Call Number:

00.017

Repository:

Drexel University: Archives and Special Collections

Extent:

0.33 linear feet

Language:

English

Date:

1885-1976 (inclusive)

Creator:

Jacobs, Hilda Stuart Wood

Form:

Black-and-white photographs.

Abstract:

Hilda Stuart Wood Jacobs graduated the Drexel Institute in 1898, completing the normal course in the Department of Domestic Science. According to her grandson, who donated the collection, she married Hiram Cushman Jacobs, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Dental School, and lived in Warren, Pennsylvania.

The Hilda Stuart Wood collection consists of cookbooks, a notebook and a few photographs, ranging from 1885-1976. The eight published cookbooks contain Wood's handwritten notes and loose papers. Annotations on a few of the recipe cards refer to the collection as having belonged to previous generations, leaving the impression that the cookbooks have been passed down through the family. There is no information of a personal nature about Hilda Stuart Wood to be found within the collection.

Within the collection are several copies of a Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry cookbook and an embossed leather notebook containing lesson plans and other basic pieces of school work. Judging from the extensive number of lesson plans, Hilda Stuart Wood appears to have been a cooking instructor, possibly at a YMCA. Included in the collection are six photographs inscribed with Hilda’s name focusing on groups of men or women working in a classroom setting. It is difficult to ascertain which of the women actually is Hilda as the inscriptions are vague. Two of these photos describe her as teaching a men’s Domestic Science Class at the YMCA.