Fig and Date Salads

Eloise's Fig Salad

 While at a Fry Family Reunion, Donna prepared one of Eloise's recipes:  grapefruit, bananas and dates. Tom said his dad frequently served this to him when he had breakfast at Grover's.  She developed this recipe by picking up dates on the golf course.  Her mother, Alice Alderson had a recipe for Fig Salad which we found in documents while at the family reunion.

Mix together 2 cups of shredded cabbace [sic], 2/3 c. shredded carrot, 2/3 cup diced celery, 1/3 cup diced green peppers, 1/3 cup finely cut fennel.  Moisten with the following dressing:  cut until crisp 2 T finely cut bacon.

Add and cook slowly 5 mins. 4 t finely cut onion, remove to heat 4 T vinegar, 1 t. salt, 2 t. sugar, 1/8 t pepper, 1/3 cup Pet milk. Whisk well, mix, pur over prepared veg.  Serve at once.  Do not chill Serves 4

Huh?  Where are the figs?  We think this must be a "Faux Fig Salad"!

Fry Photos

 While at the Fry Family Reunion, Suzy had some photos in an album.  The photo above is "the homeplace Enon, WV".

 George Henry Clay Alderson, pictured above was my husband's Great Grandfather.  The photos below are some of his children and one grandchild.

 This is Lena (Evalina) Alderson Hummel (b. 1875) for whom my mother-in-law, Lena Eloise Fry is named and my daughter Rebecca Leigh Morgan is also named for her.  Rebecca has one of Lena's rings which was left to Eloise in Lena's will.

 Ida Alderson Masters, pictured above died at 34 years old along with a baby.  She is mentioned in this letter.

 Alice Alderson Fry was my husband's grandmother, George Henry Clay Alderson's daughter. 

 Another daughter is Zela Irene Alderson who was married to Arch Wesley Grant.  We have some ice skates we inherited from her.

 This is Otis Hambra Alderson (b. 1874) whom I just discovered applied to belong to the Sons of the American Revolution.

Finally, this is Alfreda Fry Morris, my husband's aunt.  I just thought this was a very sweet photo of her.  I wish that I had photographed more of this album. . maybe next time.

Aldersons in England

Keld, Yorkshire, England

Although we don't have DNA to prove it, I suspect the Alderson family roots are Viking. The Alderson family is from the Swale River Valley which has an abundance of Viking names---Keld and Gunnerside are good examples. Click here for more information about the names of villages in the Swale Valley. Then there is the name Alder-son---sounds a bit Viking. But, the first indicator I had was in the York Viking Museum where we saw a map which showed the Swale Valley as being a significant inland Viking settlement.

The earliest Alderson I've been able to trace is Miles Alderson(1584-1610) who lived in Keld (in the upper left corner of the map above). But, we'll begin our story with Miles' great-grandson John Alderson (1661-1721) who lived in Park Hall near Healaugh (just down the river from Keld)
We have visited the area and the home was right around where "Healy Park" is in the center of this 1610 map. It's easy to imagine what the area looked like in the early 1700's---it can't have changed much. If you ever read or saw James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small, then you are familiar with the area of Yorkshire, England. Although he changed everyone's names in his books, his wife in the book was Helen Alderson (not in real life). For more about James Herriot, click here.Helen Boswell, an Alderson descendant also visited Park Hall and wrote that although an Alderson family lives there presently, it was not known if they were related since they hadn't lived there very long:
We, too, found evidence of Aldersons still living in Healaugh---Dave, below is photographing a notice which includes someone named "Alderson" in the village of Healaugh.If I recall, the Park Hill home is up that hill from the village.

We don't know much about John Alderson (sometimes known as Rev. John Alderson). Some sources think he was a minister in the Church of England but others believe he was an Elder in the Baptist Church in England. We do know that he didn't approve of his son John's choice of wife. As Col. George Alderson wrote in 1860 of his ancestors:

"He (John the immigrant) was of warm and social feelings, and about to contract an alliance with a young lady whom his father (John Alderson, a Baptist minister of good standing and property) thought beneath the standing of his own family, and to divert him from consummating the alliance, furnished him with two hundred pounds, a good horse well-equipped, and sent him out to travel."

Later Col. George Alderson writes that John the immigrant became a Baptist minister himself and "kept up a correspondence with his father, John Alderson, in Yorkshire, England, who sent him three large Theological books,which this writer has frequently seen. They were printed in Old English form." Those books were last seen in Atchison, Kansas in posessesion of Lewis Allen Alderson.
The book above gives a slightly different view beginning on page 11.

"It seems that he [John Alderson the immigrant] was the son of an Episcopal minister in England and had been studying for the ministry himself, when he fell in love with a girl of whom his father did not approve. The older Alderson, in order to prevent an undesired marriage, gave his son the not inconsiderable sum of 200 pounds, as well as a fine horse and saddle, and told to travel and forget the girl. . . The father in England had, meanwhile, been delighted to hear from his son in the New World, and to know of his reformation."

John Alderson was born in 1661 in Park Laine which is in the Grinton Parish (pictured above), married either Margaret Burton and/or Alice Milner and died in 1721 also in Grinton Parish. We visited the Grinton church above, but didn't see any tombstones of family members and my most vivid memory was of flies everywhere in knee-deep grass.

It is an area of England that is awesome in its stark beauty. Our other memory of this area is being on a one lane road, in the middle of nowhere and seeing a bright red gypsy wagon off in the distance. We felt like we had been transported back in time.

Grover's Clocks

My father-in-law Grover, loved making clocks with photos and other memorabilia. I've given most of them to the girls, but here are some. The one above was to honor Eloise's golfing.
This one includes his driver's license and various cards.

This clock has photos of Eloise as a girl and teenager---it hung in his hall at the apartment.




This one he made for me---it hung in my kitchen for many years---made of family recipe cards.


Carrie Berry was one Ellice's nieces or cousins.
Here's a dump cake recipe from Ethel Morgan (Clifford Morgan's wife)
Ellice Smith Morgan's cookies.

The egg nog is probably from Alice Alderson Fry.

He made this from one of our records for Rebecca's birthday.

Elderberry Wine, Dried Peach Wine and Blackberry Wine

For a prominent Baptist family, I was a little surprised to see these recipes---on G.H. Alderson's letterhead, no less. I've transcribed some of these in case you have 2 lbs. of dried peaches or 8 qts. of Elderberries that you don't know what to do with. Thank you Buddy and Suzy for sharing these recipes.

Elderberry Wine
8 qt. berries, 4 qts. boiling water poured over the berries. Let stand 12 hours stirring occasionally then strain well pressing out all the juice. Add 3 lb. sugar and 4 qt. juice, 1 oz powdered cinnamon 1/4 oz. powdered cloves. Boil 5 min. and set away to ferment in stone jar with cloth thrown over it. When done fermenting, rack off carefully as not to disturb the lees (?lus?). Bottle and cork well.

Dried Peach Wine
2lbs. dried peaches, pour 4 gallon of hot water over them, add 5 lb. sugar and 1 yeast cake, stir well and ferment in a stone jar. When through working, rack off into clean bottles or jars and cork for 10 days before using.

Blackberry Wine
Add 1 qt boiling water to each gallon mashed berries. Let stand 24 hours stirring occasionally, train and add 2 lbs. sugar to each gallon. Cork tightly pressing cork in cask tighten each few days until tight. Then let stand till Oct. then bottle.

Col. George Alderson's Family History

In 1860, Col. George Alderson wrote his family history. It was later published in the newspaper and re-typed. I believe the underlined words and names were misspelled, and Allie Millard (a notary public) typed it corrected the mistakes in 1935. Double click on each page to enlarge---use the back arrow to come back. This blog is longer than usual because there didn't seem to be a good place to break the pages.

Alderson History from Family Bible

This first page taken from the Alderson Family Bible, first tells a little about Polly and Joseph Alderson but then lists the children of Jennett Mc Cleary and Colonel George Alderson (married July 1813): John Marshall Alderson (high sheriff of Greenbrier), Jane Creigh Alderson (married James Remley and moved to Iowa), Thomas Creigh McCleary Alderson (a merchant in Russel,VA), Margaret Alderson, Jonathan Newman Alderson(died at 20 while preparing to study medicine), Joseph Allen Alderson (successful lawyer and in the Virginia legislature), Mary Newman Alderson, Peggy Katy Alderson(married William Aston a lawyer and former VA legislator), Sabina Isabella Alderson(died at 14 while her father was in Richmond with the Legislature), Sarah Martha Alderson (". . .gave her father the slip and married William Zall. They went to Missouri), George Alderson, Jennet George Alderson and several infants that died unnamed. To read the pages, double-click on the photos to enlarge them. Italics information from a document written in 1860 by their father Col. George Alderson. After Jennet McCleary Alderson died, he married Eliza Ann Davis(daughter of Captain Charles Lewis Davis, of Ameherst VA. She is related to the Ellises and Floyds) and had more children: Jennet Creigh Alderson (grown and at home), Georgia Ann Alderson (married S. McClung, "a well-doing farmer of Nicholas"), Rebecca White Alderson (grown and at home), George Henry Clay Alderson (my husband's great-grandfather), Josephine Davis Alderson, Alice Ellis Alderson, Francis Lewis Alderson, Overton Davis Alderson, Lewis Newman Alderson plus several unnamed infants. Do you get the feeling they were running out of names? (4 had the name George/Georgia, 3 were Creighs, 2 Davises, 2 Lewises, 2 Jennets) But my favorite is Jennet Creigh who was named for his first wife!

In another document, Col. George Alderson mentions that the other children are all minors and adds: ". . .I have lost in my family an affectionate wife and twelve children, beside eight servants, three grown and five children."


I photographed these pages at the Fry Family Reunion in 2009. It seems that I'm missing a few pages. Col. George Alderson (father of George Henry Clay Alderson) wrote this in 1860. This page 5 does mention William Morris. Click here for more information and his daughter-in-law "Caty Carroll" who was married to William Morris, Jr.Page 6 discusses William Morris, his son and his grandchildren. It also mentions John Mathews of Lewisburg.
Page 7 discusses George Alderson uncle of the man pictured at the top of the page (nephew of William Morris) and his father Elder John Alderson and the development of the Greenbrier Church. Most of the rest of the document is about the Alderson family.

Fry Family Reunions---1950's

After my husband's grandmother Alice Alderson Fry died in 1949, her nine children decided to meet every other year for a family reunion for a week. The first reunion (1951) was held at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina where the siblings, spouses and children stayed in two big houses. Although we have movies, this is our only photo.

L-R: Tom, Bobby, Davis, Harry, Cecil

Other reunions were Point Peleee in Windsor, Ontario Canada (1953), Daytona Beach, Florida (1955), Nagshead, North Carolina (1957).

The 1959 reunion organized by Phil Fry brought the family back to their roots in West Virginia. They stayed in cabins at Bluestone State Park in Hinton, W. Va.
The above is a letter from Phil---$86.70 including tax for a 6 person cabin for a week. Phil reminds everyone to bring shorts for the day but jeans and sweaters for the nights.
This article in the newspaper gives some family history about them having many relatives around Alderson, W. Va and Nicholas County, W. Va. While 31 were in attendance (all of the siblings), four could not make it including Nell Fry who was expecting. Then, the article listed the names, home towns and occupations for each of the siblings. Somehow, they merged Eloise and Irene, though, stating, "Mrs. Eloise Morgan, St. Louis, librarian at Dearborn College, Dearborn, Mich." That would be some commute. Eloise was a librarian at Riverview Gardens High School (where I attended) and Irene Fry Vogt was at Dearborn College.

L-R: Davis, Linda, Bobby, Cecil, Tom, Arlene, Alice, Sandra, Carolyn, Marilyn; Front row: Michael, Buddy (Phil, Jr), Marsha