712. The Baker Who Fed The Continental Army

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. Well, if you have been following along, you know that part of my America 250 thing that I've been doing is I've been trying to find these kind of unsung heroes of the American founding

or the people you don't hear about as often as the main ones like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. I'm trying to find these people that I don't want to say history forgot, but history sometimes, sometimes they get hidden pretty deep in history and we have to dig to find them.

And so I found the coolest guy and I'm so excited to talk to you about him today and tell his story. All right, so today we're going to talk about a man named Christopher Ludwig. And first, let me ask you this, what if the most important job

during the Revolutionary War wasn't fighting? Wasn't being a soldier? What if it was baking bread? As you know, I bake bread. So I found the story very, very cool. So I want to tell you the story of the man

who George Washington called the general baker. So I thought that was so funny. So let's talk about it. So Christopher, he actually born in Germany and his father was a baker and so he made gingerbread actually, not cookies, it was actually a type of bread.

He learned how to make really good gingerbread and he was also a soldier. So he was trained in the army for the, like the Prussian army, the German army at the time. So he did have a soldier background and then he went to London and studied baking even further.

So he took his bread very seriously, which I appreciate as a bread maker. So Christopher is living in Philadelphia. That is where he had settled and he's very, very good business man. You know, he's got his bread business up.

He's making a lot of money and all of a sudden that well, not all of a sudden slowly the revolution starts brewing. Now as an immigrant, he, I mean, most of America are immigrants at this point because they all had to come over from somewhere.

But he still, he had a very unique position here because he didn't necessarily, you know, picking aside when you have the repercussions that consequences that might happen from the British crown from the soldiers is pretty scary, especially if you're in a relatively new country.

And so a lot of German immigrants, a lot of these people who were also in Philadelphia and also, you know, Pennsylvania, they are siding with the loyalists because they don't, they don't really want to get involved but they're going to play it safe.

And let's be honest on paper, it didn't really look like the Americans were going to win the war, right? They were, they were completely outnumbered and everything. So Christopher Ludwig, though, he is very pro the American cause,

not only is he supportive, not only does he take a stand, but he also supports or pledges 200 pounds to the cause of the war. He actually gives his own money to help fund the war, which at the time, I mean, we didn't have a lot of money, you know, going into this

because there was no central, it was all the individual, you know, colonies which then became the States. And so he pledges money. He says, let me pledge this money, I believe in your cause.

So already he's contributing to the war, even though he's not a soldier because he was quite old at the time. Despite his age though, he did for a very brief time become a volunteer soldier in one of the battles,

but he was 56 years old. So that was just kind of a one time thing. But this was a really important job to be a baker at the time and to be a successful, you know, business owner because not only was he able to give the 200 pounds,

but he was able to give the soldier something that they needed very badly and didn't have a lot of and that was food. There were times when the soldiers were starving. There were times when they had literally nothing to eat, no shoes on their feet.

I mean, it was very bleak, very bleak for a long time for the Continental Army. And so here you have Christopher who's always willing to give his bread, you know, and Washington came to really count on him. He became really close to Washington.

And so he would help supply them with bread. At one point, he even built ovens at Valley Forge and he was making the bread there to, and paying for his own resources to do so, to make sure he could keep the army fed. This was so important.

I mean, this is, if you don't have a fed army, what do you think happens? Food is fuel, right? How can you win a war if everybody's starving? And so thanks to Christopher, you have the soldiers able to have something filling

in their bellies because bread is very, very filling. And so you're able to give them something to give them some fuel to keep going and to press forward. And I mean, who doesn't love some warm bread, right? So it was such an important job.

And we only remember, you know, the soldiers. I mean, we don't, we don't only remember, but that's who stands out in our minds the most when we think about all the amazing people who helped win the war. And then you have people like this, the Baker General,

you know, who was able to supply the Continental Army was something they needed, you know, so badly. And he had another contribution to the American cause. And this one I think is really cool. So it wasn't just British soldiers fighting the Americans, okay? You had these kind of paid assassins, if you will,

called the Hessians. They were these Hessian, you know, military men. They were basically paid for like on-demand military services, you know, the British, the British paid them to fight, help fight their war. Now, Hessians were German and they spoke German.

So this put Christopher in a very interesting position because he's German, he speaks a language. He also is a former soldier. And so he knows their lingo. He knows, you know, their style, he gets it, right? He's one of them.

And so he was used to kind of talk them out of fighting. He posed as a Hessian soldier who had like given up on the fighting and was like, no, no, the Americans are actually pretty good and blah, blah. And so he was actually changing minds. He was talking to the Hessians who were a force to be reckoned with. They were, they were pretty scary because remember, these are paid military men.

Like they're, they're for hire, they're going to be a little scary. But he was able to talk with them. He was able to sway some of them out of fighting. So this is like a secret weapon and how great because I mean, it's not, he didn't really have anything to gain or to lose. You know, he came from this country and he was going to be a pretty successful

bread maker with or without American independence. Like his business was doing fine, but he believed in the cause and he believed in what we were doing. He loved George Washington. And so he not only was, you know, supplying the army with food, he was literally finding a way to fight without fighting.

He was, he was winning battles by convincing some of the Hessians to abandon to not fight without ever having to lift a sword. And I think that is so cool. And it's, it's just a reminder again that there are people that help win the war without actually fighting. Christopher was also very philanthropic.

Philanthropic means somebody who likes to give to causes who likes to give back. And one thing he did, there was a yellow fever epidemic in 1797. And, you know, most people want to stay away from that. They don't want to get sick, but there was a poor community that was hit particularly hard and he risked everything. He went in there and baked bread for free because he knew they were poor

and he didn't, they didn't have anything. And so he wanted to make sure that they had something while they were fighting off this illness. And so I think that's just so incredible what it shows you his character. And, you know, we've talked a lot about character and I talked a lot about the founding era, what character, having strong moral character meant.

And when I think of, you know, the Baker general, he had a lot of character. He did so many good things out of the goodness of his heart because he felt compelled to do them without government force, of course. And then another interesting thing. So like I said, he was pretty well off. No, he was everybody was struggling after the war.

He was not immune from that. He was also struggling because remember he had to use all of his own supplies to bake the spread. I think he did go to Congress and ask them for a little bit of money to compensate. Congress didn't have much, but I think they gave him a little bit. But later on, he rebuilt his business and so he was able to get back on his feet.

And I love this after he passed, he actually left, he spread out all his money and all his assets to causes within the community. So he wanted to be able to educate. He wanted to poor kids to be able to be educated. And so he gave money to that cause. He left his money with people who he thought could really use it.

And I think that's again, you have so many stories here. You have voluntary charity, which we love. You have, you know, the American cause we also love. And I just think it's really cool. All the different people who helped America become America. You know, it wasn't just the soldiers.

It wasn't just the generals. It wasn't just the great minds like, you know, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. You had, well, the wives and the mothers of the revolution who were taking care of things at home, when we think about Abigail Adams, who was helping, you know, run the Adams farm for many years while John Adams was off doing, you know, diplomatic work for, for trying to earn money and help get money for the American cause.

You have, you know, the women who sowed clothes, you had, you know, there was even one girl. We'll talk about it later who disguised herself as a soldier so she could fight. So you have all these just incredible different people. And when we think about what made America, America, it wasn't just the fighting, right? It's all these different contributions, all these different specialized skills

that people came together to contribute. And what a perfect way to talk about the American founding, because the American founding is so prominently built on the free market and human flourishing and all these ideas. And that's it. That is what it is, right?

We know the free market is about specialization and everybody contributing to something that ends up being this end result that is the product of so many different hands, you know, they think of the miraculous pencil, things like that. And so I think Christopher Ludwig is just such a great example of that because it's somebody who kept the soldiers alive, who gave money, you know, to the cause he was doing all these other things.

How cool is that? And like I said, I'm a big fan of baking. So if I can find a story and share with you guys about somebody who changed the world with bread, that has my name written all over it. I'm obsessed with that. That is a Brittany approved story right there.

So I will leave it there. Please keep listening and following along. This is something I'm really trying to do over the course of this, you know, fun America 250 year, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I want all these these lesser known heroes to get their moment in the sun and to have us talk about them because I think it's just so cool.

So I will leave it there. Don't forget the power of bread, you guys. It can help win wars and help, you know, fight for American independence and individualism. It's amazing. So I will leave it there as always.

Don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, I will talk to you later.