Historic holiday menus from 6th Cavalry from 1925-40 now online
The Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) has partnered with the 6th Cavalry Museum to digitize its collection of historic holiday menus created at Fort Oglethorpe from 1925-1940, thanks to a digitization grant awarded by the DLG.
The collection is available at https://dlg.usg.edu/collection/ scm_scthm.
Holiday menus combine economic, cultural and social histories of holidays, as well as food and cooking history. Some of these menus also include rosters of U.S. military personnel, as well as guests and family members. In some cases, the menus include a “year in review” section, providing key insights that aren’t offered elsewhere in materials held by the 6th Cavalry Museum.
These materials have proved to be particularly helpful to genealogists who have made use of them as a source of historical information, thanks in part to rosters recorded inside of the menus.
Food historians will be able to consult these resources for a history of food or a study of ritualized meals, and menu highlights provide critical information about military life and help provide a better understanding of the loss, change and growth that took place during the 1920s and 1930s.
“My father joined the 6th Cavalry for officer’s training in 1940 at Fort Oglethorpe and eventually attained the rank of major by the end of World War II,” Camilla Canty, a family historian doing research on her family, said. “Fort Oglethorpe held special memories for my parents because they met there when my father was in training and my mother worked for Col. James Troutt in the Office of the Surgeon.”
Visit the 6th Cavalry Museum at https://www.6thcavalrymuseum. org/ or on Facebook at https:// www.facebook.com/SixthCavalryMuseum/.