Caroline Emma "Carrie" Watkins, born July 1, 1854, was the youngest of four daughters and ninth of eleven children born to Waltus Locket and Mary Ann Holloway Watkins. Carrie began collecting recipes around the age of fifteen and wrote them in the back of a ledger once used to record school township meeting minutes. A biographical essay from The Watkins Mill Cookbook describes the life of Miss Carrie.

"... Like her sisters Kate, Mattie, and Lizzie, she helped her mother take care of their large household. Although they employed a cook, the Watkins women were very involved in the kitchen and did a lot of the cooking themselves.

... The first recipes, or receipts as they were called at that time, are from the time of Kate's marriage to Dr. Hugh Atchison. Kate died in October of 1870, just four months after her marriage. Carrie was already an accomplished cook when she started her book. As a result, most of the recipes give only the ingredients, which are probably listed in the order in which they were used. Directions are minimal or missing altogether. Since she knew how to cook most meats and vegetables, the recipes are predominantly for pickles, condiments, and desserts. Most of the later entries, those made between 1890 and 1910, are newspaper clippings of household remedies.
Carrie at 16
After their mother's death in 1896 Carrie continued living at home with her brothers John and Joe, both of whom were unmarried. Their father had died in 1884. Although she went blind sometime early in the 1900s, Carrie taught herself Braille and continued to cook for her brothers and Jimmy O'Neil, a hired hand who boarded with them.

During the 1920s and 30s birthday parties for Carrie were a major social event in the area, with well over two hundred people coming to pay their respects. John died in 1931, at the age of 89. Joe, who was his junior by eighteen years, had been ill for several years, and died in 1934.

Miss Carrie at 58

Carrie continued to live in the old family home until 1943 when she was taken to live with her niece Irene Watkins Thatcher, first in Washington State and later at the family's cattle ranch in Bozeman, Montana. Carrie died five days after her 96th birthday [July 6, 1949]. She was a gently, gracious, and hospitable lady, well liked by everyone who knew her.

Carrie's Cookbook is in the Special Collections of the Curry Library of William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. Carrie's father, Waltus L. Watkins, was a friend of William Jewell, the Baptist minister who established the college, and was a member of the college's Board of Trustees for over twenty years."
Credit: Watkins Woolen Mill State Historic Site, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Division of State Parks
Miss "Carrie" Watkins taken ca. 1910
Following the creation of this web site, Miss Carrie's cookbook was given to the Watkins Woolen Mill State Historic Site archives. I am indebted to the staff of Watkins Mill for their biographical descriptions and photographs of Miss Carrie.
Home