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LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - NOVEMBER 29, 2015
Thanksgiving and Turkey and Football
by Lynne Belluscio
I often say that history is not
written in stone. That certainly is
true about the first Thanksgiving.
In fact, historians cannot agree on
the story of the first Thanksgiving.
Some claim it can be traced to
Texas, several years before the
Pilgrims landed in Plymouth.
There is also a story that English
settlers in Virginia celebrated
Thanksgiving in 1619. But one
thing for sure, turkey wasn’t on
the menu – neither was mashed
potatoes or pumpkin pie. But as a
historian, I am not about to change
my Thanksgiving menu because
it’s not historically accurate.
For my family, it was always
turkey for Thanksgiving and
Christmas, filled with my grand-
mother’s recipe for stuffing. I
have always baked the turkey in
heavy-duty aluminum foil at 450
degrees and at the last minute,
take off the foil so it would brown.
There is a difference between
baking and roasting turkey. His-
torically, turkey was roasted on a
spit in front of the fire, sometimes
in a tin reflector, or tin kitchen.
The brick oven could not hold
the heat long enough to bake a
turkey. I think that’s why boiled
turkey was popular at that time in
the early 1800s.
The 1833 Cook’s Own Book
suggests that a turkey should be
boiled in a floured bag so it can
be served white, with a sauce. (I
have never boiled a turkey, and
probably never will). When the
cast iron stove replaced the open
hearth, women were faced with
small ovens that could not hold a
turkey, and in truth, they preferred
meat roasted in front of the fire.
So the early stoves had two little
doors in front of the firebox, with
a wide shelf where the tin kitchen
could be placed. The little doors
were opened, and the turkey was
roasted in front of the fire.
I really wonder how popular
turkey was in the 19th century.
Lydia Child in The Frugal House-
wife 1833 mentions turkey, but
only to say that a “good sized
turkey should be roasted two
hours and a half or three hours;
very slowly at first.” Charlotte
LeRoy’s receipt book doesn’t
have a recipe for turkey. The
Cooks Own Book suggests that
“Many a Christmas dinner has
been spoiled by the turkey having
been hung up in a larder and be-
coming thoroughly frozen; Jack
Frost has ruined the reputation of
many a turkey roaster.”
In 1976, when we built our
cooking fireplace and brick oven,
I decided to cook Thanksgiving
dinner in the fireplace. Trying to
be prudent, I decided to roast a
small turkey, about 13 pounds,
but with no stuffing, since I was
concerned that the internal tem-
perature would not reach a proper
degree. But the turkey took much
longer than I planned, and I think
we had it for dessert!
In 1910, a turkey story was
reported in the
LeRoy Gazette
.
It seems that Alexander Suther-
land bought a live turkey for the
traditional Thanksgiving dinner
and brought it home and put it is
a bag in the woodshed. He would
“dispatch” it later. His wife had
to pluck the feathers and get it
ready for the oven, but the tur-
key had other ideas. Sutherland
heard a loud crash in the dining
room and when he went to see
what had happened he discovered
that his Thanksgiving dinner had
escaped from the woodshed and
had made its way into the dining
room. The frightened bird crashed
into the china cupboard and broke
the family set of china and did a
pretty good number on the china
cupboard in the process. The
Ga-
zette
article doesn’t mention what
happened to the errant gobbler,
but one can only suspect that it
eventually made it to the dinner
table - - on the everyday dishes.
Another story reported in the
1910
Gazette
, included accounts
of three football games that
were played on Thanksgiving
in LeRoy. The first game of the
day was played at 10 am at the
Summit Street field. The All -Le-
Roy Eleven played the self-pro-
claimed amateur champions of
Rochester, the Dreadnaughts.
Don McVean and Fenton Taylor
scored touchdowns. The final
score was 12 to 4.
The 1:30 game was between the
LeRoy Stars and the East Ends
from Buffalo. LeRoy lost the
game 18 to 0. The Buffalo team
was a lot larger than the boys
from LeRoy. At 3 pm the High
School played against Greigs-
ville. It was a grudge match, since
LeRoy had defeated Greigsville
the Saturday before. This game
was the final game of the season
and LeRoy won 41 to 0. There
were seven touchdowns. Three by
Glidden, two each by Bundy and
Kavanaugh. Glidden and Selden
each kicked 3 goals. It certainly
appears that Thanksgiving and
football have been a part of
LeRoy’s history - way before
there was television and the NFL.