Maria Anna Fisher

Maria Anna Fisher (1819–1911) was an African American baker, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Beginning around 1834, at the age of 15, she sold homemade biscuits door to door in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at 12.5 cents each. With her earnings she eventually purchased a fourteen-room house and more than dozen other houses that she rented out. She never raised the price for her biscuits. Fisher died in 1911 and left a $70,000 estate to charities, including the Tuskegee Institute and the Hampton Institute.