Sarah Friday's 1810 Granby Drawing
Cake Shop
Nothing is known about the Granby Cake shop, but like in other Colonial villages of the time, it would have been a place to go to meet and socialize. It might have been more popular with women, while men might have frequented a nearby tavern to do the same. Of course, the sweet products of the shop would have been enjoyable to all. In “Random Recollections of a Long Life, 1806 to 1876,” Edwin J. Scott gives us a period description of the popular role cakes played in Granby.
At weddings, which were nearly always in the forenoon, all neighbors attended with or without invitations, cards being unknown, and were welcomed with whisky to drink and a plentiful dinner, set out, when the weather permitted, on a long table of boards laid on benches under trees in the yard. Then the young folks and some of the old ones walked for the cake, a ceremony confined, so far as I know, to the German settlers. For this purpose, those proposing to engage in the game contributed small sums of money, which were given to the bride, in payment for a large pound cake, that became the prize, depending upon the following chance:
Each young man selected his partner of the other sex, and they, headed by the bride and groom, marched in double file around the house, where at the front door one stood with a long rod, which he handed to the first couple, and when they reached the door again it was taken from them and delivered to the next pair, who in turn surrendered it to their immediate followers. Meantime a party of three or four took a loaded gun into the woods, out of sight from the house, and after waiting a quarter or half hour fired it off, the couple having the rod in hand when the gun was fired winning the cake, which was usually cut up and divided among the players, the girls saving a small bit to put under their pillows at night, on which to dream of their future lovers. I have seen, and sometimes joined in, the parade with as many as thirty or forty pairs.
The Cake Shop site: Status: Archaeology is possible in the Riverland Park neighborhood (Click here to see this location on a map)
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