March 8 is International Women’s Day. But why do women need their own day? The Seattle Times found out why when it began research for a story about Continental Mills, a local company, owned and operated by the third generation of the Heily family. Continental is known for its Krusteaz brand of pancake, pie crust, biscuit and other mixes.
The Krusteaz web site features a “History” page with a photo of four women at a card table and a heartwarming story of the women of a Seattle bridge club who invented a just-add-water pie-crust mix. They called it “Crust Ease.” (Krusteaz — get it?) Except no one at Continental Mills knew who these women were.
Eventually, a Continental spokesperson did tell the Times reporter that one of the women was married to James Charters, a company executive in its early days. Further sleuthing initially revealed nothing. A few newspaper stories, typically social notes, mentioned a Mrs. James Charters. In those days the norm was to identify a woman by her husband’s name. An obituary published in 1964 noted that James Charters was survived by his wife Rose. The intrepid Times reporter tracked down the rest of the story.
Ada Rose Gilbreath was born in 1876, the the ninth of thirteen offspring of the first white settler in, and later sheriff of, Columbia County. He had arrived in the Washington territory by wagon train in 1852 via the Oregon Trail.
Rose attended Washington Agricultural College (now Washington State University) and taught school in Walla Walla. She later moved to the Seattle area and married Chicago native James Charters.
Rose Charters formulated her pie-crust mix in 1932 and began selling it to friends, neighbors and local cafes. Her mix did not require adding butter, eggs and milk, making it appealing to bakers during the Great Depression. Demand soon exceeded what she could produce in her home kitchen. Husband James borrowed money from investors in his hometown Chicago to open a small manufacturing facility. Continental Mills was born.
The company grew, but not without struggles. At the request of investors, John J. Heily joined the firm in the 1940s to give direction to the company.
The Krusteaz brand is now sold nationwide, but is still especially strong in the West. Continental opened a second manufacturing plant in Kentucky in 1999. The company has since added plants in Kansas and Illinois. When you purchase Ghirardelli cookie and brownie mixes, Cracker Barrel pancake and baking mixes, Snoqualmie Lodge pancake mix or Red Lobster Cheddar Bay biscuit mix, you’re buying products manufactured by Continental Mills.
By the time Rose died in 1970, she had sold the last of her and her late husband’s stock to the Heily family. The founder’s name soon disappeared from the corporate memory.
Since the Seattle Times published Rose’s story, Continental Mills has updated its Krusteaz web site to acknowledge Rose Charters as the woman who started the company.
