Texas History Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

On the table spread of Adventist histories and biographies, many of the dishes have already been sampled. Left cold on the corner of the table behind the narratives of church leaders, missions, sanitariums and other institutions, however, is the history of Adventist cookie bakeries. Adventist families like the McKees, Casons, Byrds, Dortchs, Callicotts, and Bishops have dominated commercial sweet cake and cookie baking in the South since the 1910s and found success in sweet cake baking even as the depression deepened into the 1930s. While the culture of Adventism today is less accepting of the industry of sugar, many of those who became cookie bakers were devout Adventists and were migrating from professions in medicine and the ministry. Many had also come to cookies from other food work in sanitariums, or as farmers, or grocers. Some started baking right out of college, but very few came from a business background until the 1930s. Commercially baked cookies were probably a healthier option that mom’s cookies in the 1910s. It was at this pivotal moment that Adventists began migrating to cookie bakeries by the dozens. Between 1910 and 1930 there were more than one hundred Adventists who entered cookie baking. By the 1970s, another hundred had joined their ranks. These bakers were raised in and around Adventist centers of gravity, such as Battle Creek. They were physicians, pastors, nurses, Adventist publishers, and teachers. Were they furthering the health message by selling cookies?
For the first time, oral histories have been taken with many of these bakers, their surviving families, and with the men and women who managed their baking empires. These oral histories were conducted with more than forty subjects in cities throughout the South, from Daytona to Dallas, from to Birmingham to Winston-Salem, Rome, Savannah, Baton Rouge, Knoxville, Keene, and Chattanooga.
The author has utilized primary sources at the libraries of both Southern Adventist University and Southwestern Adventist University. The digital archives at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventist’s Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research was also heavily utilized. College annual yearbooks and bulletins, and student records were consulted, as were the private collections of many of those interviewed for this research. Hundreds of newspapers were scoured, as were census records, city directories, and military records, and archives throughout the South.
By the 1980s most of these bakeries were gone but this culinary biography suggests that not only might these bakers have believed themselves part of the Adventist health message, but that the contemporary application of that Adventist health message is missing a few ingredients.