Donate to the Collection

The Woman’s Collection continues to collect titles to add to its holdings. Please contact us anytime to schedule a tour, to donate, or learn more about the history of food.

Major Donors

• Julie Benell
  Julie Benell was food editor of the Dallas Morning News for twenty-five years, and for fifteen of those years also appeared on a daily television show in the North Texas area. Publications are primarily from the 1950’s and 1960’s including many out-of-print titles.
• Marion Somerville Church
  Following Marion Church’s wishes, the collection was donated by his sister, Mrs. P.R. Gilmer of Shreveport, LA. Mrs. Gilmer had a deep interest in the university’s work in foods and homemaking. The collection includes books, several printed in the 1850's, and famous regional books as well as hundreds of menu cards from hotels, restaurants, clubs, railroad lines, airlines, and steamship lines.
• Katherine A. Francillon
  The collection was begun when she and her husband moved from New York City to Seattle. Katherine Francillon picked up recipe leaflets and softcover cookbooks as they travelled. When she decided to dispose of the collection, a book dealer recommended Texas Woman’s University. The donation consisted of vendor pamphlets from the 1920’s through 1960’s and in the 1980’s and 1990’s recipe leaflets which had been advertised in the local Seattle newspaper as well as softcover community cookbooks primarily from the northwest United States.
• Barbara Land
  A TWU alumna and librarian of the prestigious Book Club of California, Barbara Land began donating remarkable cookbooks in 1977 includes California cookbooks and miscellaneous vendor pamphlets collected by a Mrs. Kravatsky and purchased by Land in 1998 from a San Francisco book dealer.
• Nell Morris
  A TWU alumna and its most famous Chief Dietician and Associate Professor of Home Economics from 1932 to 1950. In 1950 Morris joined Frito-Lay where she helped develop many recipes including Fritos Chili Pie.
• Patty Macsisak
  A Texas native and SMU graduate, Patty Macsisak grew up surrounded by women who knew their way around a kitchen, gaining a deep respect for their skill, creativity and thrifty ways. When her husband was transferred to Northern California, her interests grew beyond “three squares” to nutrition, food quality, culinary history, international cuisines, et. al. As she explored each new aspect of the food spectrum, her library grew apace. Discovering the TWU Culinary Collection online in the 1990s, she resolved to eventually donate her collection here. Her extensive collection of books and pamphlets have added depth to many areas of the TWU Culinary Collection, notably the Deep South, Texas and Southwest cookbooks.
• Mary Elizabeth Lynch Payne
  During twenty years of living abroad while her husband worked in the oil business, Mary Payne indulged her love of reading cookbooks "like a novel" by adding to her international titles including South American (Venezuela in particular), Scottish, English, German and American imprints. When she decided to dispose of her collection, a friend of her daughter’s recommended Texas Woman's University.
• Mrs. Thomas M. Scruggs (Ph.D.) and Margaret Cook
  Mrs. Scruggs began assembling her distinguished cookbook collection in the 1940’s and continued with her daughter, Margaret Cook, through 1960. The collection includes 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th century titles covering Early American, regional, and foreign cookbooks, etiquette manuals and recipe pamphlets. Purchased at auction September, 1977.
• Anne Simmons, Ph.D.
  A TWU alumna, Anne Simmons and her husband own a commercial asparagus farm selling to fine restaurants. During travels across the United States, she has acquired a large collection of primarily community cookbooks. The donations are primarily 20th century titles.