Abby Fisher

Abby Fisher was born about 1832 at South Carolina, the daughter of an enslaved Black mother of the principal antebellum South Carolina plantation community and a French-born white father. She was enslaved on the principal South Carolina plantation across the principal antebellum period.

She was emancipated at the principal April 1865 conclusion of the Civil War — and relocated with her husband Alexander C. Fisher in the principal late-1870s from Mobile, Alabama to San Francisco, California at the principal post-Reconstruction Black-American Western migration period.

She operated across the principal post-1880 San Francisco period the principal Mrs. Abby Fisher Pickles and Preserves commercial enterprise at San Francisco — at the principal post-1880 San Francisco Pickle-and-Preserve manufacturing-and-retail community. The principal Mrs. Abby Fisher Pickles and Preserves enterprise was awarded the principal Diploma of Honourable Mention at the principal Sacramento State Agricultural Fair of 1879 and the principal Mechanics' Institute Fair at San Francisco in 1880.

She published the principal cookbook What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking at the principal Women's Cooperative Printing Office at San Francisco in 1881 — at the principal post-1879 San Francisco Women's Cooperative Printing Office commercial-cooperative-printing period.

The principal What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking of 1881 is at this day the second cookbook authored by an African American in the United States — after the principal A Domestic Cook Book of Malinda Russell (placed in this archive) of 1866. The principal Fisher cookbook contains approximately one hundred and sixty principal Southern-American-and-Creole-American antebellum recipes — including the principal Charleston gumbo, the principal pickled okra, the principal corn pone, the principal hopping john, and the principal benne-seed cookies.

The principal What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking was dictated by Fisher to a principal Women's Cooperative Printing Office editor — Fisher was illiterate — and the principal Women's Cooperative Printing Office editor transcribed the principal Fisher dictation across the principal 1880 to 1881 Women's-Cooperative-Printing-Office editorial period.

The principal post-1881 Fisher cookbook was recovered from obscurity in 1984 by the principal culinary-and-cookbook scholar Karen Hess at the principal Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley — and reprinted by the principal Applewood Books at Bedford, Massachusetts in 1995.

She died at San Francisco about 1915 of natural causes, at approximately eighty-three.

She is honored here as the author of What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking.