Emma Paddock Telford (1851-1920) was an American writer, war correspondent, editor, and traveler. She was the author of several books on culinary and household topics, and also wrote for various publication including New-York Tribune (1898-1901), The New York Herald (1903-04), and New York Evening Telegram staff (1904-11). She served as the household editor of The Delineator, The Designer, The Woman's Magazine, and did other editorial work for World Journal, New-York Tribune, and The New York Times. Telford owned her own syndicate. During the period of 1900-12, she was a lecturer for the New York Board of Education.[1] Telford was the first American woman to cross the Balkans during her 1897 trip covering the Greco-Turkish war of 1897.[2] She hailed from Auburn, New York where she was a neighbor of Harriet Tubman.[3]
In Auburn, New York, on May 13, 1874, she married William Halsey Telford (d. 1907).[7] They had one child, a daughter, Mabel Florina Telford.[1][8] When the family developed financial hardships, Telford began taking paying guests in her home.[5]
Beginning in December 1895 and through July 1905, she edited the Domestic Science in the Household column for the Brooklyn Times-Union.[9][10]
On April 7, 1897, she left on the City of Paris, for Europe and the East to make a special study of women's work and women's clubs, along altruistic, literary, social and industrial lines for the Brooklyn Standard-Union. While traveling, she also contributed to Harper's Bazaar and other New York papers. Particularly, she covered the Greco-Turkish war of 1897, traveling extensively in Asia Minor and the Balkans, as correspondent for The New York Sun, The New York Times, New York Press, and Brooklyn Standard-Union. She personally visited the scenes of the Armenian massacres and made investigation of the relief work being instituted for the widows and orphans. [11][12] During this trip, she paid especial attention to Oriental and European housekeeping methods, arguing that as U.S. might have much to learn from the wider experiences of old societies. She became a student of Serbian history, her knowledge of the country being intimate and comprehensive.[13]
Upon her return in June 1897 on the steamer Majestic Thursday, she became one of the regular staff of the New-York Tribune, at the same time appearing in the New York Free Lecture Course.[5] The New-York Tribune announced that Telford's study of Constantinople, Asia Minor, and the Balkan States, as well as her experiences of travel, including the crossing of the Balkan Mountains by ox team, would be published as "Sketches of Travel".[14] After leaving the New-York Tribune, Telford established and conducted a syndicate for The Kansas City Star, The Washington Star, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Boston Courier.[11]
"The women of my family on both sides were all noted for their housewifely attainments as well as culture, and whatever success I have achieved along such lines is just an outcrop of my grandmothers old-time faculty." (Emma Paddock Telford, 1901)[5]
Telford in 1906
For ten years she was on the Public Lecture Course of New York City, one of her special subjects being the "Among the Indians of the Southwest", "Among the People of the Balkans", "Arizona", "Camp Life on the American Desert", "Constantinople, Its People and Problems", and the "Cradle and the Wonderland of the New World".[11][1]
Telford was called in 1897 to take charge of the dining hall in one of the two largest universities in California.[5] Leaving Brooklyn in October 1899, Telford wintered in California, spending the first month among the foothills of the Sierras,[18] at a ranch in Colfax situated over the Rising Sun Mine.[19]
For two years, beginning in 1900, Telford sojourned in Arizona, caring for her ailing sister, Mrs. Charles Benjamin Wing; both of them were members of the Tribune Sunshine Society at the time.[20] Staying in Mesa, Arizona, Telford was interested in forming a chapter of the Colonial Dames in that state,[12] having been a resident of Mesa, Arizona and the valley for some years.[21] In the same year, she accepted the charge of the Domestic Science department at Lake Erie College.[5] After returning to Arizona, she was instrumental in forming several Sunshine branches among the Native Americans.[22] Her Sunshine work included sending pottery made by the Pima back East, suggesting a cultural exchange be developed between the Buffalo, New York Sunshine members and the Pima women.[23] She left Mesa, Arizona in July 1902, for Palo Alto, California, to visit with her sister again, she being the wife of Prof. Wing, of Stanford University.[24]
Telford published the The State Journal Cook Book in 1908,[25] and Standard Paper Bag Cookery was published in 1921.[26] She was co-author with Mary Dawson of The Book of Parties and Pastimes (1912) and other works on similar topics.[12]Good housekeeper's cook book (1914) contained special chapters not found in most cook books of the era: candies, cookies, dishes for invalids, ices, jellies, menus, preserves, salads, and summer drinks.[27]
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