Houston Holiday Entertaining by Helen Belcher

November 25, 2012

Helen Belcher

Historical Interpreter

As we recover from our Thanksgiving holiday meal and get ready for our Christmas feasts, we at the Museum have taken time to do a little research on what Margaret Houston would have had on her table.  Margaret Houston had the reputation as being a gracious and easy hostess.  Much of the credit for her fame as a hostess goes to the indispensable Eliza Revel, a slave who came to Texas with Margaret in 1840. Eliza, who, as a child of four, was sold into slavery to Temple Lea, Margaret’s father.

According to William Seale’s book, Sam Houston’s Wife, “Eliza operated the kitchen and cooked the cakes that brought compliments to Margaret.  Houston’s friends never hesitated to stop by for a meal, according to the custom of a day when there were insufficient means of preserving food and quantities of it had to be cooked and eaten or thrown to the hogs….At mealtime, Houston and his guests walked to the house, where in the summertime they were served at the cherry banquet table Margaret placed in the loggia. She set her table with monogrammed silver and surrounded it with homely mule-ear chairs whose cowhide seats, the general liked to note, retained their animal hair.”

The kitchen was the most important place on the Woodland Home farm with Eliza directing kitchen duties.  The Houston household, including the servants, comprised nineteen people, but at times there were as many as twenty-two people to be served at a mealtime.  At times traveling ministers, political friends, and people with letters of introduction from all parts of the United States sat down for a meal with the Houston’s.

When there wasn’t enough silver and cutlery, Nancy Lea, mother of Margaret and a frequent guest, supplemented what was lacking.  Blue and white china tureens and platters, purchases from the Gibb’s store, were placed on tablecloths Margaret had brought from Alabama.  There was said to have been a monogrammed punch bowl, which was a gift sent by the Sultan of Morocco to the President of the Republic of Texas.

Most all of the food prepared was raised or grown on the farm.  Pork, chicken, corn bread, and potatoes were staples of their diet. On occasion a beef was strung on saplings to be cured for cooking. Other vegetables were added to the Houston garden.  In Margaret’s letter dated December 23, 1853 to Houston, she requested seeds for the following: long scarlet radish seed; cabbages( three varieties, the early York, drum head and flat Dutch cabbage); the beet; salsify (a parsnip type root); lettuce; artichoke; squash; long green cucumber; and eggplant. The herbs from the kitchen garden were used to enhance the food, with rosemary being a favorite of Margaret’s.

Holiday entertaining for the Houston’s would probably have happened in mid-December before Houston left for Washington, D.C.  According to letters from The Personal Correspondence of Sam Houston edited by Madge Thornall Roberts, Senator Houston would be traveling in order to be at the opening of the Senate session the first of January.  Margaret, the children, extended family, and friends would celebrate Christmas dinner in a quieter fashion than when General Houston was in residence.

On the Sam Houston Memorial Museum’s website we have a variety of recipes from the Houston Family.  Check out the listing under “Fun Stuff – Aunt Eliza’s Recipes”.  Sections include Margaret’s White Cake Recipe from the Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center in Liberty, Texas.  Another favorite of the Museum’s staff is the Tea Cakes; a very simple but tasty cookie. The recipe is as follows:

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

2 ½ cups flour

pinch salt

2 tsp. baking powder

vanilla or lemon extract to taste

1 egg

Cream butter and sugar and then add the well beaten egg. Fold the flour into this mixture with the addition of a few tablespoons of milk or buttermilk and the vanilla. Add extra flour as needed, in order to roll out the dough. Roll out to approximately ¼ to ½ inches thick and cut out cakes with a small cookie cutter. These little cakes will spread in the oven, so avoid making them too large. Bake at 350° until lightly brown.

Please join us on the grounds of the Woodland Home on Saturday, December 1^st for Houston Family Christmas to start the holiday season with period goodies from Eliza’s kitchen as the Houston family would have done while living here over a 150 years ago.  The historic Woodland Home will be open to the public and historical demonstrations will be taking place around the grounds.  Santa Claus will also be in attendance.  For more information on this free event contact the Museum at (936)-294-1832 or visit our website.  

Margaret Houston’s Breast Cancer by Danielle Brissette

By Danielle R. Brissette, Historical Interpreter

Quick, what do Queen Anne of Austria (1601-1666), First Lady Betty Ford (1918-2011), Julia Child (1912-2004), Sheryl Crow (1962), and Margaret Lea Houston (1819-1867) all have in common? Aside from the obvious that they are all women, these ladies share something with an estimated 2.6 million women in the United States today: breast cancer. Although the topic is not altogether pleasant, it is important and timely as October, in addition to being Archaeology Month, is also Breast Cancer Awareness Month. 

Cancer of the breast has been around for a long, long time. In fact, one of the very first references to cancer ever found was on an Egyptian papyrus scroll from circa 1500 b.c. which details tumors of the breast. Until the late 19^th century, however, breast cancer was a fatal disease. Before 1890, the likelihood of surviving twenty years after discovering breast cancer was just one in ten. Treatments ranged from radical surgery, to oils and concoctions, to a do nothing approach. It is facts like these that make Margaret Houston’s story all the more evocative. This article will recount Margaret Houston’s experience with breast cancer. If you are sensitive to descriptions of medical procedures, I recommend you avert your eyes and check back in next week . This article is as factual and honest as I could research.

In 1847, Margaret Houston was the proud mother of a son, Sam Jr., and a baby daughter, Nancy Elizabeth. Her husband, Gen. Sam Houston was a Senator serving in Washington, D.C., while she herself resided at Raven Hill, a plantation 14 miles to the east of Huntsville. Before the birth of her first child in 1843, she complained of tenderness in her right breast. The issue was seemingly ignored until February of 1847 when she finally wrote to Sam that “I have suffered two or three mails to pass without writing to you for the reason that my breast was in such condition that I could not write without detriment to myself. It has risen three times and presented such an angry appearance” that the family sent for the Doctor, an old friend of Sam Houston’s and probably the best physician in the state, Ashbel Smith. 

“The Father of Texas Medicine”, as Dr. Smith is now called, was worried about operating with Sam so far away. He gave Margaret a topical treatment and returned home. A few days later, Margaret’s breast had again swollen and become quite painful. According to one account, it even burst and liquid came out. 

Dr. Smith scheduled her surgery for early March and advised her to stop breast feeding until then. He told her that the operation would be a “mere trifle and easily performed in two minutes.” When he returned, however, he brought with him a bottle of whiskey which belied his earlier statement. There were no other pain killers available, no anesthetics to put Margaret to sleep, and no laudanum to quiet her senses. Just the whiskey.  However, Margaret was a lifelong Baptist, a teetotaler, and an advocate for temperance. She had spent years encouraging her husband to abstain from drinking alcohol and could not, in good faith, drink any herself. Despite the encouragement of her doctor and family, Margaret did what many of us could not do. She denied herself the whiskey, closed her eyes, and instead bit on a silver coin while Dr. Smith removed a large portion of her right breast. He later commented that she “bore the pain with great fortitude.” 

Later that day, as Margaret recovered, Doctor Smith wrote to Sam: “It was with some anxiety that I undertook so serious an operation in your absence, but an operation offered the only possible cure and its necessity was urgent.” And the operation was serious, very much so. To put it into context, in Vienna in 1870 (23 years after Margaret had her partial mastectomy) out of 170 cases where women had operations on breast tumors, 34 died during the procedure, 128 had the cancer return, and only 8 were cured. Given these statistics, it seems that Margaret Houston’s recovery was very lucky indeed. 

Margaret did not suffer from a return of her cancer. She did encourage her husband to sell the isolated Raven Hill plantation and bought a home in a more urban area, Huntsville. Margaret lived for another twenty years and passed away in 1867 in Independence, Texas, from Yellow Fever. Her story is similar to those of thousands, or millions, of women who suffered from cancers of the breast before the advent of modern cancer treatment. Her survival is remarkable, as are countless other aspects of her life. 

This story resonates because it reminds us of the hidden strengths in those around us. It shows us how far we have come, medically.  And it reminds us that our health is vital, for ourselves, and for our families. If you are a woman over 40, please get a mammogram every year. If you have a family history of breast cancer, talk to your doctor about it. And if you are a woman at any age, check yourself monthly. We have advantages Margaret lacked-- thank heavens—let’s use them!

 (References include the American Cancer Society, “Sam Houston’s Wife” by William Seale,  “Bathsheba’s Breast: Women, Cancer, and History” by James S. Olson, “Purgatory on Earth; An Account of Breast Cancer from Nineteenth-Century France” by Therese Taylor, and the Texas State Historical Association.)