Notes for: Avalene Gwendolyn Reeves

While working at the Whitehall Hotel in Harrisville as a young woman, Avalene was well known for her baking skills. As described by her stepmother, Edna Carpenter Reeves in Goldenseal Magazine, Winter 1999: "Avalene always was so great to bake, and she baked the best butterscotch pies. She was making the filling for these butterscotch pies in a great big skillet, and she reached around to get her vanilla, and she poured in how much vanilla she wanted in her butterscotch pie. But somebody had set a bottle of shampoo there, and she put shampoo in. It just started raising up. That stuff foamed all over that hot plate, all over the floor. It was boiling butterscotch and that shampoo in it. You never seen such a mess in all your life."