“I was a little girl in 1857 when my father moved us to Arkansas using an oxen team. We drove during the day and made camp at night. We would cook enough to have a lunch along the way. One thing I remember well, all of us children would want butter and a biscuit, but we couldn’t buy butter at every camp. It was terrible not having butter on your biscuit and we would cry and cry. One day my aunt gave us a little cold grease on our biscuit just to console us. I will never forget how important biscuits were to us. We didn’t have coal oil at night for light, but we would find a biscuit or two to us through.”
These are words from my great grandmother Amanda Love. Amanda lived in Arkansas and moved to Savannah, Tennessee around 1858. Soon after, the U.S. Civil War broke out. She wrote stories of what she remembered as a little girl around that time. Her father was in the Navy and fought in the battle of Shiloh near Savannah. He returned to the family after being wounded, but it was dangerous for him. My great grandmother remembers as a little girl she would prepare suppers, including biscuits of course, for her mother to take to her father. He would hide out in a cave for fear of his life. If rebel soldiers found him during those days, they would have killed him. Biscuits always seemed to be part of her life.
When I was a little girl in the 1970s, my dad would try and try to make biscuits for breakfast, like his mom and Grandma Amanda. He didn’t always succeed, but he would try nearly every Sunday morning. I didn’t realize such a simple food would mean so much, but as I grew up, I began to understand. Biscuits reminded him of his childhood, and his mother and grandmother. Even though they both passed away years before, the biscuits were a way for my dad too hold onto precious memories of his mom and grandma.
My dad is 95, living in Tennessee. To this day, my stepmom makes biscuits for him on Sunday mornings. I also have learned to make biscuits.
