Morrell Meat Packing: Iowa Time Machine November 25, 1847

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On November 25, 1847, President of Morrell Meat Packing Thomas Dove Foster was born. An influential business and civic leader in Ottumwa, Foster helped establish one of Iowa’s most important 20th-century meatpacking operations.

In 1827, George Morrell founded a wholesale food provision business in Bradford, England. Expanding rapidly throughout the 1800s, the company established a foothold in North America by the late 1860s. Born in Bradford, Thomas Dove Foster was a grandson of the founder George Morrell. After starting at the company’s Irish hog packing plants, Thomas Dove Foster was assigned to the American Midwest when the company expanded to Chicago.

T. D., as most of his contemporaries knew him, moved the company's American packing operations to Ottumwa, Iowa, in 1877. Foster saw himself as a friend of the plant’s workers and prided himself on how all of his workers recognized him by his red hair. Foster also prided himself on civic participation and proved instrumental in the construction of Ottumwa’s first YMCA. In 1893, T. D. Foster rose to become chairman of both the English and American meatpacking operations of the company, serving until he died in Ottumwa in 1915. His son, Thomas Henry Foster, took over leadership of the family business.

Spurred by World War I, the demand for pork products, paired with the company’s international presence, accelerated sales, especially of bacon and lard, during the Great War. In a market position as the leading American pork exporter to England before the war, the company’s ability to source, process, and send pork from Iowa farmers abroad accelerated the company’s growth. #Iowa #History #OTD #Meat #Industry