Over 200 years ago a Scottish cabinet and violin maker named Gibson sailed to America. He married and raised a family in New England. There, his daughter, Harriet, married David Spearin in the early 1800s.
Samuel, one of Harriet and David's sons, may have inherited his grandfather's creative DNA. He built houses and furniture from Massachusetts to Maine. In later years he moved with his wife, the former Mary Ames of Clinton, Maine, and their children to the northern town of Fort Fairfield. He continued making furniture, and one of his cabinets with glass doors was still being used for storage in the 1970s.
Samuel and Mary’s daughter, Mary L., married William Ames of Fort Fairfield in the 1880s. In addition to raising nine children on a pioneer farm, Mary gardened, sewed, crochet, tatted, knit, braided rugs, raised bees, baked sweets, and painted flowers on fabric.
Mary's niece, Leona Spearin Shibles, was the food editor in the mid-1900s for the Rockland Courier-Gazette. She tested many recipes and edited several cookbooks including: Maine’s Jubilee Cookbook, All Maine Seafood, All Maine Fruit, All Maine Poultry, and All Maine Cooking.
Recently I tried one of her recipes using raspberries.
The Raspberry Upside Down Cake was shared with an elderly lady who, like some of the Spearins, was a baker, sewer, artist, and generally creative person. She ate a forkful and said, “This is one of the best cakes I have ever eaten."
I had changed Leona's recipe a little to make it more my own. A distant cousin, I felt a kinship with her creative spirit while making those changes and testing the results.
Maybe it's still in the DNA, after all.
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