Family & Social Life - Overview
Donations to the Museum have preserved irreplaceable evidence about generations of ordinary Americans. Objects from the Copp household of Stonington, Connecticut, include many items used by a single family from 1740 to 1850. Other donations have brought treasured family artifacts from jewelry to prom gowns. These gifts and many others are all part of the Museum's family and social life collections.
Children's books and Sunday school lessons, tea sets and family portraits also mark the connections between members of a family and between families and the larger society. Prints, advertisements, and artifacts offer nostalgic or idealized images of family life and society in times past. And the collections include a few modern conveniences that have had profound effects on American families and social life, such as televisions, video games, and personal computers.
"Family & Social Life - Overview" showing 2 items.
Máquina de Margaritas Heladas
- Description
- In the 70's, the margarita surpassed the martini as the most popular American cocktail and salsa surpassed ketchup as the most-used American condiment. Today, Mexican cuisine, in all its modified, regionalized, commercialized, and even highly processed varieties, has become as American as apple pie. Mariano Martinez, a young Texas entrepreneur, and his frozen margarita machine were at the crossroads of that revolution. The margarita was first made on the California-Mexican border, and became associated with the service of Mexican food, particularly, with one of its variants, Tex-Mex, a regional cuisine that became popular all across the United States. In 1971, Martinez adapted a soft serve ice cream machine to create the world's first frozen margarita machine for his new Dallas restaurant, Mariano's Mexican Cuisine. With their blenders hard-pressed to produce a consistent mix for the newly popular drink they made from Mariano's father's recipe, his bartenders were in rebellion. Then came inspiration in the form of a Slurpee machine at a 7-Eleven, a machine invented in Dallas in 1960 to make carbonated beverages slushy enough to drink through a straw. The soft-serve ice cream machine that Martinez adapted to serve his special drink was such a success that, according to Martinez, "it brought bars in Tex-Mex restaurants front and center. People came to Mariano's for that frozen margarita out of the machine." Never patented, many versions of the frozen margarita machine subsequently came into the market. After 34 years of blending lime juice, tequila, ice, and sugar for enthusiastic customers, the world's first frozen margarita machine was retired to the Smithsonian.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- ca 1970
- maker
- Sani-Serv
- ID Number
- 2005.0226.01
- catalog number
- 2005.0226.01
- accession number
- 2005.0226
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
1879 Almanac
- Description
- Titled Un Calendario Curioso para 1879, this almanac was printed in Mexico at the beginning of the Porfiriato—the period between 1876 and 1911 dominated by the presidency of Porfirio Díaz. This was a period of intense foreign investment in Mexico. U.S. corporations were especially active in Mexico's mining industry, which was now connected to the United States by an ever-expanding web of railroads. While many fortunes were made during this era of peace and economic growth, the boom did not trickle down to the rural poor or the urban working classes. Many small farmers and indigenous communities lost their fields to powerful landlords and plantation owners. The middle and upper classes also grew disgruntled as the political elite stifled the country's democracy in the name of progress. This almanac offers a window into the everyday lives of Mexicans living in the late 1800s. In addition to a year-long forecast, it includes a timeline of world and Mexican history, highlighting dates such Noah's flood and the execution of Emperor Maximilian. A section at the end offers an elaborate list of recipes selected by "people of good taste" for "people of all classes."
- Location
- Currently not on view
- ID Number
- CL*300959.14
- catalog number
- 300959.14
- accession number
- 300959
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center