ep. 12 Lucy Batterman -The Pie Lady of Placerville
In this episode of Ricky's Historical Tidbits, I share with you the story of a lady named Lucy Ann Stoddard Wakefield Batterman, who was known to most for her pies but there’s something else she’s known for.
Listen, watch or read. I got you covered.
Her name is Lucy Ann Stoddard. She's from Connecticut and though her friends and other family said it wouldn't work out she married an Englishman who had his eyes set on California. Doctor John Wakefield was a dentist.
Research shows they didn't like each other all too much. One wonders why they were married in the first place.
Lucy's parents had both died before they got together, and Dr. Wakefield had control of the inheritance which she despised.
Soon they made their way to California. Arriving in Dry Diggins in 1849. It seems that Dr. Wakefield continued as a dentist. Soon after arriving, Lucy wanted to make money of her own. Beginning to make pies and sell them to the miners. It started with a home restaurant selling coffee for 50 cents and pie for $1.50. She became so popular that she was selling about 240 pies a week.
Now I do think it is worth noting that based on some newspaper articles, though there are no known pictures of Lucy, she was absolutely gorgeous and like it or not that very well helped her sell those pies since women, in general, were scarce most who lived and worked in the early gold rush were single men so not too many ladies were seen.
Lucy made it clear to her husband that she didn't like him. He probably didn't like her either. Others in her family didn't like him as well, A ship captain of some relation to her came to visit and said this
"wretched & miserable pride forbade her to complain of her own choice & stir the stink among her Friends, although he [Dr. Wakefield] was in the constant habit of tantalizing and insulting her feelings with abusive epithets & jealous aspersions of all her connections."
Lucy worked hard selling those pies. Mostly apple, by the way, working alone with no help she was making hundreds of pies a week. She wrote to her friends back in Connecticut that she worked long days and had no one to fetch a bucket of water for her.
She also wrote that a normal day was to wake up before sunrise, and would finish the first batch by daylight, and then baked another batch in the afternoon and that there is no way for a woman to make money except through hard work of some sort.
Soon the business was too much for the house so Dr. Wakefield gave her 250 from her inheritance to buy a log cabin down on Main Street in Placerville to set up her new shop.
Other than nonstop piemaking she had wrist parties where she and her friends would play a card game called wrist, another thing her husband, Dr. Wakefield hated since it kept him up all night and burned up the firewood that was not cheap.
In 1851 California made a new law allowing for divorce for things like impotency, desertion, neglect, adultery, and habitual intemperance.
She right away filed a divorce request for cruelty and jealousy.
There was a court case for the divorce with a jury.
Dr. Wakefield denied the allegations saying that on the way west over the plains, she wouldn't travel with him and instead rode on a horse with some other guy and as soon as they got to Hangtown she told him that she would leave him as soon as she got the chance. Then he went on to say that she wanted to sell pies to make some money and he thought that was a good idea so he went to the village and got her some customers and within days she was doing great and selling full pies for 2 bucks a pop. He mentioned the wrist parties and also that she went out late at night to go dance with a bunch of lowlifes and gamblers which he said was an insult to him as a Christian. He said he had given her the 1,000 dollar inheritance too.
In the end though, Dr. Wakefield lost the case and she was given everything, the house, the cabin, everything in the house, all the money and he was given the bill to pay the court costs.
The jury on the case was 5 men, one was a General named Christopher Batterman who according to a newspaper article, helped her with the divorce and then got a divorce himself, and then they got married. They soon moved away to Nevada where he was the prison warden among other things.
Lucy's pie days were over once she got a divorce, she changed her name back to Stoddard, sold the cabin for a nice profit, sold the house as well then moved to Nevada with her new husband becoming Lucy Batterman. Lucy holds the title of Placerville’s famous pie lady and also the first divorce in El Dorado County.
Lucy is one of the 10 "miners" featured in a scavenger hunt coming soon to Placerville called "Miners on Main"
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