November 2025 is here and so is the planning for the Thanksgiving dinner. The American Farm Bureau Federation in 2024 priced the ingredients for Thanksgiving Dinner and came up with a price tag of $58.08. They priced the turkey, the stuffing, the pie, the cranberries, some peas, and the veggie tray and claimed this would feed 12 people.
Really? That’s just the backbone of the feast. Where are the other family dishes; the mac’ and cheese, the squash casserole, the green bean casserole, the mashed potatoes and gravy, and a host of family favorites?
And still the cooks of the grand feast will look at this and think “This is not enough food. Someone is going to go hungry. What else can we add to make everyone happy?”
Maybe the cooks can get some new ideas from a little cookbook published here in Augusta called the Sunday Night Supper and Five O ’Clock Tea. The booklet was published sometime at the turn of the century by the Cranford Club. The Cranford Club ran a local tea room to support two charities; the Wilhenford Children’s Hospital and The West End Free Library. The cookbook was popular enough to need a second edition printed.
The Cranford Club was formed by like minded ladies of the Hill in 1908. As well as staging weekly teas to support its charity projects, the club ran a lending library for members. It cost ten cents to check out a book and you were only allowed one book at a time. While the club was a social hub sponsoring teas, card afternoons and dances to support its charitable goals it was also very civic minded. It participated in Dime Days which was a city-wide campaign to raise money for the Children’s Hospital Association. It was also one of the first organizations to support the formation of a Red Cross chapter in 1917.
Perhaps the earliest tie to the Children’s Hospital Association was the reported $5.00 donation in The Augusta Chronicle newspaper. The Wilhenford Children’s Hospital opened in 1910 and was billed as the first children’s hospital in Georgia. Mrs. Grace Shaw Duff, a winter visitor, donated over $20,000 for the building of the hospital as a memorial to her family members. The name Wilhenford was an amalgam of her family member’s names. Duff’s donation crowned 13 years of work to create a children’s hospital in Augusta. Having made a stipulation in her bequest that the city be responsible for the upkeep of the hospital, the Cranford Club’s donations through its tea room and cookbook sales helped to achieve this.
During negotiations to obtain a Carnegie library in 1906, it was pointed out that a free library, the West End Free Library, was already operating in Augusta. The earliest reporting on the Cranford Club mentioned its reading room so it is not surprising that the club would become associated with a library effort. By November 7, 1909 half the proceeds of the Cranford Club library and tea room were used in support of the West End Free Library.
The most active years of the club appear to have been from 1908 to 1920. In 1922 the club reached out to the community for assistance with its first flower show. From this point the club gradually changed its emphasis becoming the Cranford Garden Club. This club stayed in existence until 2000. When the club disbanded, its remaining funds were donated to the Augusta Common, Phinizy Swamp and the Augusta Botanical Club.
Looking through the cookbook, our ancestors might have graced our tables with some very different dishes. Southerners are connoisseurs of sweet tea but the edition of 1-quart rum and 2 pints sherry definitely added a kick for a suggested Ice Tea Punch. Spanish Salad is very different from our Ambrosia being a mixture of grapefruit, oranges, pineapple, pimentos, and Spanish onion pickles mixed with mayonnaise. Need something sweet besides the pumpkin pie? Make some Sweet Sausage Candy. Thankfully, there is no sausage in the recipe.
And don’t forget the Sardine Rarebit. Pull out your chaffing dish and combine butter, salt, paprika, Tobasco sauce, cream, and cheese. Once boiling add six sardines and two beaten eggs. Intriguing but, unlikely to become a new family favorite.
While we may wrinkle our noses at some of the concoctions, the compiler has this to say about the recipe collection. “I have collected together about seventy-five recipes from friends who have tried them and who recommend them to be good and who know what good things are. So, if the recipes are not successful, it is not our fault.”
So, I’ll pass on the sardines and remain thankful for the traditional turkey and the friends and family who will eat it with me this Thanksgiving Day. However, I may take a second look at the Ice Tea Punch.