‘Mrs. Hering’ found: More than Walnut Room’s historic pot pie behind the real Mrs. Haring in Chicago

Who was Mrs. Hering?

We’ve long been told she was the woman who created the famous chicken pot pie at the historic Walnut Room in the store formerly known as Marshall Field’s, and now Macy’s, on State Street in Chicago.

Legend has it that Hering was a hat salesperson who first shared her homemade lunch with a hungry customer at the store, launching a secret lunchroom that inspired Marshall Field to open restaurants to huge success.

Earlier this year, I went in search of the real woman behind what may be the oldest known restaurant recipe in the city, dating to 1890. Despite help from researchers, genealogists and historians, Hering’s identity remained a mystery. Some wondered if she even existed.

Recently, however, a Macy’s spokesperson contacted me with more information. Armed with a new name, I discovered records that reveal Mrs. Hering was not the woman we thought she was.

The Walnut Room just added a footnote on a 115th anniversary menu, marking the opening of the current building in 1907. It notes that she may be Sarah Alice Kevan Haring (born May 2, 1847, and died May 14, 1945), who “ran the tearoom in Chicago for 20 years. By 1910, she had left the tearoom and founded a girl’s club which she ran on Wabash Avenue. She also had a restaurant on Monroe Street.” It’s unclear when or why Field’s changed the spelling of her last name from Haring to Hering.

Newspaper archives reveal more about the woman who became best known in life and death by her married name, Mrs. Haring.

Her husband, Ledra Wood Haring, came from a prominent family on Mackinac Island in Michigan. By 1870, he was a foreman with Martin Ryerson & Co., a notable lumber company in Chicago. The wealthy Ryerson family became even wealthier after the Great Chicago Fire burned the city in October 1871.

In 1872, the Harings had a son, George Ledra Haring.

Eighteen years later, around 1890, Marshall Field consulted Mrs. Ledra W. Haring about managing the tea room, according to a 1901 story in the Los Angeles Times.

“I knew nothing whatever about the catering business, the restaurant business, nor about any business whatever, but that I did know how to keep house, and that I had tact and control, and that if he wanted to let me work the matter out in my own way, I believe that I could make a success of it,” Haring said in the story.

A 1902 story in the Chicago Daily Tribune identifies Mrs. L.W. Haring as the manager of the tea and grill rooms, and quotes her as the organizer of the dining department in the old store since 1887, “fifteen years ago, when Mr. Field himself was disposed to doubt the wisdom of catering to his customers’ appetite.”

The story, published a few days after Christmas on Dec. 28, is ostensibly about “store waitresses who say they are blending work and study,” but attacks a contemporary subject: unions.

“The Federation of Labor is likely to find an intricate problem on its hands if it goes further in its effort to unionize ‘Selfridge’s girls,’ as they are termed in Labor row,” reads the story. “There are 350 of these young women in the tea and grill rooms of the State street store, but few of them own the permanent calling of a waitress.”

Harry Selfridge has been widely credited with opening the restaurants when he worked at Field’s, before he left to found Selfridges in London.

The story continues.

“I don’t see why anybody should want us in a union,‘’ said Miss Elizabeth Lindsay. “I come here three hours a day and make enough money to pay for music lessons. All the rest of the day I am practicing hard at my singing, and I take my lesson every morning regularly. Those labor organizers are intruding where they are not to — really they are. Why, it’s like a big family up here. We are all so fond of Mrs. Haring — she’s like a mother to us.”

Mrs. Haring said Field frequently visited the tea room, and had “orders that everything possible be done for the girls.”

“No, we do not need the union here. They might as well try to unionize Hull house — we do the same kind of work here,” she said.

The Hull-House Museum still stands as a living legacy to Jane Addams, the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, for her social work while living alongside her immigrant neighbors.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Haring said she did not like to employ professional servers.

“I want inexperienced girls,” she said in the story, “as I wish to teach them myself. The professional waitress has a slapdash, machine like manner. We want our girls to be neat, careful, and attentive.”

By 1910, she had left Field’s, according to a Chicago Daily Tribune story by journalist Helen Hale.

“For twenty years, Mrs. Haring managed a Chicago tearoom which served about 500 people daily when she began her work there, and at the time she resigned over 5,000,” Hale wrote. “She is now devoting all her time to a girls’ club, which she owns in Wabash avenue, and to a restaurant in Monroe street. In leisure hours Mrs. Haring finds much pleasure and good exercise in the interesting garden, which adjoins her home at Berwyn.”

In 1937, the tea room she managed was officially named the Walnut Room for the wood that still panels the walls.

This year, holiday reservations, with “Mrs. Hering’s 1890 original chicken pot pie” on the menu, open Saturday.

111 N. State St., 312-781-5219, macysrestaurants.com/walnut-room

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