‘Mrs. Fearnow’s’ migrates to North Carolina

Which product is the winner of the blue ribbon for “best Brunswick stew in a can?”

No contest. The championship can is wrapped with the bright yellow label that shouts out: “Mrs. Fearnow’s Delicious Brunswick Stew with Chicken.”

In 2007, Mrs. Fearnow’s came to roost in North Carolina, when production was moved from Virginia to Sanford in Lee County, located about smack-dab in the middle of the Tar Heel state.

The original recipe belonged to Lillie Pearl Hovermale Fearnow, who was born in 1881 in Berkeley Springs, W.Va., the county seat of Morgan County in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia.

Around 1910, Lillie Pearl and her husband, Brady Goshen Fearnow, moved to Virginia and purchased a farm near the community of Ellerson in Hanover County, north of Richmond. Their land became known as Hope Farm. The family grew fruits and vegetables and raised chickens.

Some of those chickens and vegetables found their way into Lillie Pearl’s “pot of Brunswick stew that seemed to be continually brewing.”

Writing for The Washington Post in 1991, reporter Deborah Marquardt said: “Lillie Pearl started selling jars of the stew and pickles in the 1920s at the Woman’s Exchange” in downtown Richmond, a marketplace where many women sold homemade goods to earn money.

“Now, this lady could cook,” Marquardt stated. “She once earned 40 ribbons on 50 entries at the state fair. Her stew became so popular that a Richmond department store, Thalhimers, asked for several jars.” Then several more, several times over. A family business was created in the family kitchen.

In 1946, Lillie Pearl’s sons, Herbert Clyde Fearnow and George Nelson Fearnow, established the Fearnow Brothers Cannery in nearby Mechanicsville, Va., and began commercial production on a large scale – daily filling about 1,000 cans – effectively launching the brand name of Mrs. Fearnow’s Brunswick Stew.

Lillie Pearl’s daughters-in-law, Norma Ruth Morrison Fearnow (wife of Herbert) and Finnella Saunders Fearnow (wife of George), helped prepare the stew. Finnella said Lillie Pearl’s original stew recipe called for “onion, parsley, celery, tomatoes, chicken, potatoes, butter beans, salt, pepper, red pepper, sugar and okra. And you didn’t dare call it soup to her,” Finnella recalled. “If you did, she’d whack you on your shins with her cane.”

Lillie Pearl worked at the plant every day through September 1969; she died six months later at age 88, having suffered a stroke. (Dagnabbit all, she was a legend if the food industry.)

Among the many accolades received by the family was the designation by the London-based Connoisseur magazine in 1988. Editors declared Mrs. Fearnow’s Delicious Brunswick Stew to be “one of the 10 worthiest canned treats in America.”

In the 1990s, the Brunswick (Va.) Chamber of Commerce, headquartered in Lawrenceville, quite literally added cans of Mrs. Fearnow’s stew to its “economic development tool kit,” giving away the stew as an incentive to entice businesses to the county. For certain, the chamber is still all in – its logo features an image of a big, black cauldron of bubbly Brunswick stew. You can almost smell it.

The Fearnow canning facility underwent nine expansions by the time the family celebrated the 50-year anniversary of the business in 1996, growing from 800 square feet to more than 19,000 square feet. Production reached 18,000 cans a day. The stew dominated the top spots in the canned meat sections of North Carolina and Virginia grocery stores.

In 1999, the Richmond Times-Dispatch broke the story about the sale of the Fearnow family business to Castleberry-Snow’s Brands Inc. of Augusta, Ga. The new owner announced it would move production of Mrs. Fearnow’s to the company’s existing canning facility in Bedford, Va.

Bumble Bee Foods acquired Castleberry-Snow’s Brands in December 2005; and Bost Distributing Company (of Sanford, N.C.) bought the Mrs. Fearnow’s Brunswick Stew brand from Bumble Bee in 2007.

In 2015, Bost became Boone Brands. On the company website, Mrs. Fearnow’s is positioned and photographed as the flagship brand.

The Boone Brands’ marketing literature claims: “Mrs. Fearnow’s is sure to please…it meets the need for home meal solutions…is an excellent storm preparedness item and great value for ‘not from scratch’ cooking.”

Mrs. Fearnow’s has “true Southern style delicious taste, and is great for camping, tailgating and a quick meal before the Friday night high school football game.”

Better get you some…and stock up the pantry.