FAMILY BAKERY GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

Esther and Martha Wagner devoted much of their lives to the Wagner Bakery which operated in Jackson from 1888 until it closed its doors in 1970. The bakery is has a long and rich history. (Photo by Scott Moyers)

Many adults from Jackson can probably remember going to the old Wagner Bakery on a Sunday morning before church to pick up a dozen of their favorite doughnuts. Or maybe they can remember stopping by when they were kids to nab a couple of cookies to nibble on on their way home from school.

That is very possible, considering the Wagner Bakery was almost an institution in Jackson from the time it opened in 1888 until it ceased operating in 1970.

"It was a fine bakery," said Martha Wagner, whose grandfather started the bakery in 1883. "We still get comments from people today who say 'Oh I wish we could find caramel rolls like the bakery used to have.'"

The Wagner Bakery was at several locations in Jackson during its nearly-hundred-year existence. It's final home was on West Main St. where the Methodist Church parking lot now sits.

The Wagner Bakery, like Jackson itself, is rich with history.

In 1883, William Wagner and his wife, Caroline, opened the bakery, no doubt with high hopes for the bakery and for their future.

William Wagner was ready for the challenge. He had spent five years as an apprentice to a French baker in Cape Girardeau and was more than adequately trained to run his own bakery.

William Wagner's father, Henry, had been a wagon maker who had come to America from the Black Forest of Germany. Henry Wagner had no intention of his son being a baker; in fact, he had trained young William to be a carpenter.

This skill, surprisingly, would come in handy when William wanted to build the necessary equipment for his bakery like the large work bench, bread troughs and long-handled peels which were used to place and remove the bakery products from his oven.

William Wagner's carpentry training was useful again when, in 1888, the city of Jackson purchased the building in which the bakery was located.

WIlliam used the knowledge his father had taught him to build himself a new bakery that would also serve as a home for his family.

At first, the family lived upstairs from the bakery, but the family and the bakery grew, so Wagner built another house nearby to serve solely as a home.

"My grandfather had six children," Martha Wagner said. "He had three boys and three girls and they always said he had that many so they could work in the bakery."

Two of Wagner's sons, William and Martin, took a great interest in their father's business and he taught them all of the fine points of baking.

In 1907, William Wagner retired and William and Marting decided they would carry on the family legacy.

They really had little choice, it was in their blood.

Martha Wagner, who is Martin's daughter, started working in the bakery when she was in the 7th grade.

"We all worked there," Martha Wagner said of her and her six brothers. "And I really liked it. But it was hard work."

Martha Wagner said her hard work paid off, but she said her family never got rich from owning a bakery.

"We were dealing with the wrong kind of dough," she said.

But Martha Wagner wouldn't trade her memories from the bakery for all the money in the world.

She smiles as she is reminded of the time when salt was accidentally used in some cookies instead of sugar. She said they were lucky they noticed it before they were sold.

Martha Wagner said those cookies went to Mr. Naeter, who owned the Southeast Missourian at the time.

Neater would give the bakery free advertising for their stale goods. Martha Wagner said he fed the salty cookies to two burrows that he owned.

"Those burrows loved cookies," Martha Wagner said. "But we told Mr. Naeter he might want to give the burrows extra water after they ate those."

William, Martin and their families worked hard for several years but in 1943 William Wagner sold his interest in the bakery to Richard Wagner, Martin Wagner's son.

Martha Wagner said World War II was a hard time for the Wagner family and their bakery.

Rationing of such necessary items as sugar, butter, fats and oils meant limiting production. Frequently customers would bring ration coupons to the bakery and ask that they be used to buy ingredients for a special occasion.

"It was strange," Martha said. "During the war, when there was a wedding, the bride would bring in her sugar coupons for the bakery to be able to have enough sugar to bake her wedding cake."

A shortage of labor during the war years also created more problems. For many years prior, the bakery had supplied bakery goods to Jackson merchants, but the war shortages ended this. There just wasn't enough material.

Then, when Martin Wagner died, Richard bought his father's share and became the sole owner of the bakery.

Richard Wagner had in the meantime married Esther Chandler and she had planned to break the Wagner spell, at least as far as she was concerned.

"I didn't plan to work in the bakery," Esther Wagner said. "But immediately, the lady who worked there quit so I ended up working there anyway."

Esther Wagner said her husband loved being a baker and he couldn't have imagined being anything else.

She said her husband had asthma and when he went to the doctor they told him he was allergic to wheat flour and he needed to stay away from it.

"But I'm a baker," Richard Wagner told them. "I have to be around wheat flour."

They told Richard he'd just have to have asthma then. And so he did.

Esther Wagner continued to run the bakery when her husband died in 1967. She managed to stay in business for another three years before she was forced to close the doors for good.

The Wagner Bakery may be gone, but it is certainly not -- and will not be -- forgotten for a long, long time.