Joliet woman seeking new home for vintage fruitcake

Wanted: good museum home for an ancient fruitcake from 1918.

This is no holiday joke.

Sarah Randolph of Joliet, who recently rehomed several organs and is giving free organ lessons at First Presbyterian Church in Joliet, is currently seeking a good museum home for her heirloom fruitcake.

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Randolph’s grandmother, Anna Fayette Kuhl Herron, and Randolph’s aunt, Sarah Kuhl Wallace, had baked the fruitcake in 1918 to send to their brother John Carey Kuhl, who was stationed in Europe.

But the fruitcake didn’t immediately find him since John Carey Kuhl returned home to Windsor in Shelby County in 1919.

“The fruitcake was returned to my grandmother,” Randolph said. “She gave it to Aunt Sarah, and Aunt Sarah kept it forever.”

Keeping anything “forever” might sound unusual in the 21st century, but not to people 100 years ago.

“They all came from hard times,” Randolph said. “And they also just had an understanding in preserving history and sentimentality and family history. And so they saved everything. They’d take flour sacks in the Depression and make clothes out of flour sacks.”

Wallace also became very busy and, perhaps, forgot about the fruitcake. Randolph said she owned a milliner shop and lumber yards and then married a mortician and helped run his mortuary.

Herron and Wallace also prepared many meals at the local church. Proceeds from those dinners help build the church and support mission work, Randolph said. But then, the two women were outstanding cooks, Randolph said.

“When they made the fruitcake, that was part of what they did,” Randolph said.

Randolph first saw the fruitcake when she was a child during a visit to Wallace, who was like a grandmother to Randolph and who still lived in Windsor.

Herron had died when Randolph’s mother, Anna Fay Herron Bush, was in her 20s (Herron had Bush later in life; Bush’s brother was 12 years older than she) and had asked Wallace to take her place in Bush’s life.

“When we would go and visit her, she had a storage room that had all these old things in trunks,” Randolph said. “I remember as a child going in there looking for old clothes.”

Randolph said her parents owned old cars, and Wallace had vintage clothes. Her parents wore some of the clothes when they rode in the cars.

So, one day, while poking around the trunks, Randolph found a box in bad shape with old stamps on it. The fruitcake was inside.

“But when Aunt Sarah went blind, she had to move in with us,” Randolph said. “And when Aunt Sarah moved in with us, everything came into my parents’ home. And mom just never dealt with it. But when Aunt Sarah died, the same year and two weeks before Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, then mom started going through things. And we found the fruitcake I saw as a kid.”

History repeated itself when Randolph’s mother died. Randolph moved Bush’s possessions from her house and into Randolph’s house, where Randolph is slowly sifting through the boxes.

Because Bush was an accomplished musician and longtime music teacher, Randolph has found museums interested in some of Bush’s material.

“In my family, you didn’t throw something away if it had value or history,” Randolph said. “My goal is to find a good home for everything without putting it into dumpsters.”

Randolph is not part of the only family with an heirloom fruitcake in its possession. A Michigan family’s fruitcake dates back to 1878. In 2021, an Alabama family shared its 100-year-old fruitcake recipe.

Randolph said her frugalness also ensured many children could take music lessons.

“My mother knew each student could not afford band instruments,” Randolph said. “So she’d buy old ones, get friends to fix them up and then rent them out for 50 cents per month – or just take care of it if they didn’t have the money.”

Randolph said she brings occasionally brings out the fruitcake to show people. The family joke is, “Would you like fruitcake with your coffee?” she said.

Despite being the keeper of the heirloom, Randolph said fruitcake “is not her cup of tea.”

“Honestly, I have yet to find a fruitcake I do like,” Randolph said.