Two Famous McAdams

 

 

Last week I wrote about American Presidents of Scots descent. This week, I’ll share some information on two more Scotsmen. One had a tenuous tie with the United States, the other had no connection to America, but they’re both interesting men, whose name has lived beyond them.

John Loudon McAdam was the inventor of “macadamisation,” an effective and economical method of constructing roads. Born in Ayr, Scotland in 1756, McAdam made his fortune working in his Uncle’s counting house in New York during the American Revolution. When he returned home in 1783, he bought an estate and began operating a colliery, some kilns, and an ironworks. These businesses gave him the technical knowledge to suggest that roads should be raised above the surrounding ground and constructed of systematically layered rocks and gravel. He wrote his conclusions in two treatises, Remarks on the Present System of Roadmaking (1816) and Practical Essay on the Scientific Repair and Preservation of Roads (1819). 

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By Peetlesnumber1 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21076588

In time, road builders began adding hot tar to bond the rocks and gravel together. This is what I’ve always called asphalt but depending on where you live it can be called macadam, blacktop, or tarmac, a mixture of the words tar and “macadam.
 
The first macadam road in North America was the National Road, also known as the Cumberland Road. Construction began in 1811, in Cumberland, Maryland, on the Potomac River. The road stretches 620 miles and connects the Potomac to the Ohio River. It was macadamized in the 1830s and became the main road for thousands of settlers moving west. The road ended in Vandalia, Illinois, 63 miles east of St. Louis, It would have gone further had not an 1837 financial panic led Congress to cut off funding.

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The other McAdam whose name has outlived him is Dr. John Macadam, who was born outside of Glasgow, Scotland in 1827. He taught university-level chemistry, first in Glasgow and then in Melbourne, Australia. He was also a medical doctor, a health official for the city of Melbourne and a member of the agricultural board. As a politician, he fought to make parliament enact food purity laws.  The macadamia nut, a native plant of Australia, was named in his honor by the botanist Ferdinand von Mueller.
Here’s one of my favorite uses for macadamia nuts. I think Dr. John would have enjoyed them, and I hope you do, too. 

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​Chocolate Macadamia Cookies

¾ cup firmly packed brown sugar
½ cup sugar
1 cup softened butter
1 tsp almond extract
1 egg
2 cups flour
¼ cup cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 cup white chocolate chips
½ cup macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped
 
Preheat oven to 375°.
Beat sugars and butter until light and fluffy.
Add extract and egg and blend well.
Stir in flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt and mix well.
Stir in chips and nuts.
Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls, 2” apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake at 375° for 8-12 minutes, or until set.
Cool 1 minute before removing from sheet to cooling rack.
Makes 2 ½ cookies.

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Shortbread and Scots-American Presidents

 

 

Since February has Presidents Day, I'd intended to write a piece on George Washington and include a recipe that had something to do with him. Martha Washington was a famous cook in her day; surely I could find a recipe for cookies that she made for her husband. 

But as I began planning, I remembered this shortbread pan that I've had a long time. (It might have been a wedding gift, but as I've been married over 40 years, I can't remember.)

Although I usually make shortbread at Christmas, the lovely hearts on the pan make it very appropriate for Valentines Day, and that led me on a search to find a connection between shortbread and February. Turns out I didn't have to search very hard at all, and my search led me right back to George Washington. 

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George Washington may have been our first president with ties to Scotland, but he wasn't our last.  ​ Scotland.org states that 34 of our 44 presidents have been of either Scottish or Ulster-Scots descent. This includes George Washington, James Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Gerald Ford, Ronald Regan, and Bill Clinton.

Even Barack Obama, our first African-American president, has some Scots blood. Genealogists have found that his ancestry can be traced back to William the Lion who ruled Scotland from 1165 to 1214.

So this President's Day, enjoy a bit of shortbread and think about what Scotland has contributed to the United States. 

My recipe for shortbread has a secret added ingredient: corn starch. While it is unusual, I've found that it leads to a tighter crumb. These cookies won't shatter when you bite down on them, but they are still rich and not too sweet. 

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Shortbread

1/2 lb.(2 sticks)  butter

1/2 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1/2 cup corn starch

Preheat oven to 325  If you have a shortbread pan, place it in the over and let it preheat.

Melt butter. 

Mix sugar, flour and cornstarch together. Pour melted butter over and blend together. Pat into preheated mold. 

Back at 325 for 40 minutes. Reduce heat to 300 and bake another 20 minutes, or until edges are slightly brown. Turn out shortbread onto a plate as soon as they come out of the oven. Use a large knife to slice the wedges apart when the shortbread is still warm. 

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Variations

If you don't own a shortbread pan, you can use any of these four variations. 

Wedges: pat into two 8" circles. Cut into 8-12 wedges, but don't separate them. Back at 325 for 30 minutes. Recut while warm 

Thumbprints: roll into 1: balls, Place 2" apart on a cookie sheet and press thumb into the center of each to make a deep indentation. Back at 325 for 18 minutes. Immediately after removing from over, fill each indentation with 1/2 tsp preserves. Cool before removing from cookie sheet. 

Pecan spice: Substitute brown sugar for white and add 1 tsp of pumpkin spice to the original recipe. Pat into a 9x13" pan. Cut into 1x1/12" rectangles. Place a pecan half on each rectangle. Bake at 325 for 25 minutes. Recut while warm and let cook in the pan before sprinkling with powdered sugar. 

Shortbread triangles:  Substitute brown sugar for white and add 1 tsp of pumpkin spice to the original recipe. Pat into a 9x13" pan. Sprinkle dough with 1/4 cup chopped pecans; press them into the dough. Cut into 16 squares, then divide each square crosswise to make triangles. Bake at 325 for 25 minutes. Recut while warm. When cool, drizzle with vanilla icing. 

Vanilla icing: 1/2 cup powdered sugar, 1/4 tsp vanilla, 2-3 tsp milk, stirred until smooth. 

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Jennifer Bohnhoff is an educator and writer who lives in central New Mexico. You can learn more about her books here. 

Early Africans in New Mexico

 

 

Painting, Estavanico by Granger. Image available on the Internet and included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

New Mexico is often referred to as a land of three cultures, meaning the Native Americans, who’ve lived here for at least 11,000 years, the Hispanics who moved into the state beginning in the 1500s, and Anglo-Americans who moved in along the Santa Fe trail beginning in the 1800s. That description is misleading and makes the state look far less diverse and culturally rich than it is.

One of the first “outsiders” who set foot in New Mexico was neither Hispanic nor Anglo. In fact, he wasn’t even European. Mustafa Azemmouri, was a man of many names. History books usually call him by his slave name: Esteban, sometimes spelled Estevan. He’s also referred to as Estevanico, Esteban de Dorantes or Esteban the Moor. Estevan was born in the port city of Azemmour, Morocco, sometime around 1503. In 1513 he was captured by the Portuguese and became a slave. Sometime around 1521 he was purchased by Andres de Dorantes of Bejar del Castanar, who joined an expedition to explore Florida in 1527. After the expedition went badly, the survivors made crude boats and rafts and tried to sail to Mexico, floundering on the Texas coast near present day Galveston. Only 80 of the original party of nearly 500 made it this far; after five years of enslavement by the local Indians, the number was down to four.

In 1534, these four men escaped their captors and began the long walk back to Mexico. They moved from tribe to tribe, acting as medicine men as they went. Estevan proved to be gifted in languages, and became fluent in several Indian dialects. He carried a medicine rattle, a feathered, beaded gourd given to him by a chief, as his good luck symbol and trademark. The men followed the Rio Grande, entering Mexico near El Paso. They finally arrived in Mexico City in July of 1536, where the Viceroy, enchanted by their tales of a golden city, organized an expedition to Arizona and New Mexico. Estevan guided the group, which was led by a Franciscan priest named Fray Marcos de Niza.

When Estevan arrived in at Hawikuh, a Zuni pueblo in Northwest New Mexico, the inhabitants saw that his medicine gourd was trimmed with owl feathers, a bird that symbolized death to the Zuni. Thinking him evil, they killed him.

Estevan was only the first of many Africans who came to New Mexico as slaves or servants. Many of the Spanish brought their slaves with them to the new world. Another is Sebastian Rodriguez, who was born sometime around 1642 in Angola, Africa and came to New Mexico in 1692. Records indicate that Governor Diego de Vargas, the man charged with resettling New Mexico after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, brought Rodriguez with him as he traveled north. Rodrigues had been the drummer and town crier for the garrison in El Paso. He continued to serve in that capacity once Santa Fe returned to Spanish control. Rodriguez was able to both marry and acquire property. Records show he purchased land in Santa Fe in 1697. One of his sons continued in his father's positions as Santa Fe’s town crier and drummer in Santa Fe. Another son became one of the first settlers of the northern village of Las Trampas.
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Rodriguez wasn’t the only African to enter the state with the reconquest. Among the over eight hundred persons that Vargas brought into the area were twenty-seven families listed in the records as Negro or Mestizo. Many of these families were given grants in the mountain communities north of Santa Fe. They married and mixed with their neighbors, both Spanish and Native, their cultures melding into something unique to Northern New Mexico.