A Jolly Rhubarb Story

When we first started Generational Fare, my mom submitted a rhubarb recipe from her grandmother, Mary Dayman, who’d lived in the Canadian prairies. “I should do a bit of casual research on Mary,” I thought, thus triggering a months-long deep dive into ancestry.com that would be considered anything but casual. In addition to learning that I am far more nerdy than previously thought, I discovered that many of my paternal ancestors lived in Essex, England, a place that (by pure coincidence) I’d planned to visit just a few months later to see friends. 

And so, just a few months ago I found myself walking down a pastoral country lane on the outskirts of Hockley, Essex, with the 800 year-old Church of St. Peter and St. Paul as my destination. The church was easy to find—it sits atop a small hill surrounded by farmland—as was the gravestone of my great great grandparents, John and Ellen Jolly of Lovedowns Farm. They greeted me as soon as I passed through the gate. 

Did the pickle recipe originate on this side of the family? No. But was it the reason I found John and Ellen Jolly, who’d once travelled by horse and carriage along the same rural lanes I strolled a century and a half later? Yes. And that’s quite lovely.

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