William Woys Weaver (born March 13, 1947) is an American culinary historian and scholar of heirloom plants. His specialties include Pennsylvania Dutch cookery, medieval Polish cuisine, and Cypriot cooking during the Lusignan period.
Biography Early life and career William Woys Weaver was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on March 13, 1947, to H. William and Alameda () Weaver. He is descended from 13 generations of Quaker ancestors through his paternal grandmother, Grace Weaver(née Hickman), a Quaker. His paternal grandfather, Ralph Weaver, was a former Mennonite and spoke the Pennsylvania Dutch language, teaching Weaver as he grew up. Ralph Weaver was an avid seed collector, and in 1932 he founded the Roughwood Seed Collection. Seeds were collected from branches of the family in Lancaster County. Other varieties came from Ralph's friend Horace Pippin, the prominent African-American painter, who supplied peppers such as the Fish pepper. Ralph Weaver died in 1956.
As a teenager, Weaver was interested in writing and produced several short stories. Some of these were read by Alexandra Tolstaya, the Russian writer and daughter of Leo Tolstoy, who encouraged Weaver to continue in his writing.Weaver studied architecture at the University of Virginia and received his Bachelor of Arts in 1969, which he followed with postgraduate studies in architectural history at the school. In August 1970, Weaver married another student in his architectural history cohort, Lynn Beebe, but they divorced after two years of marriage.
In 1971, he travelled to Vicenza, Italy, where he completed studies at the International Center for Palladian Studies.
In the course of his studies, Weaver moved to New York where he worked on the completion of his master's thesis and in 1972 took on a job as editor at Dover Press in Manhattan. Initially dealing only with architecture books, Weaver gradually took on editing duties for herbals and gardening books. On weekends, he travelled back to Pennsylvania, working on re-establishing his grandfather's garden. In a later interview, Weaver described feeling a distaste for working in an office, and said that vegetables sold in the city were tasteless compared to those he had eaten fresh from gardens growing up.
Return to West Chester Weaver returned to West Chester in 1973, moving into the family home he had inherited. He worked part-time as an article writer, later moving to books. It was around this time that Weaver found the cache of rare heirloom seeds, kept frozen in baby food jars after his grandfather's death. Weaver decided to maintain the seed collection, procuring varieties from relatives. Asked about this time in an interview, Weaver reflected, "I brought the collection back from the dead—though, in the beginning, I killed a lot of rare things. I was a beginner." In 1977, Weaver began work as a full-time food historian.
Roughwood Two years later, he sold the family home and purchased Roughwood, a house in Devon, Pennsylvania. Roughwood, constructed around 1805, had served as the Lamb Tavern in the early 19th century.
In 1982, Weaver's cousin Mary Larkin Thomas died at the age of 92. Thomas was a seed-collecting enthusiast too, collecting from sailors and Native American friends alike, and she bequeathed her collection to Weaver. That year, Weaver released A Quaker Woman's Cookbook: The Domestic Cooking of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea, and the following year released Sauerkraut Yankees: Pennsylvania-German Foods and Foodways, both published through the University of Pennsylvania Press. As clerk of the Marlborough Quaker Meeting, he also wrote a pamphlet, "The Marlborough Footwashing", on a 1781 dispute and reconciliation between two neighbors, members of the meeting.
In 1987, he collaborated with Mary Annes Hines and Gordon Marshall to write the catalogue for an exhibition, "The Larder Invaded: Three Centuries of Reflection on Philadelphia Food and Drink, which was held at the Library Company of Philadelphia.
Weaver was profiled in The Christian Science Monitor in 1988. At that time, Weaver had amassed a large library of ephemera—engravings, antique cookware—through inheritance and purchases that he drew upon to illustrate his writings. He lived in Devon in Chester County, Pennsylvania, working on the restoration of Roughwood. He maintained a large kitchen garden at the property, growing eucalyptus, fruit trees, herbs, and vegetables. The garden was designed in an antebellum style influenced by the jardin potager, French-style vegetable gardens.
In 1989, Weaver guest curated the exhibit America Eats: Folk Art and Food at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. He wrote a collection of essays of the same name.
Weaver received his PhD degree in food ethnography from University College in Dublin, Ireland.
In 1997, Weaver's book Heirloom Vegetable Gardening: A Master Gardener's Guide to Planting, Seed Saving and Cultural History was published by Henry Holt & Company. The book was met with acclaim, winning the Julia Child Award for Food Reference and the Jane Grigson Award for Distinguished Scholarship.
2000 onwards
In 2000 he published 100 Vegetables and Where They Came From through Algonquin Books. A profile in the New York Times described Weaver at this time as "the Julia Child of long-lost vegetables", crediting him with having "transformed the field of heirloom vegetables". By this point, his seed collection had grown to 3,000 varieties. He planted them in cycles in his garden and greenhouse. Some of those seeds were sent to the Seed Savers Exchange where they could be purchased by the public, as well as by botanical gardens, museums, and researchers.
Weaver used the plants grown with them in a range of culinary applications, for instance making champagne out of champagne rhubarb and a salsa from Naranjilla, Aji Limón pepper, and mango. He periodically made a strong parsley tea that he drank for his kidneys, which he described as in need of help "after I was bitten by a brown recluse spider and nearly died". He and his cousin Dr. Don Yoder, the noted scholar on religious history, assembled the Roughwood Collection of early Pennsylvania German imprints.
In 2001, Weaver published Sauer's Herbal Cures, an annotated translation of a herbal originally written in the late 18th century by Johann Christoph Sauer, an apothecary who lived in the Philadelphia area. In an interview with the New York Times, he described a family connection to healers in the Philadelphia area: a Quaker cousin had tended her family during the Spanish Flu wearing a sachet of garlic and herbs around her neck, and none of her relatives had fallen ill.
As of 2010, Weaver had the role of adjunct professor at Drexel University. His seed collection was at 4000 varieties, and he was hosting gardening workshops at his home. He continued writing, and in September released Culinary Ephemera: An Illustrated History, through the University of California Press. By that time, Roughwood had grown to become the largest private collection of Eastern Woodlands Native American food plants. Weaver described his goal as the preservation of the genetics of seeds that may otherwise not be preserved as most food was grown through cross-breeding. By 2025, Weaver no longer resides at Roughwood. His collection of culinary ephemera and cookbooks is at the Library Company of Philadelphia, while his collection of Pennsylvania German artifacts are at the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University. Today, the Roughwood Seed Collection is also housed at Kutztown University.
Works
PublisherYearPagesOCLC/ISBNNotes A Quaker Woman's Cookbook: The Domestic Cooking of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea University of Pennsylvania Press 1982 394 Sauerkraut Yankees: Pennsylvania-German Foods and Foodways Oxford University Press 1983 238 35 Receipts from "The Larder Invaded"Library Company of Philadelphia1986America Eats: Forms of Edible Folk ArtPerennial Library 1989The Christmas Cook: Three Centuries of American Yuletide SweetsHarperPerennial1990Pennsylvania Dutch Country CookingAbbeville Press1993Heirloom Vegetable Gardening: A Master Gardener's Guide to Planting, Seed Saving and Cultural HistoryHenry Holt and Company1997Food and Drink in Medieval Poland: Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past by Maria DembińskaUniversity of Pennsylvania Press1999Revised and adapted100 Vegetables and Where They Came FromAlgonquin Books2000Sauer's Herbal Cures: America's First Book of Botanic Healing Routledge2001The Encyclopedia of Food and CultureScribner2003Associate editor and art editor; contributor of 29 entriesCountry Scrapple: An American TraditionStackpole Books2003The Royal Garden of Pefkou: A Study of Fruit Consumption in Medieval NicosiaMoufflon Publications2006MonographCulinary Ephemera: An Illustrated HistoryUniversity of California Press2010As American as Shoofly Pie: The Foodlore and Fakelore of Pennsylvania Dutch CuisineUniversity of Pennsylvania Press2013Dutch Treats: Heirloom Recipes from Farmhouse KitchensSt. Lynn's Press2016The Roughwood Book Of Pickling: Homestyle Recipes For Chutneys, Pickles, Relishes, Salsas And Vinegar InfusionsRizzoli2019208Flavors from the Garden: Heirloom Vegetable Recipes from RoughwoodRizzoli2021208Pepperpot City: Philadelphia and the Foundation of American Cuisine, an Illustrated HistoryUniversity of Pennsylvania PressUpcoming
1980s A Quaker Woman's Cookbook: The Domestic Cooking of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea (1982)
Elizabeth Ellicott Lea was born in 1793 in Maryland, and spent much of her life in the state until her death in 1858. In 1845, she released Domestic Cookery, a recipe book focused on popular fare rather than the elaborate preparations that dominated the cookbooks of the time. A second edition, published in 1851 expanded the book to contain advice on the domestic duties of housewives, including preventing food waste and treating sickness. Weaver's A Quaker Woman's Cookbook deals with this second edition, providing annotations, bibliography, and an introduction with contextual information on Ellicott's biography, and the book's writing, editing and reception.
In a review for the journal Pennsylvania History, Emma Weigley found Weaver's analysis worthwhile contributions; a reviewer in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography likewise called Weaver's context "informative". A review in Publishers Weekly commented on the overall text, describing it as "valuable as a footnote to Middle Atlantic States folklore of the early 19th century". In Keystone Folklore, the reviewer gave strong praise to Woys's contributions, finding the bibliography capably done and the glossary so "graceful, amusing and informative that it is a delight to read".
Sauerkraut Yankees: Pennsylvania-German Foods and Foodways (1983)
Weaver's next book was written around his translation of ('The Handy Housewife'), a Pennsylvania Dutch language-cookbook first published in 1848 by Gustav Peters, a printer in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Weaver excised some of the non-cookery content and organised the remaining 139 recipes, accompanying each with an essay. In addition, an introduction, a bibliography, footnotes, 19th-century illustrations, and nineteen recipes from other period cookbooks and household manuals were included.
2010s Culinary Ephemera: An Illustrated History (2010)
Designed and composed by Claudia Smelser, the book annotated 352 illustrations of sheet music, business cards, and almanacs, among other ephemera, mostly from Weaver's own collection. The book's thesis argues that ephemera give more insight into the social history of food than one produced by cookbooks.