Kraft Bakery ... popular place for 53 years

As a young boy, Bernard "Barney" Kraft loved running errands for the family bakery. It was an adventure, and after all, it was all he knew. His German family had always lived above their bakery: His father, Adam; mother, Elizabeth (nee Huhn); and the six children, Gertrude, Ferdinand, Bernard, Otto, Bertha and Katherine.

On one particular day, Oct. 5, 1886, his dad had him deliver a huge basket of bakery goods to the steamboat "La Mascot," that was blowing its whistle at the busy Cape Girardeau levee. It was a noisy place. Passengers were boarding for the boat's last trip to St. Louis for the season. He had to hurry. The captain was blasting the bell for departure, and he didn't want to be late to his class at Lorimier School.

As he placed the last loaf of bread in the storage bin, the chief steward handed him the voucher which he had to take to the purser's office for payment. The ropes were being untied, and the boat started to move. Just in the nick of time, he hit the gangplank, passing a prominent local gentleman getting on: Henry Lind.

Later that day, Cape citizens heard the sad news, "La Mascot," loaded with freight and passengers, exploded on its way north. Thirty lives were lost, including Mr. Lind. (This story was told to Don Kraft by his father.)

The Kraft Bakery, established on the northwest corner of Spanish and Independence in 1873, actually began on Water Street during the Civil War, to catch the steamboat trade. Moving to Spanish Street gave more room for a horse, wagon, barn and water well. Adam Kraft bought the lot from John Frank, demolished an old frame building and built a larger brick structure with living quarters upstairs in 1882. The cost was $1,400.

After Adam's death in 1888 at the age of 56, Elizabeth continued to operate the bakery with the help of her three sons. Business flourished. The Cape Girardeau Democrat newspaper in 1891 stated the bakery had orders for 1,100 loaves of bread headed for Delta on the Houck Railroad, with stops along the way in Southeast Missouri to drop off bakery goods.

Not only did the business sell bakery items, county probate records for Adam show the bakery's inventory included a sundry of merchandise, including groceries, candy, German toys and tobacco.

In 1902 after their mother's death, Otto and Barney became the proprietors until 1915. After 50 years of serving fresh baked goods to Cape and other places, the bakery closed.

Barney Kraft never got the fondness for riverboats and the Mississippi out of his life. After the bakery, he worked on various riverboats, traveling from St. Louis to Memphis, Tennessee.

This previous baker was an instrumental part of the Cape Girardeau Fire Deptartment, serving as the early fire chief in 1909, 1911 and 1916, retiring in 1917.

Barney Kraft went back to the grocery business on Spanish Street, 1931-37, where he died of a heart attack on May 7, 1937, in the upstairs apartment. He was buried at Lorimier Cemetery.