Author Visit from Dean Meador Smith

News item published on: 2013-06-14 12:03:00

The Friends of University Libraries invite members of the university and area communities to hear Historic Designation and the Meador Homestead, on Thursday, June 27, 2013.

Hattiesburg resident Dean Meador Smith will discuss her work to have her family’s historic cabin, built of hand-hewn pine in 1884, declared historic designation. She and husband Eddie Smith restored the log cabin in 2009 and opened Meador Homestead Bed and Breakfast in 2010. There, Meador Smith also operates Simply TeaVine, a popular tea room where she serves Southern delicacies and tea in a setting surrounded by camellias, azaleas and pine trees.

Meador Smith will also discuss her cookbook, Momma Dean’s Southern Cooking at Meador Homestead, and have copies to sell and sign. The stories and historic photos in the cookbook are integral to the history of Mississippi’s Piney Woods region. For example, Smith devotes a chapter to her Circuit Rider’s Tea, a nod to her great great grandfather, Levi Meador, a Methodist who traveled on horseback preaching to settlers and organizing congregations in rural areas. The menu includes Preacher Man’s Stew, Hoecakes, Grilled Apple and Cheese Sandwich, and Heavenly Hash Cake. Visit the Meador Homestead Bed and Breakfast website.

The author talk and book signing will be on Thursday, June 27, 2013, at 6 p.m. in the Cook Library Art Gallery (LIB 105A) on the Hattiesburg campus of The University of Southern Mississippi.