Name Oscar Mayer | Siblings Gottfried Mayer | |
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Died March 11, 1955, Chicago, Illinois, United States | ||
Organizations founded Oscar Mayer | ||
Oscar Ferdinand Mayer (March 29, 1859 – March 11, 1955) was a German American who founded the processed-meat firm Oscar Mayer that bears his name.
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Early life and career
Mayer was born in Kösingen (now part of Neresheim), in the Kingdom of Württemberg, where his family had been foresters and ministers for generations. While he was a child Württemberg became part of the German Empire. He emigrated to the United States as a teenager and lived at Detroit with a cousin. He worked in that city's meat market and in 1876 moved to Chicago with his cousin. Mayer found work at a meat market on Chicago's North Side and started a butcher and sausage-making shop of his own in 1883, when he was 24 years old. Five years later, the proprietor who owned the store refused to renew Mayer's lease, hoping that he could profit from Mayer's business success. Pushed out on his own, Mayer bought a property and constructed a two-story building for his business and family. In 1887 he married Louise Greiner, originally from Munich, and their only son was born in that building.
With the company's continued growth, it became a sponsor of such events as polka bands and the German exhibition at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. The company had grown to 43 employees in 1900, offering meat delivered across the city of Chicago and its suburbs. Capitalizing on an industry trend, in 1904 the company started using its own brands for its meat products and was one of the earliest participants in the Food Safety and Inspection Service, created under the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906, to verify the contents of its products. By the time of his death, the business named after himself had grown to 9,000 employees, with facilities in Davenport, Iowa, Los Angeles, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.
In 1912, Mayer founded the Lincoln Park Gun Club with Philip K. Wrigley, Sewell Avery, and other prominent Chicagoans.
Death
After being ill for six weeks, he died in his sleep at age 95 on March 11, 1955, at his home, 5727 North Sheridan Road, in Chicago, with his son and successor Oscar G. Mayer, Sr. and his three daughters at his bedside. His wife died in 1931.
His great-grandson Chuck Collins is an economist and philanthropist.