Tracing the legend of the ‘pastry queen’ who baked her way to freedom
“I tell people all the time, when I’m cooking I don’t necessarily have to measure anything,” says Shae Williams-Adams. “I just sprinkle until my ancestors tell me to stop.”
Williams-Adams, 41, of Steamboat Springs, Colo., has long been surrounded by rich American history, traveling the country as a national parks chef for much of the last 15 years. She often jokes that she has always wondered where her cooking gene came from, since she hails from a family of nurses and preachers going as far back as even her grandmother can remember. “I tried nursing and I tried other careers,” she said. “But I'm only happy cooking. I literally gave up a nursing career to chase a dream that I couldn't really figure out where it came from.”
That is, until she discovered a family connection to Charity “Duchess” Channing Quamino, an 18th-century enslaved woman who was so renowned for her baking she was nicknamed “the pastry queen of Rhode Island” and may have even used her talent with dough to secure her and her family’s freedom.