless you’re a celebrity, you probably won’t get your memoir published by a commercial publisher. (That’s what so great about all the print-on-demand, self-publishing options, which I will write more about in subsequent blogs).
Frank McCourt taught us that we are all ordinary. But our memoirs can be extraordinary. If you limit the scope of your memoir to a small topic (e.g., dad’s hearing aids), if you write honestly (it made you mad when he turned them off during fights with your mother), and if you include descriptions of concrete details (his hearing aids used to have a wire going over his head like a headband), your memoir can make the ordinary extraordinary. That’s because no one perceives the world exactly as you do.
Here’s to ordinary people writing extraordinary memoirs. And to saying “no” to a one-act existence. Do you think your memoir will be an act of defiance? Let me know.
Ruth Reichl’s new memoir, Not …
April 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Ruth Reichl’s new memoir, Not Becoming My Mother, looks fascinating and I’ve just ordered it.
Help me with my research. Have…
April 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Help me with my research. Have you written a memoir for yourself or your family? If so, tell me: why?
I'm Martha Jewett and my passion is helping others capture their life stories. The purpose of this website is to share tips, ideas and resources on writing and even publishing your own memoir. Please share your own tips and experiences here and feel free to 
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