Cove Fort Kitchen

COVE FORT KITCHEN

It's amazing the number of people a housewife served back in the 1800's. Below
are pictures that help us imagine how busy these ladies must have been. There
would have been no possibility of outside employment for these women.

Mr. & Mrs. Hinckley had 11 children and they frequently entertained Brigham Young and visitors from the Mormon Church, so this kitchen was not oversized. The pottery that you see on the table is authentic. There were pieces of old pottery found in the courtyard and from those a date and manufacturer was established. By sheer luck, two boxes of the same pottery were found on the East Coast and brought to the fort. That's a great Grandmother clock, isn't it? In the far right corner just under the hutch is a little highchair that is remarkably well preserved.

Wouldn't it be great to have this old stove around? Even if it was just to look at, I know that any meals cooked on it would also be great. I can remember my Grandmother cooking on a similar woodstove and those meals were awesome. Of couse a stove like this also provided a ready heat source on those cold mornings. That old cast iron pot on the top shelf of the stove would make a great stew I'll bet. See the two flatirons resting on the cooktop? It's easy to imagine that Mrs. Hinkley put those to good use with 11 children to care for. We were told that because of the large numbers of visitors to the Hinkley home, Mrs. Hinckley was known to bake 15 or more loaves of bread on this stove in a single day. The rug that you see in front of the stove is the type you see all through the house that were made on a large loom. Nothing went to waste, and old clothing or any other kind of material was used to make these rugs. This stove was a beautiful find for the restorers because even the original hardware is intact.

This is a side view of the kitchen just to the left of the three tables you saw earlier and near the courtyard door. To the rear of the room is one of the doors that connected every room in the house with the next room. Near the door is a great old pie case with the stenciled tin inserts. No doubt the large bowl was used for bread dough to make all those loaves of bread that Mrs. Hinkley baked. The odd shaped grey mallet type tool resting in the yellow bowl in the foreground is a potato masher. (And I'll bet they expected the potatos to be without lumps too!) Just imagine keeping all these untensils shiny clean.

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