The Ridge Historical Society
Thanksgiving Week on the Ridge
By Carol Flynn
Thanksgiving has been considered an official U.S. holiday since it was declared by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Of course, taking time to give thanks for one’s blessings, and holding harvest feasts, long predated the Pilgrims’ events in the “New World” in the 1600s, but the U.S. assigned those concepts to a specific day each year.
For the next few days, we’ll look at some trivia that connects the Ridge to Thanksgiving week.
Anyone still deciding what to serve for Thanksgiving dinner need look no further than the Chicago Tribune food columns of fifty and more years ago. The food editor, Mary Meade, was none other than Beverly’s own Ruth Ellen Loverien Church, from 1937 until her retirement in 1974.
“Mary Meade” was the generic name the Tribune used for its woman food writers for years, because it was a common understanding, not only in the newspaper industry but in the workforce in general, that most women would not stay long in professional jobs but would marry and make home-keeping and raising families their careers.
Ruth was the fourth Mary Meade, and she broke this mold. She combined marriage and motherhood with a professional journalism career. She earned a degree in food and nutrition journalism from Iowa State University, and moved to Chicago in 1936, where she took the job with the Tribune.
In 1942, Ruth married Freeman Sylvester Church, a third-generation Beverly resident. They made their home in North Beverly and had two children.
Ruth eventually oversaw the largest food staff of any newspaper in the country, including five home economists. She established a kitchen in the Tribune Tower for recipe testing and food photography. She wrote at least twelve cookbooks and pamphlets, with authorship under her own name. She pioneered “specialty” cookbooks, such as one devoted to pancakes, waffles, omelets, and other breakfast foods. She also started the first wine column in a newspaper.
Some of the recipes she suggested for Thanksgiving through the years appear here.
Tomorrow we’ll look at the Ridge’s contribution to National Game and Puzzle Week, and on Friday, we’ll return to “Mary Meade” to look at some of her recipes for left-over turkey.