Joe Frogger
cookie
The Joe Frogger is a type of cookie that has been popular in New England since the late 18th century. It is flavored with molasses, rum, and spices (ginger, allspice, nutmeg, cloves) and has a soft, chewy center. Because the cookies kept well they could be taken on long sea voyages, and so became popular with fishermen and sailors. The original cookies were the size of pancakes and were cooked in an iron skillet; those made today are typically smaller, and baked in an oven.
History
Joe Froggers are named for Joseph Brown (1750-1834), the keeper of Black Joe's Tavern in Marblehead, Massachusetts. The cookies were invented by Brown's wife, Lucretia Thomas Brown (1772-1857), who worked at the tavern.
Joseph Brown was a freed former slave, born to an African-American mother and a Wampanoag father. He may have been freed as a reward for his military service in the American Revolutionary War; he was a member of Francis Felton's company, Glover's Regiment. Lucretia Brown, nicknamed "Aunt 'Crese," was the daughter of two former slaves of Captain Samuel Tucker. In 1795, Joseph and Lucretia Brown went in with another couple on the purchase of a saltbox house at the top of Gingerbread Hill in Marblehead, next to a mill pond.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joe Frogger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.