Description
These two notebooks were titled "Recipes," Volumes I and II, by their author, John D. Shane (ca. 1811-1864). The first half of Volume I and all of Volume II contain recipes for cooking and preserving foods, medical and veterinary recipes, and household and gardening advice. The second half of Volume I is devoted to the principles, techniques, and formulas for making daguerreotypes.
John Shane's notebooks are part of a vast collection of historical manuscripts collected by Lyman Copeland Draper (1815-1891), a lifelong student of history who served as the first corresponding secretary of the Wisconsin Historical Society. The Society has organized these manuscripts in fifty series, of which the "Kentucky Papers" is one. The notebooks are identified in this series as Volumes 36-37.
Draper purchased Shane's notebooks at an 1864 auction of Shane's papers held in Cincinnati. Shane was a Presbyterian minister in Ohio and Kentucky. But, like Draper, he was also a passionate historian. Draper jotted down the
following notes about Shane at the time of acquiring his papers:
John D. Shane-- born in Cinc.-Klied in March, 1864, aged abt. 53. Quiet--secretive. Poor--Spent all his earnings in his collections, book sales &c. Lived among his books & papers. Designed a Hist. of the Rise & Progress of the Religious Denominations in the West: Stinted himself --lived & clad poorly--in garrets in winter without a fire.
Draper went on to use material from Shane's two recipe notebooks in a one-volume home-and-farm encyclopedia that he and a coauthor published in 1869,
A Helping Hand for Town and Country.