Place of Origin

United States

Date of Composition

4 books, dated 1829, 1831, ca. 1831, 1866; others n.d. and 1929-1931

Description

Thomas Affleck (1812-1868) was born to a prominent Scottish family of Dumfries, Scotland. He immigrated to New York at nineteen and studied agriculture and general sciences while he lived on the East coast. He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1839, and the following year he became the editor of the Western Farmer and Gardener, a widely circulated agricultural periodical in the West. During a trip to Natchez, Mississippi, in 1842, Affleck met his second wife, Anna Dunbar Smith. He managed the plantations of his wife and stepson and established, at his Ingleside farm, one of the first commercial nurseries in the South. The plants he imported from the North and Europe came to have great agricultural importance in the region. Much of his time was given to public service, and he wrote extensively on scientific and agricultural subjects in order to establish himself as a scholar and public-minded citizen. He served as editor of agricultural departments of several newspapers, and published the Southern Rural Almanac and Plantation Garden Calendar continuously from 1845 to the 1860s. Realizing the political unrest in the country as well as being heavily in debt, Thomas Affleck disposed of his holding in Mississippi and moved to Texas in 1857, where he published a number of articles in two Texas newspapers to the time of his death. Through his correspondence and publications, Thomas Affleck established himself as a prominent authority in the study of agriculture.

The finding aid to this collection lists the following recipe books: Recipe book (1829); Recipe book (1831); Recipe book and notebook (circa 1831); Recipe book (no date); Recipe books (1929-1931, undated); and Recipe book (1866, no date). The finding aid does not indicate the contents of these books or who may have compiled them.