Margaret Haughery - Bakery and Bread Cart

Bakery and Bread Cart

Although Margaret provided for the orphans, fed the poor, and gave generously to charity, her resources continued to grow. Over time, Margaret became the owner of many businesses. An industrious and resourceful woman determined to feed the orphans, at one point in time Margaret found employment at a bakery. Later on she loaned money to a baker but soon discovered that the business of Monsieur d' Aquin was on the verge of bankruptcy. She had become the main shareholder in the business. Margaret realized the only way she could recover her money was to take control of the bakery and operate it.

Known simply as Margaret's Bakery, her bakery business became an overnight success, and it is from this that she made the greater part of her fortune. Margaret became a bread-woman instead of a milk-woman. For years continued her rounds with the bread cart, which replaced the milk cart. She carried the bread just as she had carried the milk, in her cart. And still she kept giving money to the asylum.

Margaret provided for the home market and exported her produce was exported. All the asylums in New Orleans were supplied with bread from her bakery at such a low price as to be virtually free. Improvements to the bakery were always a priority. It became the first steam bakery in the south, "a marvel" providing employment for many. The bakery situated in New Levée Street was so successful that even the destruction so widespread in the South as a result of the Civil War had no effect on it.

Although she provided for orphans, fed the poor, and gave enormously in charity, her resources grew dramatically and Margaret's thriving bakery became famous. One of her businesses called "Margaret's Steam and Mechanical Bakery" became very popular, and she advertised her products by her first name. (Hence as in the plaque on her statue years later, everybody knew her by her first name). The bakery sold "Margaret's Bread" and she became the "Bread Woman of New Orleans." Eventually, she owned a popular store in the city called the Klotz Cracker Factory, associated with the Klotz Bakery.

The winos and beggars of the city used to converge on Levée Street. Margaret would not turn them away by. She always gave them a loaf of bread but cut it in half so that they could not sell it to buy alcohol.