Mary J. Lincoln

Mary Johnson Bailey Lincoln (July 8, 1844 – December 2, 1921) was an influential Boston cooking teacher and cookbook author. She used Mrs. D.A. Lincoln as her professional name during her husband's lifetime and in her published works; after his death, she used Mary J. Lincoln. Considered one of the pioneers of the Domestic Science movement in the United States, she was among the very first to address the scientific and nutritional basis of food preparation.

Born in South Attleboro, Massachusetts, she contributed to the family income due to the death of her father when she was aged seven. In 1864 she graduated from the Wheaton Female Seminary, Norton, MA, now known as Wheaton College.

In 1865 she married David A. Lincoln of Norton, MA and "happily settled down to life as a housewife" in Boston. During the late 1870s, David Lincoln's health began to fail and Mary entered domestic service to provide an income. (The Lincolns had no children.)

When the Boston Cooking School was founded in the spring of 1879, Mary Lincoln was invited to become its first teacher. As she later recalled, "I refused to consider the proposition, for while I knew that I could cook, I knew nothing about cooking schools. ... The matter was dropped and Miss [Joanna] Sweeney was engaged as a teacher."

In November, 1879 she was offered the opportunity to take lessons from Miss Sweeney and attend the public demonstration lectures by Maria Parloa, following which she would be engaged "to teach for six months at a salary of $75 per month. This was a most generous offer, and I felt that if others had so much confidence in me I certainly ought to be willing to try, and I consented to take the school a month on trial. ..." She continued at the school until 1885, eventually becoming its first principal. She inaugurated a wide variety of special courses and lectures ranging from free courses for immigrant girls in Boston's North End to special instruction in "sick-room cookery" for nurses from area hospitals.

During her years at The Boston Cooking School, she researched and wrote Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book: What to Do and What Not to Do in Cooking, published by the Boston firm of Roberts Brothers in 1884. She later observed, "This was done primarily to meet the need of a textbook for our pupils and save the copying of recipes ..."

It was one of the first American cook books to provide scientific information about nutrition and the chemistry of cooking. It also help set a pattern for the rational organization of cookbooks, and was among the first in America to provide recipes formulated with consistent measurements. It should be seen as the fore-runner to the world-famous Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer, Mrs. Lincoln's most prominent student who eventually succeeded her as principal of the Boston Cooking School.

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