E. C. Hazard and Company's facilities at Shrewsbury, New Jersey, circa 1890.

E. C. Hazard and Company was a major grocery importer, manufacturer and distributor in 19th-century and early 20th-century America. In particular, Hazard and Company has been credited with pioneering the U.S. domestic manufacture and distribution of "fancy groceries" — a term that referred to processed canned, jarred and bottled food products (now commonly found throughout modern-day groceries and supermarkets).^[1]

[edit] The founder

The firm was founded in 1850 by Edward Clarke Hazard, born April 4, 1831, at Mumford's Mills near Peacedale, Rhode Island; died February 2, 1905 at his home Shrewsbury Manor Shrewsbury, New Jersey.^[2] Hazard attended public schools in Narragansett, Rhode Island, and at age 18 went to New York City to enter a trade. There, "with horse and wagon, he became engaged at vending soap and fancy goods with B. T. Babbitt," particularly imported grocery items.^[3] Eventually, he opened his own grocery firm, which he called E. C. Hazard and Company.

He moved from 22 Grove St. to 36 Grove St in 1858 just before or after his second marriage, to Emily (Emma) Howe. They had two sons, Edward, Jr. (born 1861) and Charles (born 1863). Emma died in May 1880, age 42, and Hazard married for the third time on November 23, 1880, to Florence (Frances) Adaline Frothingham of Charleston, Massachusetts.

Hazard had eight children with Florence, one of whom married a European nobleman and thereafter was known as "Princess von Auersperg." They divorced after the Prince demanded that she place her fortune in his name. She later married John Joseph Murphy in New York, the son of New York Senator Edward Murphy, Jr..^[4]

Label from a bottle of E. C. Hazard and Company's Shrewsbury brand tomato ketchup, circa 1890. Note the spelling "Tomatoketchup" (one word).

[edit] The company

First located at No. 69 Barclay Street and then at 92, 94, 96 and 98 Chambers St. — and from 1886 at the new Mercantile Exchange at Hudson and Harrison with his warehouses at Hudson and North Moore Streets in Manhattan — E. C. Hazard and Company opened a large factory after 1883 at Shrewsbury, the latter of which also became the adopted home of the Hazard family.

It was in Shrewsbury that Hazard and Company purchased a 165-acre (0.67 km²) tract on which it built "extensive factories, including handsome offices and one of the best-equipped laboratories in this country." The firm also grew many of its own agricultural produce on this Shrewsbury tract.^[3]

Among the consumer goods produced by E. C. Hazard and Company at its Shrewsbury facilities were Hazard's Shrewsbury Brand ketchup, canned tomatoes (which the firm sometimes called by the archaic name "love apples"), canned baked beans and mushrooms, as well as asparagus, okra, peppers, tarragon, jellies, salad dressings, and various sauces.^[3]

Perhaps the ealiest well-known product it distributed, however, was made by another manufacturer: McIlhenny Company's Tabasco brand pepper sauce, which Hazard and Company helped to introduce nationally beginning in the early 1870s.^[5]

Hazard had a devotion to purity of his products and is credited with marketing the first pure and unadulterated ketchup. He patented the name and recipe as Hazard's Shrewsbury Brand "Tomatoketchup" (one word). He was president and presiding officer of the Pure Food Manufatures Association at Madison Square Garden in 1904.

At its peak, Hazard and Company was said to have generated annual revenues in the range of $7 to $9 million. In 1907, however — two years after E. C. Hazard's death — the company suffered in the credit panic. By the end of the year, it was forced into bankruptcy by his widow, Florence A. Hazard, to wrest control from the former partners and two of her children. Eventually the firm went out of business entirely.^[6]

Hazard's son-in-law, Harry Lord Powers of New York, and his wife Elizabeth Robinson Hazard, bought Shrewsbury Manor, the forty-bedroom manor in 1911, and the factory and more land in 1913. Hazard's widow and Powers fought in court for many years over whether Powers had bought just the factory, and not the recipes and business.

[edit] Footnotes