Today in Food History

Also, on this day in 1889 The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was established as a Cabinet level agency.

In 1894 Hershey’s Chocolate Company was founded as a subsidiary of Milton S. Hershey’s Lancaster Caramel Company.

In 1901 Fred Harvey died in Leavenworth, Kansas. Born in 1835 in London, Frederick Henry Harvey, was an American restaurateur who operated a chain of restaurants called the ‘Harvey House,’ and a series of railroad dining cars and hotels. The restaurants were opened along the route of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, and were staffed by ‘Harvey Girls’, who over the years numbered in the thousands. Will Rogers said Harvey “kept the West in food and wives.”