Caketown

            Mary Hunter’s property was bought by several different owners and eventually sold to Colonel Joseph Warren Cake on August 23, 1859.  The northern portion, which had been granted to Nancy Hunter, continued to be passed on to family members until 1859 when it was bought by Benjamin Hendricks.  He sold the property to Colonel Cake on June 25, 1863.
In a similar fashion, Colonel Cake acquired nearly all of the land lying north of Line Street and extending toward the Northumberland Bridge.  In the late 1850’s he had it surveyed into town lots and since that time it has been known as Caketown.  Colonel Cake had high aspirations for his “town”, which he suspected, with the help of the new Sunbury and Erie Railroad, would blossom at such a pace that Sunbury would eventually become its suburb.  The streets that ran east and west he named for his best friends, Masser, Greenough, and Packer, his wife Julia, and his four children, Amy, Alice, Joseph and John Adam.  He imagined that Packer Street would serve as the main street for his new town and thus he built a passenger station for the railroad here, a hotel and on Front Street a bank.  He also sold 42 acres to the railroad to be used for shops, yards and a round house.