Than a Potluck: Shared Meals and Community-Building in Rural Nebraska at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Nebraska History posts materials online for your personal use. Please remember that the contents of Nebraska History are copyrighted by the Nebraska State Historical Society (except for materials credited to other institutions). The NSHS retains its copyrights even to materials it posts on the web. For permission to re-use materials or for photo ordering information, please see: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/magazine/permission.htm Nebraska State Historical Society members receive four issues of Nebraska History and four issues of Nebraska History News annually. For membership information, see: http://nebraskahistory.org/admin/members/index.htm Article Title: More Than a Potluck: Shared Meals and Community-Building in Rural Nebraska at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Full Citation: Nathan B Sanderson, “More Than a Potluck: Shared Meals and Community-Building in Rural Nebraska at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Nebraska History 89 (2008): 120-131 URL of article: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/publish/publicat/history/full-text/NH2008Potluck.pdf Date: 2/11/2014 Article Summary: Shared meals were the cornerstone of events and celebrations in Nebraska’s early years, offering rural families a chance to gather, socialize, and escape the lonely drudgery that filled much of their lives. Cataloging Information: Names: Luna Sanford Kellie, Etta Simons Organizations Sponsoring Potlucks: Wagner Sunday School, Knights Templar, Modern Woodmen, Community Club, Old Settlers Club, Scottish Rite Masons, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Grange, Volunteer Fireman’s Association, United Methodist Church Nebraska Counties Mentioned: Adams, Cherry, Custer, Fillmore, Lincoln, Keya Paha Keywords: Luna Sanford Kellie, “The Home” (Loup City Northwestern column) Photographs / Images: a gathering featuring a shared meal (John Nelson photograph); a family picnic; a meal hosted by the Knights Templar in the park at Broken Bow in 1922; families enjoying watermelon or ice cream at a picnic; Luna Kellie; inset household tips from “The Home”; young people, perhaps gathered for a game or a performance; Nelson Potter and his family, Custer County (Solomon Butcher photograph); 1883 picnic of the Fullerton Methodist Church at Wiltse Grove MORE THAN A POTLUCK B Y NAT HAN B. SAN D E RSON Free ice cream and lemonade. These summer time staples were the highlight of the Wagner Sunday School picnic held in rural Custer County on a warm Wednesday afternoon in June 1910. GE(:)RCiE MOORE MADE THE ICE CREAM, the Sunday School reimbursed her. main course, however, was not purdlasl2d, as "the ladies brought the baskets and a dinner was served."! Throughout the numerous picnics, celebrations, and church events took place in Custer County, many featuring a potluck-style main course. Shared meals, in which families and friends gathered together to eat, drink, and socialize, were an integral part of creating a sense of "community" in rural Nebraska at the turn of the twentieth century. The traditional history of rural Nebraska in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is a story of determined homesteaders scratching out a life,livelihood, and home from the thick prairie sad. Rugged individuals, usually male, broke the land and built farms, ranches, and communities through the force of their will and constant, never While the traditional story of Nebraska's prairie ending, work. Even in the twenty-first century, rural pioneer heritage lives on, recently other aspects of Nebraskans still pride themselves on a tremendous community-building have come to light. Deborah work ethic, a legacy 6f their immigrant forefathers Fink, in Agrarian Women: Wives and Mothers in who spent hard lives at hard labor. But sweat alone Rural Nebraska, 1880-1940, argues that frontier did not build the towns that dot the landscape. life, instead of liberating women and offering them Food, games, and celebrations helped make the a rough equality with men, in fact reasserted the sod, wood, and bricks of these places into commu notion that a woman's "proper" place was in the nities of friends and neighbors. home. Fink focuses on the ways in which women's Shared Meals and Community-Building in Rural Nebraska at the Turn of the Twentieth Century a man work, which fundamentally influenced the struc A community-wide event was likely the setting ture of farming and rural communities, remained where Nelson photographed thisfamily's picnic. NSHSRG3542-102-5 subordinate to men's work, at least in the eyes of their husbands and fathers. In numerous instances, The role of women in rural America has also Fink points out that food-primarily its acquisition received a great deal of study in the last twenty and preparation-was one of the most important years. Works such as Joan Jensen's Calling this elements of a rural Nebraska woman's life." Yet for Place Home and Promise to the Land; Cornelia Pages 120-21: all her focus on food as it relates to women's lives, Flora, Jan Flora, and Susan Fey's Rural Communi This photograph of a gath ering featuring a shared the enjoyable aspects of mealtimes fail to come to ties: Legacy and Change; Sandra Schackel's meal was taken by Ericson, light. The Iarmwives in Fink's study often mention Western Women's Lives; Nancy Grey Osterund's Nebraska, photographer preparing meals for ice cream socials, picnics, Bonds of Community; and many others have John Nelson sometime in school events, and funerals, but the importance of explored women's roles in rural areas and exam the early twentieth century. food in strengthening families and communities is ined the ways in which their lives give insight into The people and places in most of the Nelson photo overlooked. the larger story of the growth and development of graphs, including those in The study of food and cooking has been on the the United States.' this article, remain uniden rise in recent years and new texts have provided Despite these and many other important works, tified. NSHSRG3542-1-2-11 valuable insight into the ways what we eat, how the relationship between shared meals and the we eat it, and where the eating takes place influ sense of "community" in rural areas of Nebraska ences our lives. Titles such as A History of Cooks has been ignored. The towns that dot the Nebraska Nathan B. Sanderson is and Cooking; Women, Food, and Families; and landscape may have been built on sweat and a Ph.D. candidate in A History of Food: From Manna to Microwave have determination, but once the work had ended, American history at the appeared in abundance." No monograph has celebrations with food, games, and socializing University of Nebraska explored Nebraska cooking in detail, and although solidified that work as the product of an entire Lincoln. most general studies have noted that different community. These events took on various forms, types of meals cause different feelings among but almost all featured a shared meal as its center the participants, few have examined the value of piece. Shared meals were the cornerstone of shared meals as a time of bonding and community celebrations in Nebraska's early years, offering building in rural areas. women and their families a chance to gather, 122 . NEBRASKA history socialize, enjoy a meal and a conversation, and As "a meal for which participants share the respon escape from the lonely drudgery that filled much sibility of providing the food and taking it to the of their lives. An examination of the meals they meal-site," early residents knew them as "bring a shared offers a glimpse into their lives and gives basket" picnics, chip-in dinners, pitch-in suppers, us a fuller understanding of life, leisure, and work shared picnics, or simply basket meals." By the around the turn of the twentieth century. mid-twentieth century, these meals became known For rural Nebraska families during the late nine to many Nebraskans as "potlucks." Before taking teenth and early twentieth centuries, any chance on this meaning, a potluck meal meant (and still for social interaction was an important event. does, in some places) literally "taking the luck of Settlers often lived miles from their nearest neigh the pot." If a man invited a friend home for pot bor and the steady labor required to keep up a luck, he offered whatever his wife happened to homestead offered few opportunities for leisure be cooking. In print, the term can be traced to the activities. As D. Sven Nordin observed in Rich sixteenth century, although its origins likely extend Harvest: A History ofthe Grange, 1867-1900, "a back even farther. In Europe during the early farmer's lot in the nineteenth century was noted Middle Ages, servants at large estates cooked food more for its backbreaking work than for its pleasur in a massive cauldron, left hanging over the fire for able aspects." Isolation from relatives, friends, and days at a time. As Reay Tannahill noted in Food in neighbors brought mental and emotional suffering History, "[t] he cauldron, probably, was the original to many homesteaders; loneliness, the perceived stockpot or pot-au-feu, providing an ever-changing desolation of the land, and the difficulty of making broth enriched daily with whatever happened to Most Nebraska money on a new claim drove many to escape the be available, and very rarely cleared out except in newspapers did not plains any way they could." To reduce feelings of preparation for the meatless weeks of Lent." The seclusion and isolation, rural Nebraskans engaged regular addition of new food to the pot changed begin referring to in many social activities that combined work, its flavor constantly, possibly leading to the phrase, shared meals as food, and entertainment. Events such as barn "to take pot-luck." raisings, corn huskings, quilting parties, Grange Later, the term "potluck" was also used as a meetings, church activities, and school functions general luck-of-the-draw phrase in various parts of until the 1930s offered an opportunity to enjoy the company of the United States.

Load more