1827 - Receipts and Big Feet! - A Few More Bits About G. Thorburn & Sons, Seedsmen

In poking around the Hyde Hall site I found two seed receipts of Grant Thorburn and Sons that are wonderful to read.  What insight into what an 1827 gardener would want for a well funded estate!!
(Hyde Hall looks to be a lovely place to visit if you are going near Cooperstown, NY.)


In the "you learn something new every day" category, I didn't know that "do" is the same as writing " for ditto.  When my eye first caught it under the "White Solid Celery" it read, to me, "Red Do Da", which I found fascinating for the moment it took the clues to process.  Oh well.



The following year a few more items were needed.



Now, about those feet...

"Museum Of Foreign Literature, Ac, for January -, E. Litteix, Philad.—This periodical, than which none affords more, or more varied reading, appears in an enlarged form, and henceforth will be under the direction, as to the selections, of the editor of that capital and cheap work, Waldie's Library.  

There is a good plate in this number of our old friend Grant Thorburn, which, if not very like as to the fact, is unmistakeable as to the feet.   The literary contents are of the best of all the foreign magazines."

Here is the illustration I originally posted January 2014 in the post about Grant Thorburn,

Wiser to Marry than Hire a Housekeeper,

with the comment,  "Do you find the feet oddly big?".  

I had assumed an artist had a bad day!

1911 - "Prepare To Be Delighted" - A. T. Cook's "Coffee" Berry

You have to hand it to him...A. T. Cook was a salesman to his bones.  





















He was selling soybeans to be grown as the replacement for coffee.  After roasting, grinding and brewing the resulting beverage was praised in his ad below.  



Postum was concocted around this time.  If you haven't ever drunk it I can tell you it isn't too bad...but like coffee it ain't!!!!!  

Cook was cashing in on this craze for healthful coffee substitutes.  Early Postum (I think) was also brewed from the toasted and ground wheat berries, but later versions were instant Postum.  That is the one available now.

Someone in an old article from this time talks about wheat coffee (Postum) as wheat soup. :-)  A real coffee lover I'm guessing!

I had to look up the word Iamatological!  Never saw it before...but it is an obsolete noun meaning the science of remedies.

New Domestic Coffee Berry. 

The best coffee substitute ever discovered— many  pronouncing it as good as the genuine, and is superseding in a great measure store coffee as its merits become known. It is the 
poor man's friend.    It is the hardiest, easiest raised and most productive of any plant I 
ever saw. While growing it is a perfect sight to behold; fruits from the ground up, and on 
the limbs in every direction, the pods touching each other.
In the south two crops of coffee can be raised in a season by planting the first crop early. 

Many claim that by mixing a few grains of store coffee with the Domestic, combining
 the flavors, they obtain a more delicious and aromatic beverage than the imported 
article.