Josephine Wade began cooking when she was 13. The daughter of sharecroppers, Wade was babysitting her siblings one day as her parents worked when she realized she needed to make them dinner. She went out to their garden, picked some vegetables and went inside to whip up a gourmet cabbage dish.
By the time she was 19, Wade knew she wanted to open her own restaurant. In 1986, Wade opened Captain’s Hard Times in Chatham, although she eventually changed the name to Josephine’s Southern Cooking.
