Annie Fisher

Annie Knowles Fisher (December 3, 1867 – June 11, 1938) was a cook, caterer and entrepreneur. Annie lived in Columbia, Missouri, and worked for prominent families as a cook until she started her own catering business. Fisher became famous in Missouri for her widely sold beaten biscuits. Through her cooking, Fisher amassed a sizable fortune and purchased rental properties and farms in and around Boone County.

Early life Annie Knowles Fisher was born on December 3, 1867, in Boone County. She was one of eleven children born to formerly enslaved people Robert and Charlotte Knowles . From an early age, Fisher was put in charge of cooking for the family. Although Fisher attended school for a short time, she eventually quit school to help support her family. Fisher found her love of cooking while working in kitchens of wealthy white families in the Columbia area. She was paid little and received second hand clothing as one of the "perks" of the job. Fisher noted later in life for a newspaper article that although she was grateful for the second hand clothing, she wanted to make a good living so that she could afford new clothes. Fisher went to work for the Lenoir-Nifong family of Maplewood. In 1890, Fisher began to work for George Bingham Rollins and the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at the University of Missouri. She reportedly had over 1,000 place settings of tableware and handled many large catered events for the University of Missouri. In 1911, a Sedalia hostess who handled catering for the Missouri State fair made sure Fisher's biscuits were on the presidential table for William Howard Taft's visit.

Fisher's ingenuity did not end in the kitchen; she invented a nonstick cutter specifically for her biscuits. After Fisher's mail order business had taken off, she incorporated a biscuit brake to meet the demand for her biscuits. In a news article, Fisher reported she usually made around one million biscuits a year and around 50 dozen biscuits every hour with the help from her daughter. In her speech, Fisher taught how to make a profit from catering and about her life growing up. She said she was a 57-year-old woman who was not afraid to tell her age. Fisher rented her properties out to black families who couldn't find housing easily in 1913. Annie gave out her recipes freely, but noted that she could not teach the common sense needed to cook her food. Fisher's first home was a 16-room house on Park Avenue which stood until 1960. In the 1920s she had a house built along Old Highway 63. During construction, she bought the materials, hired her own workers, and stayed on the property in a tent to oversee construction. The Annie Fisher food pantry is operated by the Columbia Housing authority, the goal of this local food pantry is to provide nutritional options for growing families and is supplied by the Food Bank of Central and Northeastern Missouri.