The fruitcake that went through the mail: a Texas bakery and its busy autumn

By Rafe Calder

The fruitcake is an old food with a bad joke attached. The joke is newer than the food.

An old cake

Wikipedia says the earliest known recipe, from ancient Rome, combines pomegranate seeds, pine nuts and raisins with barley. It says honey, spices and preserved fruits were added in the Middle Ages, and that fruitcakes are made with candied or dried fruit, nuts, spices, sugar and flour. They are usually served, it says, to celebrate weddings and Christmas. The same article gives 1913 as the year mail-order fruitcakes began in America.

A bakery on Collin Street

The Handbook of Texas, published by the Texas State Historical Association, says Collin Street Bakery was founded in 1896 on Collin Street in Corsicana, Texas. Its founder was August Weidmann, a young German immigrant, backed by Tom McElwee, a local cotton buyer and opera-house proprietor. The fruitcake came from a recipe Weidmann brought from Germany, and McElwee suggested the name “DeLuxe Fruitcake.”

The circus order

The Handbook says mail order began after a Ringling Brothers circus troupe bought dozens of cakes as Christmas gifts, and the recipients ordered more. It dates that to 1914. Wikipedia gives the same circus order in 1914, calling it the bakery’s entry into mail-order sales. Wikipedia’s general fruitcake article gives 1913 for the start of American mail-order fruitcake, a year before the circus order.

Selling only by mail

The Handbook says the cakes are sold only through the bakery or by mail, not in stores. Wikipedia says the bakery has no distributor and sells through mail order and its own shops: two in Corsicana, plus Waco and Lindale, Texas. Those are compatible if “stores” means retail chains, but the sources do not say.

The busy autumn

The Handbook says that from October to mid-December the bakery makes 30,000 fruitcakes, or 75,000 pounds, a day, growing from 50 regular employees to more than 600.

How far it ships

The Handbook says the cakes go to “all fifty states and more than 190 countries.”

Dates in order

1896: bakery founded in Corsicana, Texas.
1906: moves to a Sixth Avenue location, according to the Handbook.
1914: Ringling Brothers troupe orders dozens of cakes.
1967: moves to West Seventh Avenue, per the Handbook.

What kind of sources these are

The Handbook of Texas is a state historical association reference. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia anyone can edit, and its bakery article carries a maintenance tag. No contemporary newspaper or company archive page loaded.

What we left out

Prices, recipes, a later criminal case at the bakery, the names of celebrity customers, and religious dispensations mentioned in Wikipedia’s older history of the cake.

Quick answers

When was Collin Street Bakery founded? Both the Handbook of Texas and Wikipedia say 1896, in Corsicana, Texas.

How did Collin Street start selling by mail? The Handbook says a Ringling Brothers troupe bought dozens of cakes as Christmas gifts and the recipients ordered more, in 1914.

How many fruitcakes does it make at Christmas? According to the Handbook, 30,000 fruitcakes a day between October and mid-December.

Roam first. Shop later.

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