Recipe: Civil War and Apple Pies

The following apple pie recipe is from the book, Ever True: A Union Private and His Wife

 (see televised "reader's theater")

by Lisa Saunders

                Nancy's time at Forte Foote was spent baking pies and selling them to the soldiers. Apparently she was a large supplier of these delicacies despite the effort to enforce protection "against free trade in pies” (Roe 51).

Civil War letter describing Nancy's apple pie business at Fort Foote along the Potomac River.  Excerpt from EVER TRUE (now a "reader's theater):

 

To Friends from Charles and Nancy:

 

[Fort Foote]                                               November the 6-1863

Dear Friends,

             I have neglected writing for some time but to tell you the truth, I haven’t got much time.  I am detailed to work on the barracks and nights, I heft to help Nancy peel apples.  Nancy is in the pie business pretty strong.  Since she has come here she has made up seven barrels of apples and most two barrels of flour.  She has a woman to help her a good deal of the time.  She pays her three shilling a day.  We sell about seventy pies a day and after payday, we can sell three times that many, if we had them, and we expect that every day now.  Money is getting pretty scarce with the boys.  We can’t tell how long we shall work in the pie business, but as long as we can get things reasonable, we will. If we could get apples as cheap here as we could out North we could do very well, but apples is four dollars a barrel and flour eight and a half and sugar fourteen cts per pound.  Lard fourteen cts and everything else high. 

            I tell you though I wished you could see our bluff now.  We are a-going to have the nicest place you ever see and a very strong place.  There was part of a Russian fleet went past here the other day.  They lay near at Alexandria.  They though[t] of going to the Navy yard but they draw so much water they think they can’t run up there. Is four of them.  The smallest one draws twenty-seven feet of water.  I tell you they look nice.  There was a monitor [ironclad] went down the river day before yesterday.  We think that the war business looks pretty favorable now but it will be some time yet. In my opinion it depends a good deal on congress now.

            I have traded my old watch off for a revolver and Nancy is practicing on it.  She is getting to be quite a marksman.

            From Charles and Nancy

 

(See a televised reading of the one-act play.)

                I do not have Nancy's exact recipe for those famous bootleg pies, but her great-granddaughter, my mother, is also known throughout the region for her delicious apple pies and has baked many to raise funds for scholarships.  I’ve asked her to share her apple pie recipe.

My mother, like Nancy, makes apple pies in bulk. Nancy and Charles’s farm had apple orchards, so when apples came into season, my mother and grandmother put together several pies and stored them in their large chest freezer that stood in their mudroom. Now my mother owns a similar freezer and fills them with apple pies every fall.

Charles wrote that Nancy made seventy pies a day with the help of others doing the peeling.  My mother believes she probably put some apple filling into one crust, folded it over, pinching the sides together, making small “finger pies.”

Mom's Apple Pie 

Pastry for two crust 9 inch pie:

2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

Generous 2/3 cup shortening (Crisco)

4 - 6 tbsp milk or water

 

Filling
¾ - 1-cup sugar

Dash of salt

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

6 apples

1 tbsp butter

 

Pastry - Sift flour with salt into large bowl.  Cut in shortening with two knives criss-crossing (I use a pastry blender) until pieces are the size of peas.  Add milk one tbsp at a time, stirring gently after each addition. Use just enough liquid to make it possible to gather half of dough together with a well-floured hand.  Too much water and/or too much stirring make pastry tough.  Shape dough with hands into a large thick round disk. Pat down somewhat with hand on a well floured piece of wax paper.  I put the wax paper on a marble slab.  Put more flour on top of dough.  Roll dough with a marble rolling pin.  Roll lightly, but evenly from center to edges.  When pastry is the correct size, pick up wax paper and drape wax paper with dough over right hand (if you are right handed).  Carefully place on pie tin with dough side down.  Gently lift wax paper off dough. If dough sticks in some areas, scrape off with floured knife.  Tears don't matter too much because dough is easy to patch.

Filling - Combine sugar, salt and spices.  Peel, core and thinly slice apples.  Stir in sugar and spices.  Place apples in pie tin making a high rounded dome of the mixture.  Dot with butter.

After filling is placed on bottom pastry in pie tin, put second rolled out pastry on top.  Pinch edges of two crusts together so that it stands up around pie.  Bake in 425F degree oven for about an hour.  Turn down to 400F after 15 min.

I generally spend a day in the kitchen making several pies.  I bake only the pies we will be using within the next couple of days.  The rest are put in freezer unbaked.

The kitchen and I are covered with flour.

Mary Ann McDowell Avazian

Buy Ever True

• From publisher, Heritage Books
• Buy signed copy from author
• Purchase From Amazon

2/10, Mon, 7pm, Civil War Love Letters

Monday, Feb 10, 7pm
Presentation: Ever True: A Union Private and His Wife
Admission: Free and open to the public
New London County Civil War Round Table
Main Auditorium of the Slater Museum
Norwich Free Academy
108 Crescent St.
Norwich, CT  06360
For more information about the program, call Barry Wilson at 860-889-5449 or Vic Busch, Program Director, pvb27@att.net (Most programs last about 45-60 minutes).

The New London Civil War Round Table is hosting Lisa Saunders of Mystic, author of Ever True: A Union Private and His Wife, which features the love letters between Lisa’s great-great grandparents, Charles and Nancy McDowell.  Charles married Nancy when she was 15 years old. Enlisting as a private in the New York 9^th Heavy Artillery two years later, he asked Nancy to save his letters. Despite his grueling battles and marches, he was able to save hers as well. Together, their letters tell of bullets, hangings, prostitutes, venereal disease, typhoid fever, lying injured on the battlefield for days, “clever women,” and the court marshalling of a cow. Ever True is also a “Reader’s Theater,” and Saunders, with the help of the audience, will read several selected letters. (Note: Charles fought in several battles with the 2^nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery in the Sixth Corps.)
 
About the Presenter: Lisa Saunders of Mystic is an award-winning writer, TV host, part-time history interpreter at Mystic Seaport and member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. A graduate of Cornell University, she is the author of several books, including the humorous and historical travel memoir, Mystic Seafarer's Trail. Visit Lisa at: www.authorlisasaunders.com
 
 

1/23/14, Waterford Women’s Club Presents Civil War Love Letters

Author Lisa Saunders of Mystic presents the Civil War love letters featured in the book, Ever True: A Union Private and His Wife, published by Heritage Books. Photo by Collette Fournier.

Free and open to the public

Author Lisa Saunders will present Civil War love letters from her book, Ever True: A Union Private and His Wife published by Heritage Books, to the Waterford Women's Club. The public is invited to attend.

 

Thursday, Jan. 23, 2014, 11 a.m.

Presentation: “Ever True: A Union Private and His Wife”

Waterford Library, lower level

Admission: Free and open to the public

The Waterford Women's Club is hosting Lisa Saunders of Mystic, author of Ever True: A Union Private and His Wife, which features the love letters between Lisa’s great-great grandparents, Charles and Nancy McDowell.  Charles married Nancy when she was 15 years old on Christmas Eve in 1860. Enlisting as a private in the New York 9^th Heavy Artillery two years later, he asked Nancy to save his letters. Despite his grueling battles and marches, he was able to save hers as well. Together, their letters tell of bullets, hangings, prostitutes, venereal disease, “clever women,” and the court marshalling of a cow. Ever True is also a "readers theater." (Charles fought in several battles with the 2^nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery in the Sixth Corps.)

Lisa Saunders of Mystic is an award-winning writer, TV host, and part-time history interpreter at Mystic Seaport. A graduate of Cornell University, she is the author of several books, including the humorous and historical travel memoir, Mystic Seafarer's Trail.

 The Civil War love letters of Private Charles McDowell and his wife Nancy featured in the book, Ever True: A Union Private and His Wife, published by Heritage Books.

Photo by Larry Chester.

 

 Lisa will be joined in the reading of the letters by Captain Marcus John Fisk and Pamela Collins Fisk of New London, Connecticut.

 

Captain Marcus John Fisk has appeared in over 30 stage productions in Virginia, Maryland, Colorado and California. Most recently, Fisk was in A Christmas Carol (Scrooge), Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, 1776, Broadway Bound, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (George), in the Washington DC area. He authored the book to the Vietnam POW musical, Four Part Harmony, slated for a 2015 NYC production and was the Technical Advisor to the Discovery Channel production, Vietnam POWs: Stories of Survival, which received the 1998 Emmy Award for Best Documentary. He has just completed the screenplay, The Sea Devil, on the life of Count Felix von Luckner, a swashbuckling, chivalric German Officer who raided allied shipping in WWI. A retired Navy Captain and graduate of the Naval Academy, Fisk is a consultant with the Department of the Navy on Special Operations and Irregular Warfare. 

 

Pamela Collins Fisk worked many years as a staffer for Congressman Joe Kennedy and then went on to own and operate a Bed & Breakfast on Nantasket Beach in the Boston area.  She has modeled for various designers doing both runway and print, and was a Historic Interpreter for George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon in Virginia.  She is planning on opening another B&B at her new Victorian home in New London this spring, and is currently finishing her book, The Innkeepers Diary, to be published this summer. Pamela and her husband, Captain Marcus John Fisk, have two sons and a daughter and are expecting their first granddaughter in April. The couple now lives in New London, Connecticut. They can be reached at pcollins0404.pf@gmail.com.

 

See event flyer at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WhYlLsRaWuEHvUkuu-2kvwtz6xC9iyBYa0f-BRGJI0Q/edit?usp=sharing

For more information about the event, contact Gay Clarkson, Co-President, Waterford Woman’s Club, at gaywil@cox.net, or Waterford Public Library at 49 Rope Ferry Road Waterford, Connecticut 06385, Tel. 860-444-5805.

###

 

 

Lisa Saunders to Present Ever True: A Union Private and His Wife

Ever True: A Union Private and His Wife is the story of one couple’s devotion to their country and each other in the midst of the Civil War’s infidelities, scandals and ever present threat of death. Through the actual love letters of Private Charles McDowell and his 17-year-old wife, Nancy, you will not only hear of dreams, desertions and disease, but of hangings and the court marshalling of a cow. Published by Heritage Books.

Reviews of Ever True:

"Unusual ..."American Civil War Magazine"

 

"An intimate portrayal of the relationship between a husband and wife that makes them interesting reading for anyone." Civil War News

 

"Charming and romantic in a very personal way." Heritage Books

 

"The story of how the marriage between Charles and Nancy survives separation, disease, the threat of death, and malicious gossip is compelling." Pamela Goddard, Ithaca Times

Charles McDowell married Nancy when she was 15 years old. Enlisting as a private in the New York 9^th Heavy Artillery, he asked Nancy, then 17, to save his letters. Despite his grueling battles and marches, he was able to save hers as well. Nancy’s letters give us the worries and gossip of a teenage wife during the war. Her fears for Charles are many and include:

• Prostitutes
• Venereal disease
• Bullets
• Typhoid Fever
• Lying injured on the battlefield for days
• Being taken prisoner
• “Clever women”

Nancy’s happiest time during the war was the year she spent with Charles while he was stationed at Fort Foote in Washington. She ran an apple pie business, selling 70 a day to the soldiers, and learned how to shoot a revolver. Before returning to her parents to recover from Typhoid Fever, she met Lincoln and shook his hand. Nancy was unable to return to Washington because Charles’s regiment was sent out to "chase old Lee."

 

Charles’s letters tell of the battles of Cold Harbor, Jerusalem Plank Road, Monocacy, Opequon (Winchester), Cedar Creek, the Siege of Petersburg, an attack by Mosby's Men, and the Shenandoah Valley Campaign.

 

Great-great granddaughter Lisa Saunders will tell the “back story” of her book, Ever True: A Union Private and His Wife. She is also available to present her “reader’s theater,” Ever True: A Civil War Love Story, with members of your organization if so desired. The play, which debuted at Lafayette Theater in New York, has been produced by Emerson Theater, Historical Societies, Lincoln Depot Museum and many others. Play reviews include:

 

"The audience was greatly moved... The letters of the play's characters, Charles and Nancy McDowell, bring to vivid life our ancestors' world. We travel with Charles and Nancy through the trials of camp life, the devastation of battle, and the challenges of day-to-day life on the home front. Nancy's gossip is a wonderful release when we are swept up in one of the most turbulent times in American history. At the play's end, feeling an overwhelming sense of our nation's history, we responded with raised voices to sing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," our tribute to the sacrifices of all the veterans and citizens who have preserved our freedoms and way of life." John Quinn, Event Coordinator of the 2005 Civil War Music Heritage Gathering And Encampment,New York Regimental Balladeers.

 

"Dear Lisa, I wanted to thank you for making "Ever True" possible.  The Museum of Wayne County History recently performed the play under a tent on our lawn.  The atmosphere--complete with crickets, church bells, and train whistles in the distance--evoked what Charles and Nancy could have heard.  Everyone in the audience LOVED the performance.  One man told me he was "hanging on every word."  People laughed at Nancy's gossipy chatter and fell silent when Charles spoke of men who had been killed.  The entire experience was very moving.  This production of "Ever True" was one of our most memorable events of the summer." Joe O'Toole, Executive Director, Museum of Wayne County History

 

"[Nancy] could have been the Rona Barrett of the Civil War." Sun & Record

About Lisa Saunders:

Lisa Saunders is an award-winning writer and TV host living in Mystic, Connecticut, with her husband and hound. She works as a part-time history interpreter at Mystic Seaport and is a columnist for In Town. A graduate of Cornell University, she is the author of several books, winner of the National Council for Marketing & Public Relations Gold Medallion, and continues to write for several clients. She holds writing/publishing workshops for children and adults.

 

Note: Charles fought alongside the 2^nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery in the Sixth Corps.

 

 

Civil War Script Read by Author

Lisa Saunders reads the part of the narrator with others reading the parts of Charles and Nancy. These are excerpts of letters from the book, Ever True: A Union Private and His Wife.
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G74TBGATbSE&feature=youtu.be

Civil War Letters Found

Ever True: A Civil War Love Story

I carefully unfolded the stiff yellowed paper, incredulous that I was actually touching a letter written during the American Civil War. It was one of 150 letters written between my great great grandparents that I had discovered in a small wooden box in my mother's attic in Suffern, New York. The note I held in my hand, authored by Private Charles McDowell to his wife Nancy, was written on a small, plain piece of stationery--not at all fancy like some of the others in the batch which bore sketches of the White House and battle engagements. I gently smoothed it flat on the table, afraid I would tear it. The handwriting was strange, the ink somewhat faded, making it difficult to read. And then suddenly I came upon a word I recognized in an instant--Abe! It read, "We have [Secretary of State] Seward down here about every other day, and sometimes he fetches Old Abe with him and [he] looks about like any old farmer." I couldn't believe it - Charles met Lincoln!

In addition to the letters was Nancy's obituary, which reads: "MRS. MCDOWELL IS DEAD - SHOOK HANDS WITH LINCOLN. With the death of Mrs. Nancy Wager McDowell...the town of Sodus probably loses the distinction of having a resident who could boast of having shaken hands and talked with the martyred Lincoln… Mr. McDowell was a member of the Ninth New York Heavy Artillery in the Union Army and it was while stationed near Washington that his wife had an opportunity to speak with the President. Mrs. McDowell passed nearly a year in that vicinity and many were the pies she baked for the soldiers stationed at the capital. Typhoid Fever caused her to return to Alton to the home of her parents…" ("The Record," Sodus, Wayne County, N.Y. September 18, 1931)

I took the collection of letters back to my home in Maryland and began what was to become an exciting ten-year adventure. First I arranged the letters from Charles by date and began to read. Once I grew accustomed to his old-style handwriting and run-on sentences, I felt myself leaving the present and entering his past. I traveled back over 130 years and joined Charles in heart and mind. I felt his loneliness, his boredom, his fear. I laughed when he found a reason to laugh. He and his brother had enlisted despite his Canadian father's pleas to stay out of the war. As the months of his service turned into years, I hurt over his deep longing for his wife and home and for the life and family he left behind in Canada.

In other letters I was shocked to read of the desertions, hangings, amputations, prostitution, and even theft and murder among Union troops. Charles wrote home about the battles of Cold Harbor, Jerusalem Plank Road, Monocacy, Opequon (Winchester), Cedar Creek, the Siege of Petersburg, an attack by Mosby's Men, and the Shenandoah Valley Campaign.
Next I tackled Nancy’s writing. As her collection of letters drew to an end, I was completely immersed in her anxious thoughts about Charles's welfare. She hoped there hadn't been a "ball made to kill" him. She hoped he wouldn't get too close to the Southern women when he occupied their homes. She longed for him to return to her--even if it was just for a short furlough. She wrote that she would rather be dead than continue to live the way they were. I now pondered the final years of her life spent rocking in her chair looking out the window. Perhaps she was awaiting her death so Charles could come for her once more…