Ham prepared the Maryland way won an award in a display of hams in the state:
To every hundred pounds take best coarse salt, eight pounds, saltpeter, two ounces, brown sugar, two pounds, potash one and one-quarter ounces, and water, four gallons. Mix the above and let it stand in the tub some two days and pour the brine then over the meat. Let the hams remain six weeks in the brine and then dry several days before smoking, rub the meat with fine salt when it is packed down. Dr. Chase's Family RECEIPT Book, (1906).
The Pennsylvania Dutch cured their hams in brine; then they were given a bath in hard cider, dried and smoked with hardwood and sprinkled with spices, then completely covered with a thick layer of dough, sprinkled heavily with pepper to keep the flies away. The dough hardened and formed an air proof crust, and the hams were hung up to age slowly. The northwestern Pennsylvania hams owed their spicy taste to the use of sassafras smoke. Indianans used the Maryland recipe with more saltpeter, and for a quantity of twenty or thirty hams they added a gallon of molasses to the brine.
So it was that our early settlers cooked their food differently, spoke the language with different dialects and lived differently. To this day you can note some of these early influences, the long lanes of the Virginians, the overhanging barns of the Pennsylvania two story type like Eichelberger's; an old home with beautifully kept vegetable and flower garden on the side of the front lawn such as only German families arranged in such perfect order. Pennsylvanians from Greene County named Greene Township and many Germans settled El Paso Township. Englishmen settled in eastern El Paso and Panola Townships, with people from other states and countries as their neighbors. Despite the differences of nationalities, temperaments, speech, creeds and opportunities these families of an early day moulded into a fine community, uniting almost all these differences to form a democratic way of life.
Many of the material possessions of our forefathers have passed out of existence, but their story of determination and of human endurance in pioneer living is a challenge. Their vision, courage and faith is a lasting inheritance for us and for all their generations, a great and good legacy that will endure.
REFERENCES AND NOTES
Radford, B. J., History of Woodford County, 1877.
LeBaron, Wm. Jr., The Past and Present of Woodford County, Illinois, 1878.
Chapman, Bros., Portrait and Biographical Album, 1889.
Clarke, S. J., The Biographical Record of Livingston and Woodford Counties,
Illinois, 1900.
Gerhard, Fred., Illinois As It Is, 1857.
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