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Subject: Collecting Butler County ancestor stories & recipes
Date: 15 Jun 2004 13:31:24 -0600

This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.

Surnames: WILLI
Classification: Query

Message Board URL:

http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/0R.2ADE/2175

Message Board Post:

Family stories, recipes, food, cooking, gardening, hunting, fishing... plowing with a mule, picking plums in the summer and scuppernongs in the fall, gathering eggs and milking cows ...

It's The Butler County Historical & Genealogical Society's 40th ANNIVERSARY in 2004 and we don't want to leave any ancestors, neighbors and friends out of our COOKBOOK project. We'd love for you to join us and share your family recipes and stories!

Folks have turned in recipes from "Aunt Christine" (the amazing Gaston twins, Christine & Ernestine, are now age 95) and "Grandma Rumbley" (who never sifted her cornmeal and baked special batches for her children and her chickens).

"Ralph's Barbecue Sauce" is a great recipe and so is "Aunt Belle's Pound Cake" (be ready to use a LOT of eggs and REAL butter). Winnie Gafford sent a wonderful photo and story of the woodstove that's been in her family for 3 generations, and Gayle Hogelin's story about "Grandma's Raisin Cake" is a touching memory. The cake sounds good, too.

We've got recipes from Utah to Texas and Maryland, from old-fashioned slow-cooked "REAL Brunswick Stew" to modern microwave recipes. Send us just one or a dozen favorites and we'll include all we have room for.

We're even going to have some of Hank Williams' recipes in the book. One of his cousins in Georgiana tells how Hank's mother, Miss Lillie, used to make meat loaf in a coffee can --- now, that's an old-fashioned Southern recipe! Just wait till you try it. And naturally Hank's favorite food was fried chicken (how Southern can you get)? We'll have that classic recipe for you to try. But of course if you're a real Southern cook yourself, you don't USE a recipe to fry chicken -- you're BORN knowing how to do it! Southerners can make potato salad and fried chicken in their sleep, and throw in a batch of buttermilk biscuits and fresh peach cobbler on the side.

Hank's daughter Jett Williams is sending us a recipe. She was just down in Butler County at the Hank Williams Festival in Georgiana. Very friendly, very nice young lady. Looks JUST like her daddy and boy, can she sing. If you haven't ever looked up her web site, take a look at http://www.jettwilliams.com/home.htm

My mother (Myra Ware Williams Crenshaw, first president of the historical society) really would've loved this project. I'll never forget her homemade chicken pie, purple-hull peas cooked straight from the garden and blackberry cobbler ... wonderful Southern meals to remember. We children really enjoyed it, once we got through picking the blackberry stickers out of our fingers! Growing up on a farm, you helped with the work or you didn't eat. No pain, no gain. We loved every minute of it.

If you're a member of our society, send in a favorite recipe or two of yours, your parents, grandparents and cousins. You don't have to live in Butler County right now today to be part of the project. After all, our mutual kinfolks are not only in Butler County but all around in Lowndes, Wilcox, Monroe, Conecuh, Crenshaw, Montgomery, Dallas.... in nearly every county and almost in every state, all directions on the compass. And you're in one of those directions!

If you're not a member, you can join the Society for only $12.00 and share in this wonderful recipe & story project that memorializes our families' good Southern cooking for generations and generations. Send your $12.00 membership dues to BCHGS, P. O. Box 561, Greenville, AL 36037, and send your recipes and stories to Annie at the e-mail address on this message.

With membership, you'll get our 4 ANNIVERSARY YEAR QUARTERLIES, too. It's a special year celebrating 40 years of genealogy in Butler County in 2004! The historical society has been preserving the history and heritage of Butler County and its families since 1964. Hard to believe it's been that long. The ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION in October with the Alabama Historical Association joining us in Greenville is going to be FANTASTIC. Hundreds of folks will be there!

You can send recipes directly to me by e-mail and they'll be easy for me to cut and paste into the recipe database. Or just xerox or write out and send by regular old Uncle Sam mail. Deadline for members has already arrived, so join right now, send your recipes in and share in this great project.

Hope to hear back from you soon,
Annie C.
306 Government St., Wetumpka, AL 36092

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