My father, Mack Crosby, went to Bakers school in 1938. After school he worked for Craig’s Bakery in Columbus, Georgia.  We moved to Albany, Georgia in 1950.  Mack bought a bakery from a friend’s father whom
he had worked for as a teenager.  He taught
my sisters and me how to decorate and make the cakes.  Then when we married, he taught our husbands to bake every recipe that he had learned from baking school.  Mack Crosby passed away in 1956.  My eldest sister and
her husband kept the bakery. 

Shirley and I, however, moved to Jacksonville, Florida where we opened a bakery still using the original recipes.  In 1970, Charles Ellison Sr. and I moved to Orange Park, Florida and opened another bakery.  Charles Jr. was 14 when his dad began teaching him how to bake, when he married Lynn I began teaching her how to decorate the cakes. 

In 1992, we moved again to Greenville,
South Carolina where Charles Sr. was born
and opened a Cake shop on Augusta Road.  We sold the shop in 1996 and a year later Charles Sr. passed away.  I moved to Seneca and Shirley and I opened “Cakes By Shirley” where we sold in 2005. 

Charles Jr. and Lynn opened “Ellison Cakes and More” in 2006 in Seneca where they still use the same recipes from Mack Crosby.  I agreed to help them in their shop and now Charles Jr. is teaching my grandson Charles III to bake, thus the 4 generations of cake bakers.