"I now pronounce you man and wife," announced Charles "Chuck" Hershman who presided over the wedding of legendary, Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren at Bethel Methodist Church in Mountain Lake Park. The 1950 lavish ceremony was a re-enactment roughly 80 years after the death of Tom Thumb, the 3-foot, 4-inch performer who rose to stardom and captured worldwide attention.

As she dug deeper, the recipe books were not all Mary discovered. She found fascinating letters from and to her great-grandmother, Lillian Byrne Morris Sincell, and at a time when most women's lives rarely strayed beyond the kitchen walls and favorite recipes.