Rick's Hoosier Cabinet

Rick purchased the bottom part of a Hoosier from Carol Burdick in Alfred Station. The cabinet had been in “Farm House,” her parents’ get-away cabin. When CB sold the cabin she sold the furniture in it. Rick purchased the Hoosier in order to use the porcelain table top for his own version of the famous cabinet to be made in oak and ash.

This is what we bought:

In the past several years the term 'Hoosier' cabinet has come to mean any free standing step back cabinet from the early 20th century. These include the ones made by the Hoosier Manufacturing Co as well as all the other Indiana makers. It has also come to mean many different styles of cabinet that were made in many different areas. But, primarily a Hoosier cabinet is one that usually contained a porcelain top, tambour doors, and large refillable flour bins and sifters.


There were several manufactures of Hoosier cabinets but most were located in Indiana. These include:
• Hoosier Manufacturing Co in New Castle Indiana,
• GI Sellers & Sons Company in Kokomo and later Elwood Indiana,
• McDougall Company in Indianapolis and later Frankfort Indiana,
• Coppes Brothers and Zook Inc, in Napanee Indiana.
• Cambell-Smith-Ritchie Company in Lebanon Indiana (Boone County)
• Wilson Cabinet Co in Greencastle Indiana

It's hard to say just how many were actually made to give an idea - the Hoosier Manufacturing Company sold over 300,000 cabinets in 1910 alone. It is believed that there were at least 4 million cabinets sold during the 1910s and 20s. The first cabinets came out about 1898 and reached peak sales about 1925. By the 1930s built-in kitchens caused demand for free standing cabinets to decline. Interestingly, in the last ten years or so freestanding cabinets are again becoming popular in upscale homes.


Prior to these cabinets most kitchens had numerous cabinets, tables, and boxes where baking and cooking supplies were kept. The Hoosier cabinet was introduced as a timesaver and was advertised to cut in half unnecessary kitchen work. Since all the supplies were now located in one cabinet that had its own pull out preparation surface many steps were saved. Hoosier cabinets were also popular due to a unique marketing scheme commonly called "a dollar down and a dollar a week".

Story Jar - Leaping York

Leaping York
Story Jar published in The Patriot, August 1, 2007

York is our cat. Named for sharing a color scheme with some famous peppermint patties, her white face and feet decorate her silky, black presence.

On a cool November afternoon in 1995, I went to Max’s house to pick up Jay and his bike. Opening the back of the van to put the bike in gave local cats the opportunity to invite themselves into our lives and they didn’t miss the chance.

A male cat flew under my arm through the open hatch and began to walk around simultaneously sniffing the car and ignoring me. I wasn’t sure if I should try to pick the cat up or not and didn’t know where it had come from. As I stood pondering, his sister jumped up to share in the exploratory sniffing.

Someone called out from the porch across the street asking if we’d like a cat. She scarcely touched the steps as she left the porch and bent in an ever-moving, fluid motion to scoop another cat from one of the many boxes on the porch. Hope filled her face and, it seemed, sent out some kind of radar that brought people from several houses. In no time, Jay and I were surrounded by excited people and cats. We must adopt cats, they urged – as many as the car would hold.

A family had moved away in August leaving behind a pregnant cat. She gave birth in an empty box on a porch in September and, now, cats were growing and the temperature was falling and someone must take the cats.

Tim put out the box that lured the mother cat to his porch and wanted to keep the litter but, since he already had five cats in the house, his mother only allowed the kittens to live in a box on the porch. Their food came from neighborhood residents who never lost an opportunity to offer the cats to passers by. Since the cat was already in our car, hope was high.

While I was distracted by all the conversations around us, Jay did the serious business of bonding with York – scratching her chin, rubbing her ears, snuggling her in his arms. We went home with a bike and a cat and sent an Email to Rick who was working in Malaysia at the time.

He said he wouldn’t mind a new cat in our home as long as it wasn’t black and white.