Now that peaches from Carters Mountain Orchard near Monticello, were sitting on my countertop, the kids and I wanted to can them.
Having researched my cookbook, Dining at Monticello by Damon Lee Fowler, I found peach recipes for dessert: Peach Ice Cream and Brandied Peaches.
A historical recipe from Mary Randolph led me to her relationship to Thomas Jefferson, which led to a great story.
1744-1752 TUCKAHOE PLANTATION
Her father grew up with his cousin Thomas Jefferson at Tuckahoe Plantation after Randolph’s parents died.
Jefferson’s father brought his family to Tuckahoe to live, to raise the Randolph children and manage the plantation, until the oldest son, Thomas Mann Randolph, came of age.
1741-1793 THOMAS MANN RANDOLPH
Thomas Mann Randolph, whose mother was of the Page family of Rosewell Plantation, had a good friendship with his cousin, Thomas Jefferson.
Growing up together at Tuckahoe, both Thomas’ began their early education together while tutored at the plantation.
Marrying Anne Carey of Ampthill Plantation in Chesterfield County in 1761, Thomas Mann Randolph inherited Tuckahoe Plantation a few months after their daughter Mary was born in 1762.
Together they had thirteen children, three of whom died in infancy.
One of their daughter’s, Martha, married Thomas Jefferson.
1762-1828 MARY RANDOLPH
Although born at her mother’s family home of Ampthill, she grew up at Tuckhoe where she was tutored with her siblings.
In 1780, she married David Meade Randolph, a cousin and officer from the American Revolution.
First living at a 750-acre plantation called Pesquile in Chesterfield County, Mary and her husband moved to Richmond in 1798, after President Washington appointed her husband US Marshal of Virginia.
After their cousin, Thomas Jefferson became president, political disagreements caused Jefferson to remove Randolph from office, resulting in decline of income.
MARY RANDOLPH RECEIPT BOOK
In 1807, Mary opened a boarding house in Richmond, where a boarder noticed the refrigerator in her kitchen.
Hariott Pinckney Horry, daughter of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, had begun a receipt book in 1770, in which she described her time at Mary Randolph’s boardinghouse.
In the introduction of Hariott’s receipt book, the editor paraphrases: Witty, charming, and providing outstanding meals, she attracted a large following of wealthy and fashionable people. At her home Harriot found, “excellent fare and genteel treatment,” but what most intrigued her was a refrigerator. This was an outward box four inches smaller, both made very tight and the space between filled with powdered charcoal. Harriott both sketched the wonder and wrote a detailed description. Each day Mrs. Randolph placed in the refrigerator five pecks of ice brought to her door for fifty centers and was thereby able to refrigerate for twenty-four hours pans of butter, meats, and other foods.
By 1819, Mary and her husband moved to Washington to live with one of their sons, where she wrote her receipt book published in 1824 as The Virginia House-Wife.
After she passed away four years later, she was buried at Arlington House, the home of her cousin, George Washington Parke Custis.
CANNING PEACH PRESERVES
One of Mary Randolph’s receipts for peach marmalade closely resembles my recipe for Peach Preserves, which the kids helped me to can.
First, we got all the pots of water boiling hot.
Then we rinsed off the peaches.
To easily take off the skins, we put them in boiling water until the skins split.
Then they were put into ice water.
While those were cooking, we cleaned more jars and filled them with the rest of the preserves.
We had just a little left over at the end, enough to fill a little glass jar that we need to consume this week.
As I took these out to set out to cool, we immediately heard the “ping”, “ping,” “ping”…6 items! Success! (“Pings” mean they properly sealed.)
The last set went in and came out to cool.
Four sets of “pings!” Music to a canner’s ears!
