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Grandma Gilbride's Date & Nut Bread, 1974

Date & Nut Bread is Santa-approved! Our genealogy writing group is getting together this week and some of us are going to bring a holiday goodie to share. One of my absolute favorite holiday treats is my Grandma Gilbride's Date & Nut Bread. Grandma Gilbride was born Mary Josephine Baker (1911-1981) in Cleveland. She married my grandfather, Joseph John Gilbride (1910-1990) in 1934 in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio. I don't have any real memory of Grandma Gilbride making this bread though we probably enjoyed some on a holiday visit to my grandparents' house. Clearly Mom thought it was a winner and asked for the recipe and she started making this bread when I was in my early teens. The recipe card I inherited is dated 12/21/1974.  When baked the bread usually has a peak running down the length, which cracks open a bit. It's moist, dense, and sweet, with a little crunch of walnuts and nuggets of diced dates. The bread is perfect with a little cream cheese spread...
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GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021 - Photo of Ancestral Place


 

GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021

Ancestral Place - January 14th entry of a 31-day challenge to post a document, photo or artifact on social media every day in January.  

by Nancy Gilbride Casey

 

Soaring 700 feet above the surrounding valley, on a limestone cliff in northern Slovakia, is the magnificent Stará Ľubovňa Castle.1 This very sight may have captured the imaginations and stirred the souls of my great grandparents Anna Sophia Tatar (1883-1950) and John Simonik (1873-1950). 

Well, that was the way this blog post about an ancestral town photo was going to begin. Insert sound of needle scratching a phonograph record here.

Sometimes our imagining of what our ancestors may have experienced collides head on with reality. 

Both Anna and John were born the village of Forbásy, a few miles from this castle. They were baptized in the Roman Catholic church at Gňazdá (now known as Hniezdne). The map below shows the distance from these towns to the castle (starred).


I wondered: Could my great grandparents see this imposing sight from their village? Were they inspired by it every day? Never having been to Slovakia to see for myself, I posed some of these questions to the good folks on the Slovak Genealogy FaceBook page.

Turns out the answer was, "Nah!"

One knowledgeable FBer noted, "Hniezdne is about 2 miles from the castle at Starã Ľubovňa, and Forbásy is about another mile away. So if you were up on a hill and no other hill was in the way, you could barely see the castle in the distance." Womp waaaa.

On the other hand, I did come away from my FaceBook exchange with some other interesting tidbits, such as: 
  • Forbásy was a very small village, with clustered, independent houses. It had no church, only chapels. So, residents went to nearby Gňazdá to tend to Catholic sacraments like baptisms, marriages, etc. 
  • The church in Gňazdá was named Kostol sv. Bartolomeja or Church of St. Bartholomew.
  • The residents of Forbásy at the time my great grandparents lived there may have actually been Goral, a mini-ethnic group combining Polish and Slovak characteristics; I'm tasking myself with learning more about this group in the future.
So as the search continues for a good photograph of Forbásy, at least I now have a bit better mental image of the area...even if my great grandparents couldn't see the castle on a cliff.


NEXT UP: Military Picture
 
 
Thanks to the members of the Slovak Genealogy / slovenské genealógie Facebook page for insights which contributed to this post.


1 "Ľubovňa Castle," by Kateryna Baiduzha (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php : accessed 13 January 2021), licensed under Creative Commons License - CC BY-SA 4.0.



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