Stillwater Minnesota 1904 Nick Starkel Chicago Bakery Billhead 8 x 7

This 1904 billhead documents a routine commercial bread transaction from Nick Starkel’s Chicago Bakery and Confectionery, reflecting local food distribution in early twentieth-century Minnesota.

Bakeries and confectioneries in river and rail towns like Stillwater operated as both producers and small-scale wholesalers, supplying surrounding communities with staple foods such as rye and wheat bread. These businesses depended on daily production cycles and short delivery routes, and their printed stationery formalized otherwise ordinary exchanges between merchants. Billheads from this period illustrate how food commerce was organized before national baking chains and industrial packaging transformed the trade.

The document is headed Nick Starkel, Chicago Bakery and Confectionery, Wholesale and Retail, with a Stillwater address and printed invoice number 5182. It is dated December 3, 1904, and sold to a customer in Somerset, Wisconsin. A handwritten entry records loaves of rye bread with quantity and unit price noted at right, leaving most of the sheet blank as was typical for single-item orders. The billhead measures approximately 8 x 7 inches.

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