Behind the Chronicle: Sources, Transcriptions, and Search Notes

How we looked

The Chronicle is built on newspapers, cookbooks, public records, and the work of historians who got there first. Every claim in the story carries a superscript number that leads to a note with the full citation. This page holds the pieces that did not fit comfortably in a footnote: the original words of the newspaper items, the searches that found them, and a straight list of what is solid and what is still a good guess.

Most of the newspaper searching happened in Charleston papers (The News and Courier, The Sunday News, and the Evening Post) and in Savannah and Georgia papers. We searched by phrase and by year, then opened every promising page and read it in the original page image, because the machine-read text of old newspapers misses words and sometimes invents them. Where a search came up empty, that result is recorded here as well. A search that finds nothing tells you where to look next.

Four rules guided the work. We write down what a source says before we say what it means. We say “earliest located” and never “first,” because an archive we have not searched may hold an earlier item. We keep a quotation’s original spelling and punctuation. And we separate what a source states from what we infer from it.

Where to read the sources yourself

Newspaper items cited as “GenealogyBank” come from that subscription database, which holds page images of the Charleston papers. Several of the same Charleston papers are also searchable through NewsBank, which the South Carolina State Library offers to library cardholders; the State Library describes its Charleston newspaper collection as running from the early 1800s through 1995. Georgia newspapers are free at Georgia Historic Newspapers, and many other U.S. newspapers are free at Chronicling America at the Library of Congress.

Books cited in the notes are public wherever the law allows. These are free to read or borrow at the Internet Archive:

• Blanche S. Rhett, compiler, 200 Years of Charleston Cooking (1930)
• Junior League of Charleston, Charleston Receipts (1950)
• Harriet Ross Colquitt, ed., The Savannah Cook Book (1933)
• Sarah Rutledge, The Carolina Housewife, in the 1979 facsimile with Anna Wells Rutledge’s introduction
• Harriette Kershaw Leiding, Street Cries of an Old Southern City (1910)
• Thomas Ashe, in Alexander S. Salley Jr., ed., Narratives of Early Carolina, 1650–1708 (1911)

John Lawson’s A New Voyage to Carolina (1709) is online in full at Documenting the American South.

The original words

These are typed from page images. Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation follow the page, and square brackets mark a word that is worn or unclear. All of these were printed before 1931, so they are in the public domain. The April 8, 1888 clipping, “Rather Give Up the Shrimp,” is transcribed beside its image in The Chronicle itself.

The Advent of the Shrimp Fiend, June 22, 1881

The News and Courier (Charleston), June 22, 1881, page 1. GenealogyBank page image. The piece runs just below an unrelated item about a legal dispute, separated by a rule.

THE ADVENT OF THE SHRIMP FIEND.—The luscious “long-tailed decapod crustacean”—which is the zoological name for what the South Carolina darkey calls “raw, raw swimmy” and other people “shrimp”—has entered the harbor, on his way up the rivers in search of fresh water. The prawn, as he continues to migrate up the river, will occupy several weeks in passing, and during that time he will be caught and boiled and peeled and converted into pates and pies and things until the rear guard of the immense migrating army has passed beyond the reach of the shrimp catchers. His descendants are due in salt water again in about two months time, when the regular shrimp season will fairly set in.

The advent of the migrating prawn has called into existence that peculiar institution which is to be found probably nowhere outside of Charleston—the shrimp fiend. He made his first appearance in the season of 1881 in Meeting street, at 5 o’clock, yesterday morning, and as he wended his way northward early matutinal naps were rudely dispelled, and the air made to resound with the burden of the song. The familiar refrain—

“Raw raw swimmy
Got sugar een do horn
Why don’t you come and buy
Dese leetle raw raw prawn,”

brought people out of their beds like the horrors of a nightmare, and while the bon vivants hastily rang for the cook to buy a plate of shrimps for breakfast, they showered left-handed blessings without number upon the head of the fiendish purveyor of the crustaceans, and at once made up their minds to the inevitable necessity of imitating in future the traditional and oft quoted early bird whose chief delight is said to be to forego the pleasures of a morning nap in order to catch the historic worm. At present the fiend asks 60 cents for a plate of the crustaceans.

About the date: the paper is dated June 22, but the article places the vendor’s first appearance “yesterday morning,” which makes it June 21, 1881, at five o’clock. The article’s own first paragraph treats the shrimp’s migration as the news, and the vendor arrives in the second paragraph as a seasonal nuisance. The vendor is unnamed.

The Street Cries of Charleston, August 14, 1873 (excerpt)

The News and Courier (Charleston), August 14, 1873, page 4. GenealogyBank page image. This is an unsigned feature that runs across three columns. The excerpt below keeps everything about shrimp and the landing at Moreland’s wharf. The feature’s section headings are typeset as phrases that finish the sentence before them, and that device is kept. A bracket marks a worn word, and a row of dots marks a passage left out here. The writer’s language about race and class belongs to 1873 and is printed as the page has it.

THE STREET CRIES OF CHARLESTON.

Shrimp-Buying and Selling—Charleston’s Billingsgate—A Criticism of the Matutinal Concerts of the City—California Watermelons—Landmarks of the Past.

From early dawn until after dark each day the streets of Charleston are enlivened by a species of concert that is a source of wonder to persons who are strangers in the city. […]

THE FIRST ACT

of the street concert begins at the earliest moment of daybreak, and the chorus is composed of the thousand men and women who perambulate the streets to the tune of “Raw shrimps,” and who supply our breakfast tables with that delightful luxury, which is comparatively unknown to our Northern neighbors.

TAKING SHRIMP.

The fishermen who are engaged in taking shrimp are a thrifty set of night workers. Their sole possession in the way of stock in trade consists of a “dug-out” canoe and a cast-net. They start out on the last of the ebb or flood tide, and follow the “run” of the shrimp up either bank of the river which may happen to be the leeward bank. The shrimp generally resort to the marsh shores to feed, and it is here that they are taken. One man paddles the canoe and another casts the net. About four hours’ work generally suffices to fill the boat, and by daybreak the nocturnal fishermen return to the city. The general landing place is Moreland’s wharf, on South Bay, and by daybreak the crowds of hawkers are promptly on hand. Then follows a scene that would put

BILLINGSGATE MARKET

to shame. Fishwomen all over the world are notorious for their excessive profanity, and the confraternity in Charleston are no exception the rule. The shrimp men dare not land at the wharf for fear of being torn limb from limb by the crowd of hawkers, each one of whom is endeavoring to get out first in the street with his tray. Amid the cursing, swearing, haggling and pushing of the crowd it is impossible to hear a word, and an ordinary mortal would be distracted. […] This is about the scene that is enacted at all the landing places, but Moreland’s wharf is the general rendezvous and the supply depot for shrimp, in a half hour

THE AIR IS MADE MUSICAL

with the cry of “Raw Shrimp,” yelled out in all the variations of tone, from the shrill tenor of the young African of ten summers, to the bass profundo of the patriarch of fifty years. The general cry is “Raw Shrimp, Raw Shrimp,” sung out in a plaintive nasal twang, but of late years innovations have been made, and occasionally the tone is varied. One vendor in particular practices a kind of running staccato song of “Shrimp, Shrimp, Shrimp,” accompanied by variations, in which he dwells upon the size, price and excellence of his wares. Many of the vendors are women, but they preserve a uniformity in their cry which is only varied by the different degree of vocal power which each one possesses.

“Bass profundo” is printed that way on the page. The writer probably meant “basso profondo.”

A Song of “Raw Swimps,” July 22, 1894

The Sunday News (Charleston), July 22, 1894, page 8. GenealogyBank page image. The article names Joe Cole and says his “yell” is a fragment of a war-whoop of an Indian tribe he is “evidently a direct descendant” of. That is the writer’s suggestion, and The Chronicle does not adopt it as a statement about Cole’s family. The arithmetic in “The Money In It” holds: 300 vendors at $4 a day make $1,200 a day, $7,200 a week, $28,800 a month, and $144,000 across five months.

A SONG OF “RAW SWIMPS.”

SOMETHING ABOUT THE DAINTY DISH THAT CHARLESTON ENJOYS.

Twelve Hundred Dollars Worth of Shrimp Served at Breakfast Every Day in the City from June Till November—How Raw Shrimps are Caught and How they are Sold and How the Buyers are Cheated.

Among the many epicures in Charleston to-day there are probably not more than a score who can tell anything about their dainty dishes more than the manner in which they are cooked and served. The Spaniards have their olla podrida, the Italians their macaroni, but the Americans as a rule eat indiscriminately and enormously. The inhabitants of the coast live on the luscious bivalve, the oyster, during its season; but it is essentially a side dish and its season is a short one.

The Charleston gourmet is now joyously feasting daily on our own little dish, the shrimp. There is hardly a family in the city that does not have this dainty little crustacean served for breakfast in some shape or form. The long elliptical dish in the centre of the table, with its sides overrunning with the pretty little pink, crescent-shaped fish is the cynosure of all eyes, and as the pater familias doles out the regulation amount for each plate of hominy the eyes of the children glisten and the death-like stillness that ensues bears witness to their love for their breakfast.

HOW THEY ARE SERVED.

There are not very many ways of serving up the shrimp for the breakfast table. The most popular method is that of boiling them and whilst still steaming picking them clean of head, tail and hide and serving them with a sprinkling of pepper in this simple manner. There are, however, more fancy ways. The French folks have a method of stewing them with tomatoes or of serving them in a combination with bell peppers. Then there is the proverbial shrimp pie that is the most important adjunct to the boarding houses of the city, and again at the dinner table at home a pillau of rice, tomatoes and shrimp, the result of one of those mental formulas which originate in the mind of Aunt Chloe in the kitchen. So much for how we eat the shrimp; now for

THE WAY HE IS CAUGHT.

When the dark shades of night drop over the harbor the hardy shrimpmen man their little canoes and with their cast nets neatly arranged and ready to be thrown they make for the long, dark shores of marsh, where their prey makes his feeding grounds. They have to wait silently and patiently on the edges of the marsh until a certain time of the tide, when out come the shrimp in millions and out fly the heavy nets and the work commences.

The oarsmen pull or punt or paddle along the shore and the man with the net keeps his eyes and ears open for the ripple and sound of the sportive shrimp. As the shrimp moves through the water he is a beautiful sight. The most beautiful of colors shine from his long body and his fan-shaped tail stirs the phosphorescence and leaves behind him a subdued trail of fire.

When the usual quantity is caught and the turning of the tide takes the shrimp to other spots the shrimpers pull for the wharves to sell their spoil.

The most prominent marts for the salesmen are Gadsden’s Green, Council street wharf and Market street wharf.

Long before daybreak the venders, men and women, are on hand with their trays to get their morning’s supply for their numerous customers. The number of these venders can safely be put at three hundred. Some handle a greater supply of the fish than others, according to their thrift or shrewdness.

THE TRADE.

The shrimp business does not require a license, although it far exceeds that of the fish trade in profitable returns.

The fish trade requires a license and why the shrimp is not classified as fish is a standing cause of wonder and chagrin to the fish venders.

THAT PLATE.

The measure of the shrimp man’s little plate or pan is, however, regulated by a city official, whose especial business is to see that the pans are of a standard size and weight and give a standard measure.

The venders get their shrimp from the shrimper and have them measured to them by this standard plate, and after the sale they come back and account to the shrimper for what they were given and are allowed 20 per cent of the money made. At six in the morning with one voice they start their yell of “Swimpy, swimpy raw—swimp” and every street, lane and alley from the Battery to Cool Blow is traversed and gets the benefit of their cheerful howls, which serve as a kind of maddening reveille to the drowsy sleepers.

There are probably over eighty miles of streets in Charleston, and there is not a mile which does not come within the range of the lusty voices of the vender; and now for a little calculation of the amount of money spent on the shrimp for breakfast.

THE MONEY IN IT.

That eminent fisherman and impresario of the drum and fife band, Joe Cole, says that on Friday mornings he has sold as much as $25 worth of shrimp on his tour through the town! Joe’s method of sale and thriftiness are well known, and his yell is the fragment of a war-whoop of the tribe of Indians from which he is evidently a direct descendant.

Another shrimp man, from the Gadsden Green vicinity, says that he sells sometimes as high as sixteen dollars worth a day. This fellow has a good trade, however, with the restaurants. An ordinary vender sells on an average four dollars worth a day, and the women get rid of three dollars worth a day. Each one taken at a low average sells four dollars worth a day. The three hundred of them sell then $1,200 worth of shrimp a day, making $7,200 a week of six days and $28,800 that go for shrimps and into the shrimp toilers’ pockets every month. The shrimp season lasts from June to November, but they are sold often earlier than June, but taking those months as the legitimate season we find that the money spent for shrimps during these five months aggregate $144,000.

The shrimp trade is run on a strictly cash basis and the business is carried on only in the early hours of the morning, leaving from 9 A.M. open to other employment for the shrimp men and women.

Like all other industries the shrimp business is not without its failings. The latest excitement among its workers is the showing up of a mean piece of trickery on the part of the salesmen.

THE FRAUDS

consist in the measuring out of the shrimps to customers in pans with false bottoms and sliding rims, which cheat the buyer out of his regulation and legitimate quantity of shrimp. The knaves that practice this work buy, say, forty plates of shrimp to be sold at fifteen cents a plate. They injure the honest members of the fraternity by making the forty plates stretch into fifty or more by means of the false bottoms and rims. They pay for the forty plates at fifteen cents, but manage to make on the decrease of the measure.

Several of them have been caught at this work and have been arrested. The housekeepers should keep their eyes open and not let the shrimp man rob them as easily as he has been doing. The latest scheme is to carry two plates, a good one for inspection and a false one to use.

The industry pays well, and the knaves that use the false pan thrive at the expense of the simple, unsuspecting housekeepers.

This fraud is being looked into by the detectives, but the best way to stop it is to be on the watch yourself, and if you can catch “swimpy—swimpy—raw—swimp” at it, “sic” the family dog on him until the policeman comes from his beat around the corner and “settles his hash,” so to speak.

Anent a Howling Nuisance, July 19, 1896

The Sunday News (Charleston), July 19, 1896, page 3. GenealogyBank page image. A letter to the editor signed “Insomnia.” The letter uses a racial slur twice, and both are shown here as “n——r,” as in every other printing of it in our research. The writer’s hostility toward the vendors is part of the record, and the letter is included because it shows both the complaint and the bargain: the same people who hated the cry wanted the shrimp.

ANENT A HOWLING NUISANCE.

A Heartfelt Protest Against the Fiends who Disturb the Peace of Charleston’s Citizens.

To the Editor of the Sunday News: Being myself an acute sufferer from shrimp shrieks, vegetable howls and neuralgia, I have naturally read with interest the protests of my fellow sufferers, which have appeared from time to time in your paper. I want to protest too, if you will let me. Indeed, I think I have more reason to protest than any other citizen of Charleston. I defy any other protestant to claim that his ears have been pierced as often as mine. In my block the fiends commence at 6 o’clock in the morning, continue with double expansion lungs all day, and finish their music with an ultra-diabolical yell at 11 of the night. If any of your long-suffering correspondents dwelt but a day and a night in my house they would, without question, give the palm of martyrdom to me. They would first hear the echo of a scream, which would soon become a substantial cry in the distance. Then they would grow nervous, speculating whether it were around the corner or not; or whether it were coming their way or not. Then they would become despondent as the sound grew ominously louder. Then they would utter awful cuss words as they heard the fiend pass under the window. Then they would, in a forgiving spirit, apply themselves to an attempt to get another nap by night or to continue their work by day, as the case might be either one of midnight outrage of sleep or daylight robbery of peace. But ere the wicked ceased from worry or the weary were at rest they would become aware of the presence of two other demons in the block, more boisterous than the first, calling out unintelligible invitations to the mammon of iniquity. Then would follow others in geometrical progression and procession until my guests would conclude that if Satan wished to establish a pandemonium on earth he would have only to put a roof over the block in which I live and leave the musical performance to the peripatetic fiends. They might thrust their heads out of window to see what the deil it all meant, and would discover a ragged n——r with a tray on his head or a basket (I have many times seen even a bucket) on his arm, but would fail utterly to find out from the unearthly howl what was the nature of the twenty-five cents’ worth of wares the n——r hawked. Some have hand carts or wagons and appear more respectable, but they howl just as loud as the others.

(Query: Do the metropolitan police see to it that every basket and bucket has a huckster’s license?)

Now, Mr Editor, I wish not so much to decry the work of these poor fiends as to throw out a suggestion to the public and to the City Fathers, which, if put into effect, would allay the nuisance.

The main reason for this state of things is the convenience of housekeepers. They drop an “r” into the “fiend” and make him a “friend;” and certainly when a shrimp breakfast or okra soup for dinner has been decided upon in the lower regions (no diabolical reflection upon cooks) the respective sounds are sweet to the ear of the housekeeper. But consider the rest of us, who don’t want okra soup or shrimps that day! There are also conservative people who believe that the dear old institutions of Charleston should not be infringed upon; but Charleston is an aggregation of people with ears, and that should be considered.

Not to discuss further the sentiment or convenience of the hawker’s yell, I propose to make the fiend indeed a friend in need. Here is my proposition: Let the City Council absolutely prohibit the crying of wares through the streets; and instead, let them require the hucksters to stand at roomy corners throughout the city and serve those who come to buy. Leave the hucksters free to select any of the corners appointed or to pass from one to another, but without crying. By this means the supply will soon find the demand and the hucksters will soon distribute themselves accordingly. Let so many corners be appointed as to enable a housekeeper to get all the vegetables, etc, she may desire without going more than two blocks from home. The evidence of our ears is conclusive that there will be an abundance of hucksters for every corner appointed. Put no restriction on their serving their regular customers at the door, but without crying, as they pass through the streets. Exception may be made in favor of wares which are rarer than others, for instnace [sic], honey, charcoal, fish, perhaps, (not shrimp, however,) etc.

Hours should be appointed, say from 5 to 12 A. M.; after which time the streets should be cleared; for surely by midday the housekeeper would have had time to provide for all meals. The butchers have given a limited example in the same line. They do not hawk their meat around; but they have so well distributed themselves over the city that it is a short walk anywheres to a butcher’s shop.

This scheme would have this advantage besides, that at any time before a fixed hour the housekeeper would know exactly where she could get what she wanted. Even shrimps could be gotten at a very early hour, whereas now they cannot be legally hawked until 6 o’clock.

Insomnia.

The “Stone Grits Mill” advertisement, June 1786

An estate-sale advertisement for the plantation of the late Robert Murrel Jr. in Christ Church Parish, for a sale on Thursday, June 8, 1786. David S. Shields provided the clipping. It carries no masthead or date line. The best identification so far is The Charleston Morning Post, June 2, 1786, and that still needs to be confirmed against the newspaper itself. The long s is printed here as s.

TO BE SOLD, / On THURSDAY next, / The 8th of June, / At TEN o’Clock, / In the Parish of CHRIST CHURCH, / at the Plantation of the late / Robert Murrel, jun. deceased, / PART of the ESTATE of said deceased, consisting of about thirty or forty head of tame Cattle, breeding Mares, a valuable saddle Horse and chair Horse, Plantation and Cart Horses, a Stock of Hogs, Houshold and Kitchen Furniture, Carpenter and Plantation Tools, Riding Chair, Horse Cart, small Canoe, Stone Grits Mill, Saddles and Bridles, &c. &c. &c. / A L S O, / Three valuable NEGROES, one a handy boy, and the others field slaves. / The conditions will be made known on the day of sale.

The same advertisement sells three enslaved people. That is the other half of this plantation’s inventory, and the Chronicle cites it for the mill alone.

The netmaker’s advertisement, April 6, 1784

The South-Carolina Gazette, and General Advertiser (Charleston), April 6, 1784, page 1; the same text ran April 8 and April 17. GenealogyBank page image. This is the earliest South Carolina newspaper item we located that mentions shrimp. Searches for “shrimp,” “prawn,” and “swimp” in South Carolina papers before 1784 turned up nothing earlier.

FISHING SEANS, of all sizes, to be made, and mended, by the Subscriber; Shrimp, Cast, and other Nets, at as cheap a rate as they can be made or mended with strong work.

MATHEW JOUSSEAUM

The Corner of Queen and Union-streets, near the Fish-market.

The Isle of Hope recollection, December 7, 1929

The Savannah Press, December 7, 1929, page 7. This is the closing paragraph of William Garrard’s review of Ward Greene’s novel Cora Potts. It is catalogued as the Savannah Evening Press. The recalled summer is 1914, so this is a memory printed fifteen years after the meal.

Ward Greene visited Savannah for several weeks during the summer of 1914. He stayed at the Hardee’s at Isle of Hope, and at that time distinguished himself chiefly by his astonishing capacity when eating fried shrimp and hominy.

WILLIAM GARRARD.

Searches that mattered

This is a selection of the searches behind the claims in The Chronicle, with what each one turned up. “Charleston papers” means The News and Courier, The Sunday News, and the Evening Post as indexed in GenealogyBank.

What we searched	Where and when	What turned up
“shrimp and grits”	Charleston papers, 1873–1986	Sixteen pages. The earliest is September 12, 1961, in Norman E. Spell Jr.’s column. Then 1966, 1967, 1970, 1971, 1984, and a cluster in 1985–1986.
“shrimp and hominy”	Charleston papers, 1873–1960	Nine pages, all between 1936 and 1960.
“hominy shrimps”	Charleston papers, 1873 to March 31, 1888	A July 6, 1878 market price (“shrimps 25c a plate”) and an October 25, 1883 meal listing with hominy and shrimps as separate breakfast items. No pairing before April 1888.
“shrimp breakfast”	Charleston papers, 1873–1960	Three pages: July 19, 1896; July 30, 1928; and July 16, 1931.
“shrimp fiend” and the cry (“raw swimp”)	Charleston papers, 1873–1930	The June 22, 1881 item is the earliest located. Joe Cole appears by name from March 29, 1885.
Vanderbilt’s chef, hominy, and shrimps	All U.S. newspapers, 1888–1890	Three reprints of the 1888 paragraph: Audubon County Republican (May 10), San Diego Union (May 12), and Bridgeport Chronicle-Union (December 15). Only the opening paragraph traveled.
“shrimp,” “prawn,” “swimp”	South Carolina newspapers before 1784	Only the April 1784 netmaker’s advertisement.
“cast net,” “shrimp man,” and “shrimp” with “net”	Georgia newspapers before 1900	No Georgia match to the Charleston items. A May 30, 1818 sheriff’s sale lists a cast net among a household’s property. The Georgia result describes our coverage, not Savannah’s fishing.
“shrimp and hominy,” “hominy and shrimp”	Georgia newspapers, 1840–1960	Three pages, including Garrard’s December 7, 1929 review.
Everett’s with hominy or river shrimp	Charleston papers, 1940–1970	The “Special Breakfast” advertisement of November 19–20, 1965. No menu from William Deas’s lifetime turned up.
“Helen Woodward”	Charleston papers, 1930–1931	Nine pages about her and the book’s making (February 26, June 8, and October 10, 1930, among them). None of them mentions Deas, Sally Washington, or the seventy-eight-year-old gentleman.
“Sally Washington”	Charleston papers, 1929–1965	Seventeen pages. The November 29, 1930 recipe column credits her. No obituary.
Sally or Sarah Washington, Charleston	FamilySearch, 1925–1965	About two hundred records, with no way to pick the right one without an address or an age.
“Joe Cole” and “Joseph Cole”	Charleston papers, 1900–1930	Several different men by that name. No obituary for the shrimp seller.
“shrimp and grits” on the Google Books Ngram Viewer	English books, 1950–2019	See the saved chart data and the yearly CSV.

What we know and what we are guessing

A history built on old newspapers has firm parts and soft parts. Here is where each one sits.

What we know. The dated items quoted in The Chronicle say what they are quoted as saying. The cry, the plate, the dawn hour, and the shrimp breakfast were ordinary in Charleston by 1881 and described the same way for the next thirty-five years. William Deas is credited by name in the 1930 cookbook for the earliest printed shrimp-and-hominy recipe we located. The pairing, its name, a shrimp gravy, restaurant service, and cheese in the hominy all appear in Charleston print before Bill Neal and before Craig Claiborne’s 1985 article.

What “earliest located” means. It means earliest in the archives we searched. The 1881 “shrimp fiend,” the 1784 shrimp net, the 1930 recipe, and the 1961 “shrimp and grits” are the earliest we found. Another archive may hold an earlier one, and we would like to hear about it.

Fried grits. The idea that fried cakes of cold grits belong to the dish’s family tree rests on two items we located: the 1847 Carolina Housewife recipes for breads and cakes from cold hominy, and a January 20, 1855 item in the Independent Press of Eatonton, Georgia, that says “some fried homony.” We cite the 1855 item for that phrase alone. Mary Randolph’s The Virginia House-wife (1824) has a recipe called “To make mush,” and Catharine Beecher’s writing on hasty pudding may matter too. We have not yet read either one closely. We found nothing citable on the name “grit cakes.”

Joe Cole’s dates. Nic Butler gives Joe Cole’s life as 1840 to 1919 in the Charleston County Public Library’s “Hucksters’ Paradise, Part 2” and does not say where the dates come from. We found Cole in print from 1885 to 1910 and found no 1919 death notice. We use Butler’s dates as a good lead, not a settled fact.

The 1797 ice house. The date comes from Butler’s article on Charleston’s first ice house. We have not matched it to a 1797 primary source. The 1829 Courier advertisement, shown in The Chronicle, we read ourselves.

The 1881 “first appearance.” The 1881 article says the vendor made his “first appearance” of the 1881 season, which is the shrimp season’s first morning. Read that way, the article describes a trade already known to its readers. Joe Cole is not named in print until 1885, so we cannot say whether the 1881 vendor was Cole.

The cookbooks. The first edition of 200 Years of Charleston Cooking (1930) is the edition we cite for page numbers. A revised edition appeared in 1934. We read Charleston Receipts in a later printing; the Internet Archive copy lists printings through March 1961, including a revised sixth printing in October 1952. We have not collated the first printing of 1950, so we do not claim that a given recipe wording is the 1950 wording. We found the phrase “grits” in neither the 1930 nor the 1950 book.

The Ngram chart. The chart shows how often the phrase “shrimp and grits” appears in the books Google has scanned. It does not show how often people ordered it. Google’s search returns the same yearly series each time we ran it, but we could not tie a sudden rise to a single cause, so The Chronicle makes no claim that the 1985 article caused one.

The 1985 Claiborne article. The New York Times article is behind a subscription wall. Secondary accounts, such as the University of North Carolina Graduate School’s page on Crook’s Corner, credit Claiborne with the review, and we follow them. The article itself prints a recipe called “Shrimp With Cheese Grits.” It does not use the phrase “shrimp and grits.”

Savannah and Georgia. Savannah’s record is thinner than Charleston’s because the digitized Georgia newspapers we could search gave us less. The 1929 recollection is testimony, and so is the 1914 meal it recalls. A 1917 Brunswick supper announcement lists shrimp and hominy as separate items on one menu, which shows them sharing a menu and not a single dish.

Sources read through a summary. For a few web sources, mostly encyclopedia and park-service pages, we read a page summary. The notes flag each one. The same goes for a Google Books snippet of Christie Anne Farnham’s book on Savannah’s 1801 licenses, where the sentence around the snippet was not available to us.

The Gullah Geechee region and Black cooks. The National Park Service studies cited in the notes establish the region and its culture. They do not name an inventor of the dish, and a Black cook named in print is not automatically a Gullah Geechee cook.

Modern cooks. Sallie Ann Robinson’s family recipes and testimony are living tradition. We do not treat them as evidence of a colonial origin.

Leads we have not run down. The first printing of Charleston Receipts. The Georgia Reports for the Cooper case on Savannah’s 1854 ordinance. A Festival ’65 menu that would show whether shrimp and hominy was actually served at the World’s Fair. Deas-era menus from Everett’s. Savannah and coastal Georgia manuscript sources.

Help us check the work

If you hold a menu, a family cookbook, a clipping, or a memory that belongs in this story, or if you find a mistake, send it to us. A date, a page number, and a photograph of the page are the most useful things to include.

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