H. L. Barnum's cookbook from Cincinnati

Not the great showman P. T. Barnum, but H. L. Barnum (another of the vast Conn. family), lived in Cincinnati in 1831 when he compiled the 400 page Family Receipts, including an egg and boiling tea substitute for milk. 

Hussey, the inventor who made bread cheap

Obed Hussey (1797-1860) created the first successful reaper in America, rather than the more well known Cyrus McCormick (1809-1884). Great films of harvesting 1904, 1938...

Spare ribs

Instructions on how to butcher, cook and carve a spare rib of pork from an 1831 Cincinnati cookbook is below.  During this time, the city contained large hog packing operations, shipping the meat to the eastern markets.

Watermelons - Italy 1810 and Cincinnati

When the British traveler Mrs. Trollope first tasted water-melon she "thought it very vile stuff."  She also felt the men, women and children who were sitting on the streets of 1830 Cincinnati, spitting the seeds "to the great annoyance of all within reach" and the juice pouring out of their mouths... looked "very unpleasant."  The delightful image is from Italy, 1810.

Men doing the shopping - in late 1820s Cincinnati

6 days a week at dawn the men went to the market - even "those of the highest standing."  Mrs. Francis Trollope (1780-1863) wrote Domestic Manners of the Americans, 1832 about  her travels and travails in the United States with some of her children.  They settled for several years in the growing city of Cincinnati, Ohio where she opened a large store - the Bazaar.  And like NYC, HERE, pigs cleaned refuse from the streets.