William Woys Weaver

Early life and career

William Woys Weaver was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on March 13, 1947, to H. William and Alameda (née Woys) Weaver.^[1] Growing up, he learned some cooking skills from his grandmother, a Quaker.^[2] His grandfather, Ralph Weaver, was a Mennonite and only in spoke the Plautdietsch dialect, teaching Weaver the language as he grew up.^[2][3][4] Ralph Weaver was an avid seed collector, and in 1932 he founded the Roughwood Seed Collection.^[5] Seeds such as strawberry rhubarb were collected from family members on trips to Lancaster, which Ralph returned to his home in West Chester. Others came from Ralph's friend Horace Pippin, the prominent African-American painter, who supplied peppers such as the Buena Mulata pepper. As a child, Weaver helped his grandfather in his garden.^[6] Ralph Weaver died in 1956.^[4][6]

As a teenager, Weaver was interested in writing and produced several short stories. Some of these were read by Alexandra Tolstaya, the Russian writer and daughter of Leo Tolstoy, who encouraged Weaver to continue in his writing.^[1] In the mid-1960s, Weaver came upon a cache of his grandfather's seeds, stocked in baby food jars in a freezer. Several were nonviable, and some represented among the last of their kind. Weaver decided to maintain the collection, procuring varieties from relatives such as the Lenape cutshort bean and blue dogbane.^[4] Asked about this time in an interview, Weaver reflected "I brought the collection back from the dead—though, in the beginning, I killed a lot of rare things. I was a beginner."^[7]

Weaver studied architecture at the University of Virginia and received his Bachelor of Arts in 1969,^[2][4][1] which he followed with postgraduate studies in architectural history at the school. In August 1970, Weaver married another student in his architectural history cohort, Lynn Beebe. Beebe was the daughter of Kenneth John Beebe, the president of the American Schools and Colleges Association and founder of the Horatio Alger Association.^[8][1] In 1971, he travelled to Vicenza, Italy, where he completed studies at the International Center for Palladian Studies.^[1]

In the course of his studies, Weaver moved to New York where he worked on the completion of his master's thesis and in 1972 took on a job as editor at Dover Press in Manhattan.^[6][1] Initially dealing only with architecture books, Weaver gradually took on editing duties for herbals and gardening books. On weekends, he travelled back to Pennsylvania, working on re-establishing his grandfather's garden.^[6] In a later interview, Weaver described feeling a distate for working in an office, and said the vegetables in the city tasted like cardboard, especially when compared to those he had eaten from gardens growing up.^[4] In 1973, Weaver and his wife divorced.^[1]

Return to West Chester

Weaver returned to West Chester in 1973, moving into the family home he had inherited. He worked part-time as an article writer, later moving to books.^[4][a] His main job at this time was at the industrial component manufacturer Ametek, where he worked as the director of product information.^[1] In 1977, Weaver began work as a full-time food historian.^[6] Two years later, he sold the family home and purchased Roughwood, a house in Devon, Pennsylvania.^[6][4] Containing 28-rooms, Roughwood had been constructed around 1805 and had served as the Lamb Tavern in the early 19th century.^[2][7][4]

In 1982, Weaver's cousin Mary Larkin Thomas died at the age of 92. Thomas was a seed-collecting enthusiast too, collecting from sailors and Native American friends alike, and she bequeathed her collection to Weaver.^[4] That year, Weaver released A Quaker Woman's Cookbook: The Domestic Cooking of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea, and the following year released Sauerkraut Yankees: Pennsylvania-German Foods and Foodways, both published through the University of Pennsylvania Press.^[2]

Weaver was profiled in The Christian Science Monitor in 1988. At that time, Weaver had amassed a large library of ephemera—engravings, antique cookware—through inheritance and purchases that he drew upon to illustrate his writings. He lived in Devon in Chester County, Pennsylvania, working on the restoration of Roughwood.^[2] He maintained a large garden at the property, growing eucalyptus, fruit trees, herbs, and vegetables. In the interview, Weaver expressed the higher value he put on home cookery over professional kitchen cookery: "Serving more than 40, you have to cheat. You can't be an artist and a commercial cook, too".^[2]

In 1997, Weaver's book Heirloom Vegetable Gardening: A Master Gardener's Guide to Planting, Seed Saving and Cultural History was published by Henry Holt & Company.^[4] Based around plants he grew from seeds in collection, the book was met with acclaim, winning the Julia Child Award for Food Reference and the Jane Grigson Award for Distinguished Scholarship.^[6]

2000 onwards

Heirlooms reintroduced by Weaver

Thorburn's Terra Cotta Tomato

Fish pepper

In 2000 he published 100 Vegetables and Where They Came From through Algonquin Books. A profile in the New York Times described Weaver at this time as "the Julia Child of long-lost vegetables", crediting him with having "transformed the field of heirloom vegetables".^[4] By this point, his seed collection had grown to 3,000 types, stored in pickle jars throughout Roughwood on shelves and in cupboards. He planted them in cycles in his garden and greenhouse,^[4] reporting "I eat all the ugly stuff, and the beautiful stuff is saved for seed".^[6] Some of those seeds were sent to the Seed Savers Exchange where they could be purchased by the public, as well as to botanical gardens, museums, and researchers.^[4]

Weaver used the plants grown with them in a range of culinary applications, for instance making champagne out of champagne rhubarb and a salsa from Naranjilla, Aji Limón pepper, and mango. He periodically made a strong parsley tea that he drank for his kidneys, which he described as in need of help "after I was bitten by a brown recluse spider and nearly died".^[4] He shared Roughwood with two friends.^[4]

In 2001, Weaver published Sauer's Herbal Cures, an annotated translation of a herbal originally written in the late 18th century by Johann Christoph Sauer, an apothecary who lived in the Philadelphia area.^[6] In an interview with the New York Times, he described a family connection to healers in the Philadelphia area: a Quaker cousin had tended her family during the Spanish Flu wearing a sachet of garlic and herbs around her neck, and none of her relatives had fallen ill.^[6]

As of 2010, Weaver had the role of adjunct professor at Drexel University. His seed collection was at 4000 varieties, and he was hosting gardening workshops at his home. He continued writing, and in September released Culinary Ephemera: An Illustrated History, through the University of California Press.^[7] A profile in Modern Farmer at the end of the decade described the state of the Roughwood Collection. Seeds were stored on bookshelves that lined an archive room stretching "hundreds of feet". By that time, it had grown to become the largest private collection of Native American food plants, with around 100 varieties of potatoes alone.^[9] Some were particularly rare, including a Scottish potato with red, blue, and white splotches on its surface, and Oneida corn flour. Weaver described his goal as the preservation of the genetics of seeds that may otherwise not be preserved as most food was grown through cross-breeding.^[5] By 2024, Weaver had moved and was residing in Maryland.^[9]

1980s

A Quaker Woman's Cookbook: The Domestic Cooking of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea (1982)

Elizabeth Ellicott Lea was born in 1793 in Maryland, and spent much of her life in the state until her death in 1858. In 1845, she released Domestic Cookery, a recipe book focused on popular fare rather than the elaborate preparations that dominated the cookbooks of the time. A second edition, published in 1851 expanded the book to contain advice on the domestic duties of housewives, including preventing food waste and treating sickness. Weaver's A Quaker Woman's Cookbook deals with this second edition, providing annotations, bibliography, and an introduction with contextual information on Ellicott's biography, and the book's writing, editing and reception.^[63]

In a review for the journal Pennsylvania History, Emma Weigley found Weaver's analysis worthwhile contributions;^[63] a reviewer in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography likewise called Weaver's context "informative".^[64] A review in Publishers Weekly commented on the overall text, describing it as "valuable as a footnote to Middle Atlantic States folklore of the early 19th century".^[65] In Keystone Folklore, the reviewer gave strong praise to Woys's contributions, finding the bibliography capably done and the glossary so "graceful, amusing and informative that it is a delight to read".^[66]

2010s

Culinary Ephemera: An Illustrated History (2010)

Designed and composed by Claudia Smelser, the book annotated 352 illustrations of sheet music, business cards, and almanacs, among other ephemera,^[71] mostly from Weaver's own collection. The book's thesis argues that ephemera give more insight into the social history of food than one produced by cookbooks.^[71]

In The Public Historian, a reviewer described Weaver's prose as "breezy and devoid of jargon", identifying the book as ultimately a success, and at its best as "a snapshot of American culinary history through culinary ephemera". The reviewer found the section on how the American diet differed from diets elsewhere, while disagreeing with Weaver's treatment of gender and race.^[71] The book was also reviewed in Gastronomica. While some criticism was given to the inclusion of platitudes and design choices such as justifying text, the review overall judged the book to be a "lovely coffee-table book" that offered a "thoughtful reference".^[72] In both reviews, the intended audience was reflected on, with notes that serious collectors may find the lack of bibliography and purchasing advice disappointing.^[72][71]

The book was also reviewed in the Wall Street Journal,^[73] and in the The Minnesota Star Tribune.^[74] It was named "Best Culinary History" book at the 2011 IACP Awards.^[75]