#PiDay English author Rudyard Kipling started it all back in 1894, when, after a stay in Vermont, he told an interviewer that New England was the “Great #Pie Belt.” /1

#PiDay New Englanders responded with pride. Newspapers carried articles about the bliss of apple pies, pumpkin pies, and even mince pies, noting over the next several decades the extension of the “Great #Pie Belt” across the nation (image, @BostonGlobe, 15 December 1895). /2

#PiDay #Boston was considered the center of the Belt, and the Boston Globe reveled in promoting the success of “pieology” in the Hub. Check out another image comparing the Bunker Hill Monument and a "Monument of Pies" measuring consumption in @BostonGlobe, 15 December 1895: /3

#PiDay Imbedded in these discussion appearing in the nation's newspapers were three issues. The first was the rise of industrialized #pie production, from canned filling and refined flour to large pie ovens and pie delivery wagons. (Fitchburg Sentinel ad, 24 April 1900) /4

#PiDay The second was the Americanization of #pie (during the Second Great Immigration) through the elevation of Thanksgiving, originally a New England holiday, and other founding myths such as George Washington’s cherry tree incident. (San Francisco Call, 20 November 1898) /5

#PiDay The third was the consumption of #pie—both sweet and savory—by the working classes at work. In "An Impressionist Sketch of Pie Alley at Noon," ethnic caricature tells us a bit about the vexed definition of pie as a symbol--for whom? ( @BostonGlobe 15 December 1895) /6

#PiDay Here’s Carl Gaertner’s “The Pie Wagon” (c. 1926, @ClevelandArt), at one of Cleveland, Ohio's many mills. #Pie: A cheap and efficiently eaten source of energy for mill workers and white-collar workers alike. /7

#PiDay Hoping to pull this all together for an essay—stay tuned! Happy Pi/e Day! Don’t cross the Delaware River without #pie! Here’s Lloyd J. Harriss Pie Company’s (Saugatuck, MI) great pie ad, 1947 ( @librarycongress). /end