The Saint Paul Globe (Saint Paul, Minnesota) · 4 Jan 1903, Sun · Page 13
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Emeline Jones creates "Chesapeake Cuisine", making it famous in Europe.
A famous and world known chef, Emeline Jones was born enslaved in the 1830s on Colonel Benedict William Hall’s estate, Eutaw Manor. The manor was originally located in this portion of the park; it no longer exists. When Hall’s daughter Elizabeth married Horatio Whitridge, Ms. Jones moved with her to his house in Baltimore’s Little Gunpowder District. Here Jones grew into womanhood and perfected her cooking skills. Prior to the Civil War, Whitridge freed Jones, who made her way to New York in 1864, where she worked as a private cook. She met John Chamberlain, a hotelier and entrepreneur, when he was a guest in her employer’s household. In the late 1860s, Chamberlain hired Jones to cook for the clubhouse at Monmouth Raceway in Long Branch, New Jersey. John Chamberlin was a former Mississippi riverboat gambler who ran grand establishments, including a popular restaurant in Washington, D.C. In the early 1870s, Chamberlain invited Jones to be a chef at his club house in Washington, D.C., where she gained favorable attention from different reporters. Club houses were exclusive gathering spaces for different social groups. When Chamberlain undertook the management of New York City’s Carlton Club, where the sporting and political worlds met, Jones moved with him. Presidents Garfield, Arthur, and Cleveland attempted to secure her services in the White House, but she cordially declined. Jones was loyal to Chamberlain because he paid her well and treated her with deference and affection. He permitted her to hire out her services and employ assistants in the kitchen for banquet work. Jones considered it her responsibility to train African American cooks and she launched many careers. After the 1886 closure of the Carlton Club, Chamberlain offered Jones a permanent position at his resort hotel at Point Comfort on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. After Chamberlain’s death in 1896, Jones ran the club house kitchen at Long Branch during the summer months and worked out of her home catering banquets and parties for men’s clubs and society women. Newspaper reporters repeatedly interviewed Jones in the 1890s and 1900s about her expertise in the "Chesapeake Style" of cooking. New York’s famous French Chefs’ Society paid for her care and support during her prolonged illness at the end of her life, as well as her funeral upon her death in the summer of 1912.
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