Research Projects

Victory Gardens and the African American Horticultural Legacy

This research project explores the history of African American edible, medicinal, and ornamental gardening with a particular focus on the mid-twentieth century, during the Victory Garden movement, and the period when the Melvina Smith—the first curator of the Stowe House—gardened at the site with her friends, Marian Spencer (1920-2019) and Lucy Oxley (1912-1991). Spencer was one of Cincinnati’s leading civil rights activists and Oxley was the first African American graduate of the University of Cincinnati Medical School.

Two special themes are

  • the history of African American herbalism and how this tradition coexisted with and continues to exist alongside institutionalized medicine.

  • the cultivation of plants from the African diaspora and their role in the history of American horticulture and foodways.

This research supports development of the Edgemont Garden on the Stowe House grounds. Sources include oral history interviews and archival research at the UC Archives and Rare Books library, the Winker Center for the History of the Health Professions, and the Lloyd Library.

Zinnia Stewart (PI) Mona Jenkins and Kate Sorrels (Co-PIs)

Herbal Medicine and Home Economics: Catharine Beecher and the Complicated Legacy of Gender, Science, and Healing

Catharine Beecher (1800-1878) was the founder of Domestic Economy, the field that later became famous as Home Economics. To her, Domestic Economy was a rigorous scientific field of study that codified and expanded upon women’s domestic knowledge, including expertise in the cultivation and use of medicinal plants. Yet her legacy is complex: she opposed women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery, instead advocating for female domesticity and colonization—the movement that promoted the emigration of enslaved people to Africa.

This research project asks what we can learn about the history of herbal medicine when we center its cultural context.

The project supports development of the Medicinal Herb Garden on the Stowe House Grounds. Sources include archival collections at the Lloyd Library, the Cincinnati Historical Society and the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center (Conn.) among others.

Kate Sorrels (PI), Kris Ramprasad and Theo Jansen (Co-PIs)