Cookbooks from the past are a fascinating chronicle of the change that takes place as a community grows and expands. Food and Nutrition Educator Kate Helfrich has studied charity, or “community”, cookbooks produced in the late 1800s in Stockton and Sacramento, northern California. She shows how their recipes and advertising chronicle changes in the types of food that were eaten, the nature of home food production, and the influence of industrialization as these cities grew from Gold Rush-era local stagecoach stops to large metropolitan centers.

This presentation highlights 15 remarkable burial sites of soldiers from the American Revolution in the metro Detroit area—an impressive subset of over 70 known graves! Among these are three soldiers laid to rest right here in Ann Arbor. Notable figures include a Detroit veteran who was born enslaved but died free, Colonel Jean Francois Hamtramck—a confidant of George Washington and the namesake of the city of Hamtramck—and a Boston Tea Party participant buried in Dearborn Heights who continued to fight for the United States into his 70s.

Santa Cruz cookbook collector Thomas Gordon presents choice items from the U.S. period between World Wars I and II, including general interest cookbooks, some of the earliest regional and ethnic cookbooks, and pamphlets marketing specific products. These materials reflect two elements of American food history: the beginning of diversification of what had been a largely English-based cuisine, and the increasingly symbiotic relationship between “home cooking” and the industrialization of food.

In 1866, Malinda Russell published A Domestic Cook Book in Paw Paw, Michigan. As the oldest known cookbook by an African American woman, this slim volume is a landmark in American culinary history. The only known copy resides in the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive in the University of Michigan Library’s Special Collections Research Center. Join us for a reception and panel discussion celebrating a new edition released by the University of Michigan Press. The reception will begin at 5:15pm, with the conversation to follow at 5:45pm. 

Some say that MLK's stance against the Vietnam War weakened his stance on civil rights. Bill Shea and Mike Muha of the local Veterans For Peace Chapter 93 will inquire into MLK's relationship between civil rights and militarism and discuss if the connection of this relationship is still applicable today in the global situation of war.

When most people think of 18th-century food preservation, only a few of the many methods that were actually used occur to them, and most of those are for long-term food storage. In this slide presentation, distilling her many years of work in the experimental archaeology of food, Susan McLellan Plaisted will explore a multitude of historical techniques used in long- or short-term storage, providing a comprehensive view of the sophistication of past practices in preserving foods.

Michigan is home to an amazing array of food and drink brands, each with a fascinating story behind it. Ready-to-eat breakfast cereals like Kellogg’s and Post changed how the world eats, and Gerber first made baby food commercially available. Other state food stars include northern Michigan cherries, fudge, and pasties, and brands such as Faygo, American Spoon, Jiffy, Sanders, Vernors, and Better Made.

Join us as we take a close look at the histories of twenty architecturally significant live performance spaces in metro Detroit constructed between 1895 and 1987, including four in Washtenaw County. This even also includes brief examinations of the life and work of two of Detroit's top theater designers of the past, Charles N. Agree and C. Howard Crane.

Land has always been central to many conflicts in the United States, especially regarding the land that Indigenous people lived on. Continuously moving westward, it became increasingly difficult for tribal nations to continue to hold onto their land. Having sided with the French during the French and Indian War, at the war's end and a British victory, life was changing drastically for tribal nations. Pontiac's Rebellion was in response to a British victory in the French and Indian War and the disdain for British policies that were coming into play.

Let's get ready for the A2 Tricentennial! We know about Ann Arbor's last 200 years because someone kept and cared for evidence of their lives--diaries, photos, even meeting notes. But what will people in the future be able to learn about our lives today?

Physical and digital preservation specialists from the Bentley Historical Library will join AADL Archives staff in a workshop to offer tips on preserving your own histories for your families and communities. Try hands-on techniques including mending, mounting, and storage for your personal collections.