Tuesday’s Child’s Family Heirlooms: Laura’s Relish Dish (2)

Earlier in December I shared my great-grandmother Laura Belle DEMPSEY née INGRAM’s glass relish dish shaped like a leaf and a bunch of grapes.

Several readers said they would like to see a photo of it with my homemade Santa Fe Cranberry Sauce.

Since we are taking it easy after all the feasting I thought this would be a great filler, pun intended, until next week.

Wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year.

 © 2015 Cathy Meder-Dempsey

Jeanne Bryan Insalaco of Everyone Has A Story suggested doing posts on heirlooms in a discussion in the Genealogy Bloggers Facebook group and wrote Now Where Did I Put That? Several bloggers have taken her up on the challenge to write about their heirlooms and we hope more will follow our lead.

Tuesday’s Child’s Family Heirlooms: Laura’s Relish Dish

After I graduated from high school in 1976 I went to live with my paternal grandmother, Myrtle Hazel ROOP, widow of Fred Rothwell DEMPSEY, while attending West Virginia Tech. Grandma gave me several items including a cardinal feeding her young ones and this glass relish dish shaped like a leaf and a bunch of grapes.

It belonged to Grandma’s mother-in-law Laura Belle INGRAM, my great-grandmother and wife of William Henderson DEMPSEY. It’s special to me because of who gave it to me and who it originally belonged to.

I use it for my homemade Santa Fe Cranberry Sauce I serve at Christmas with Yeast Rolls from Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book ©1976 and the Traditional Stuffed Turkey with Gravy, Chicago Mashed Potatoes with Onion & Bacon, and Louisiana Maquechoux or Sautéed Yankee Brussels Sprouts. Recipes are from “An All-American Thanksgiving Sampler” found in the November 1996 issue of the Good Housekeeping magazine.After I took these photos of the dish I searched the internet for grape bunch shaped glass dish. I was surprised to find photos of exactly the same dish. On Ebay sellers describe it as a relish, nut, fruit, or candy dish. There is no mark on the dish which would identify the glass-maker and some sellers attribute the dish to Anchor Hocking. It may have been sold as a set of five with four small and one larger dish.Since it belonged to my great-grandmother Laura she must have bought or received it before her death in 1940. Is this Depression glass – machine-pressed glassware, mass-produced in the US from the late 1920s to the 1940s and often used as giveaways to persuade customers to purchase goods?

It may have been a giveaway at the time but to me it is priceless.

 © 2015 Cathy Meder-Dempsey

Jeanne Bryan Insalaco of Everyone Has A Story suggested doing posts on heirlooms in a discussion in the Genealogy Bloggers Facebook group and wrote Now Where Did I Put That? Several bloggers have taken her up on the challenge to write about their heirlooms and we hope more will follow our lead.

Other bloggers doing Family Heirloom stories:

• Vera Marie Badertscher at Ancestors in Aprons
• Karen Biesfeld at Vorfahrensucher
• Schalene Jennings Dagutis at Tangled Roots and Trees
• Jeanne Bryan Insalaco at Everyone Has a Story
• Jacqui Kirkman at Leaves on my Family Tree
• True Lewis at Notes to Myself
• Kendra Schmidt at Trek Thru Time
• Linda Stufflebean at Empty Branches on the Family Tree

Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks theme for 2015 Week 24 was Heirlooms. Visit her 52 Ancestors Challenge 2015: Week 24 Recap for the links to more posts in the comments.