About Ruth Graves Wakefield
Ruth Graves Wakefield was born June 17, 1903 in East Walpole, Massachusetts, the daughter of Fred Graves and Helen Vest Jones. Following her completion of secondary school, she continued her education at what was then known as Framingham State Normal School (now Framingham State University). She graduated in 1924 from the Household Arts Department.
After graduation, she taught home economics at Brockton High School, worked as a hospital dietitian, and acted as a food lecturer. In 1926, she married Kenneth Wakefield, a meatpacking company executive. In 1930, the couple bought a building on Bedford Street in Whitman, Massachusetts, and opened the Toll House Inn. It expanded from seven tables to over sixty tables and became famous for many of its recipes. In 1931 she published a cookbook entitled Ruth Wakefield's Recipes: Tried and True Recipes, which included many of the recipes.
The most famous of her original recipes was the Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie, better known as the chocolate chip cookie. Her cookie was named for the restaurant that she and her husband Ken Wakefield owned, the Toll House Inn. Ruth Wakefield first published her Chocolate Crunch Cookie recipe in her 1938 edition of Toll House Tried and True Recipe which involved breaking up a Nestle semi-sweet chocolate bar and adding it to a basic brown sugar cookie dough. The Wakefields enjoyed a pleasant relationship with the Nestle Company. Ruth Graves Wakefield sold the rights to reproduce her recipe on their packages in 1939 where it remains printed to this day.
The Wakefields sold their resturant and inn in 1967. The building burned down in 1984, and the only remains of the building is a historical marker.
Ruth's interest in seeking new and innovative recipes to serve at the couple's restaurant led her to amass a collection of cookbooks. In 1969, two years after the Wakefields sold the Toll House Inn, Ruth Graves Wakefield donated her cookbooks to the Framingham State University Special Collections.
Ruth Wakefield died January 10, 1977 at the age of 73.
