DAR | Museum - Featured Objects

In each issue, the bimonthly DAR magazine, American Spirit, highlights an object from the DAR Museum collection in its "National Treasures" feature. These objects, often recent accessions or important pieces in the current exhibit, always have a story to tell about American history.

National Treasures

A Link to the Past

In the 19th century, meat preservation was a serious business, though quite messy and time-consuming. A family usually made sausage at the same time it butchered a hog. Pork was ground and mixed with several spices as a means of preservation. A sausage stuffer was then used to force the ground meat into a casing, which was usually made from hog intestines.

The DAR Museum’s large, cumbersome sausage stuffer consists of wood and tin. The casing would fit over the funnel-like structure, then the handle would be raised and lowered to push the meat into the casing. This mid-to-late 19th-century example was used by Rebecca Hendrickson Conover (1805–1892) of New Jersey. Today’s stainless-steel sausage makers weigh only three pounds, a vast improvement over this 25-pound example.

American Spirit, Volume 141, Number 5, September/October 2007, Page 11
Photo courtesy of the DAR Museum

More National Treasures

The Mystery of Mother and Child