Cavanman’s wife was the ‘tyrannical’ White House Cook
Even when the story is historical, mentioning the word tyrant and cooking recalls a certain enraged English television chef. Well, it has already been documented that Mrs Henrietta Nesbitt was akin to a Prussian General in the kitchen and a woman not to be dissuaded once she had made up her mind. In the mid1920s, Henrietta’s husband Henry had moved to Dutchess County, New York, to begin farming, not too far from the Franklin D. Roosevelt's estate at Hyde Park. The Nesbitts became good friends of the Roosevelts and when Franklin became President of the U.S.A., Henry and Henrietta were given jobs at the White House.
Bearing in mind that the 1930s was an era of austerity and food rationing was felt prudent. Mrs Roosevelt suggested that they employ her friend Henrietta Nesbitt from Hyde Park. Both ladies were known for their frugality and thrift when it came to cost-saving cookery. Who better to set an example to a nation suffering from the effects of austerity than by the President himself. In 1933, when Henrietta Nesbitt moved into the White House with the Roosevelts, she brought her husband Henry F. Nesbitt with her. Henry was employed as a steward on the White House staff.
Henry's father, William Humphreys Nesbitt was born in 1830, the son of George Nesbitt, a farmer in Ballyhaise. A quick check of the 1821 census shows that the Nesbitt families around Ballyhaise were well to do, and some are listed as innkeepers. When he got married, William Humphreys Nesbitt was by then farming at Pottle, in the parish of Kilmore, not too far from Cavan town. He wedded Louisa Garven on 13 January 1855 in the Parish Church, Kilmore (the Cathedral was not yet built). Their marriage record shows that Louisa’s father was John Garven, a merchant from Killinagh, Co. Cavan. Probably around the early 1860s, the married couple went to live in the townland of Dreenan, Kilmore, and that is where their children were born.
Henry F. Nesbitt was born on 26 May 1865. However, the birth register, while showing his parents details and date of birth, it incorrectly lists him as William. However, Henry’s siblings were all born in Cavan. They included George Knight Nesbitt, born in 1856; Robert Garven Nesbitt, born in 1858; Thomasina Nesbitt, born in 1862; Lettia Frances Nesbitt, born in 1867; and Louisa E. Nesbitt in 1869.
Having finished his studies at Trinity College Dublin, Henry Nesbitt came to the United States with his parents as a young man. The Nesbitts settled in St Louis County, Minnesota, United States of America. Henry’s early career revolved around the insurance industry, before going to Washington to represent a cooperage firm whose headquarters were in Poughkeepsie, then becoming a chief clerk of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company and afterwards working as a sales representative for the American Whaling Company. In 1905, he married Victoria Dora ‘Henrietta’ Kugler Nesbitt from Duluth, St Louis. She was the owner of the Hyde Park Bakery.
Henry’s father, Mr William Humphreys Nesbitt died on April 11, 1905, at Duluth, St Louis, aged 75 years. He was described as a well-known citizen who lived at 124 Tenth Avenue. For the last two years of his life, William had been confined to his house having been invalided due to the loss of his leg in ‘a runaway accident.’
The local newspaper described how his wife had left him sitting in his ‘invalid chair’ to go up the stairs and when she returned to him, she found he was dying. The family physician, Dr C.S. McComb was sent for but by the time he arrived, William had died. His wife and four children survived him. Of his children, his two sons mentioned are Henry also known to others as Harry working at the time for the Silberstein and Bondy company and his brother George Knight Nesbitt living in Chicago. William’s two daughters were still living at home with Louisa, their mother.
Henrietta Nesbitt’s tough exterior and infamously ‘bland’ cooking became a topic of conversation amongst visitors to the White House during the Roosevelt years. In 1945, when Harry S. Truman succeeded Roosevelt as the next President of the United States, he sacked Henrietta Nesbitt for disobedience when she refused to provide a ‘stick of butter’ for the woman’s club run by the First Lady, MrsBess Truman. Henrietta maintained that butter rationing should be adhered to by everyone. In retirement she wrote her memoir about life as the White House cook and produced a cookery book.
The Nesbitt’s two children were Lt. Col. Garven Stokes Nesbitt (1906-1970) and Trevanion Henry Ernst Nesbitt (1911-1989). Garven, like his father, worked in the whaling business for a time, before serving in the ‘U.S. Army Corps. Of Engineers’ from 1943 to 1947 and was ‘associated’ with the National Guard at Washington D.C. from 1947 to 1965. While Trevanion, also known as, Buck Nesbitt, conducted exemplary work a State Department official, and as deputy director of the Office of Space, Atmospheric and Marine Science Affairs. On September 29, 1989, The Washington Post noted about him, that ‘In 1965, Mr Nesbitt received the State Department's Superior Honor Award for setting up the command and reporting centre that monitored the space flight of astronaut L. Gordon Cooper’ and ‘Mr Nesbitt was credited with an important role in demonstrating the feasibility of global television transmissions via satellite.’
When he died on 5 January 1938, Henry F. Nesbitt had been employed for five years as a White House steward and was considered a very popular member of the staff. The Roosevelt's sent a personal message of sympathy to Henrietta Nesbitt. It was reported that Mr Nesbitt had undergone an operation twelve months earlier which had not been successful and yet, he appeared in good spirits while seated at his working desk in the White House on the very day he died. He was laid to rest in Hyde Park Cemetery.
Even if MrsNesbitt’s cooking was so bland that the common advice to anyone visiting the White House was to ‘eat well before you go there,’ she was still the right person in the job. After all, she was hired to make meals that reflected the recessional times of 1930s America.
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