I had a welcome surprise the other day. I received an email from a stranger who was cataloguing a huge collection of antique cookbooks. He read my blog posts about my great grandmother’s cook booklets and said he ran into copies. We exchanged a few emails. He said he was impressed and they were a good representation from that era. We’re talking late 1890s to early 1900s.

I mentioned there was one booklet that I didn’t have. “16 Studies in White and Gold,” which are egg recipes. He scanned and emailed it to me. A week later he said he found an extra copy, asked for my address and mailed it to me! I was thrilled. Since he doesn’t have “Sick Room Necessities,” I scanned it for him. Also, I found several letters and photos of Nellie’s as well as her husband’s obituary, scanned those and sent them to him. (FYI, Nellie went by her married name as a cook booklet publisher extraordinaire, Mrs. De Witt C. Owen. Her real name was Ella Upton Leighton Owen.)

Nellie’s husband De Witt was first a printer and then a newspaper publisher. Eventually they left Dixon, Illinois for the “far west” moving to Anacortes, Washington where he was publisher of another newspaper. They settled in Marysville, Wash. when he took over that town’s newspaper. My namesake grandmother Elizabeth Owen was their only child. When my mom Mary Ella (named after her grandmother) grew up in Marysville, Nellie lived next door. She was in my mother’s memory a loving and kind grandmother, the most nurturing person in my mom’s life. Nellie died in 1948, so I unfortunately never met her.

Nellie was a strong woman and set the type herself for her cook booklets that she sold across the nation for 10 cents each. Her market was ladies’ church auxiliaries. The booklets were used as fundraisers, much as our kids sold gift wrap to raise money for their school. My aunt told me that at times, Nellie supported her husband and daughter with her cook book sales.

If you want to read more about Nellie and her cook booklets, I wrote about her HERE.

Here’s an except from “Sick Room Necessities:”

Have a wonderful Easter weekend! Any plans to celebrate Easter, Passover or Spring?

I found a few photos of Ella Leighton Hunter (Hunter was her maiden name, Nellie was her nickname) in an old family photo album. It includes photos of Rose Hunter and A.J. Blethen. Blethen founded The Seattle Times and the family still owns the paper generations later.

I found postcards from Rose Hunter Blethen writing that she was looking forward to seeing Ella at Christmas. Ella was adopted into the Hunter family after her parents died. Dr. Hunter, Rose’s dad, thought Ella was so cute and always thought well of her. She was adopted as a young child. I’m enjoying researching our family heritage and am impressed that as a journalism major, I’ve got lots of newspaper history in my blood!