Camp Meeting Food
1872 Camp Meeting Scene, Courtesy of The New York Public Library
In the U. S. south annual revival meetings, which the Baptists called “protracted meetings” and the Methodists called “camp meetings,” became a religious tradition for church folk (and candidates running for elected office). By the mid-nineteenth century churches organized several week long revivals that were often multiethnic community-wide events in which people camped in a secluded place, worshiped, listened to sermons, and enjoyed great campfire food. Fredrika Bremer described camp food at a revival in Macon, Georgia, in 1850 which included frying ham and eggs, simmering red-eye gravy, and one would imagine freshly caught fish served with grits. “I visited several tents in the black camp and saw tables covered with all kinds of meat, puddings, and tarts; there seemed to be a regular superfluity of food and drink.”
