Your Ketchup and Pickles: The H. J. Heinz Company in Marshall County

Your Ketchup and Pickles: The H. J. Heinz Company in Marshall County

by | Jun 3, 2026 | Business & Industry, LaPaz, Tippecanoe

Heinz Tippecanoe workers, undated.

By Dr. Don S. Balka, Board Treasurer

The Marshall County Museum is the repository for old county road tax records.  These large legal-size journals contain handwritten listings of property owners, lot numbers, acreages and road taxes.  Over the last few years, volunteers have transcribed the holdings for three townships (North, Tippecanoe and West).  One interesting property owner appears in journals for these townships in the county, the H. J. Heinz Company of Pittsburgh, PA.  Henry John Heinz was the oldest of nine children and grew up in Sharpsburg, PA.  Heinz and his cousin Frederick formed F. & J. Heinz Company to produce condiments, pickles, and other prepared food.  The well-known ketchup brand was added in 1876 when the new company was formed.  In 1888, Henry gained control of the company, renamed the company as H. J. Heinz, and was soon known as the “pickle king.”  The phrase that we often see and hear, “57 Varieties,” was added to the brand in 1892.  H. J. Heinz died in 1919 at the age of 75.  His son Howard took control of the company until 1941, when H. J. Heinz II (Jack) took the reins.  This family member began his career with the company at the Plymouth plant as a pickle-salter for $1 per day. 

            According to Flickr, a Heinz salting operation began in LaPaz in 1897, on the north side of the B & O train tracks across from the train depot and on the east side of Michigan Road.  Road taxes are listed in the North Township ledger for 1898. Other properties in the township with their taxes are listed for 1900, 1901, 1902 and 1904.  The postcard views shown below are from Hoosier Recollections.

Postcard from Hoosier Recollections.

Postcard from Hoosier Recollections.

For Tippecanoe Township, the earliest listing was 1905, stopping in 1918, with several missing years in between.  The earliest journal listing for West Township was 1902, with yearly entries through 1914.  Although lot numbers are provided in the journals, the exact locations of the properties are difficult to determine.  Cucumbers and tomatoes were the crops.  Acreages for the fifty-nine lots (with duplications) listed in the ledgers for the three townships were all one acre or less. 

Based on the following information, county farmers contracted to raise cucumbers and tomatoes on their own farms.  The Plymouth Tribune (March 24, 1904) printed an ad for the company:  “Persons in Marshall county desiring contracts to supply the H.J. Heinz Co. with pickles the coming season may obtain them at the store of Haag Brothers, Plymouth, Ind.”

The Indian Historical Bureau provides a publication entitled Untold Indiana.  It contains stories about the H. J. Heinz Company from the Argos Reflector and the Bremen Inquirer.  In May 1944, the Argos Reflector reported that H. J. Heinz Co. had leased a 300-acre farm north of Argos in Marshall County, “as part of their program to insure delivery of war time food commitments.” According to the Reflector, this was the company’s “largest venture in the country.” Cucumbers were planted on 114 acres of the farm, “one of the largest items of the company’s list of 57 processed foods.” The article reported that the company produced “about half” of the cucumbers provided to the U. S. Navy where “pickles are an everyday part of the sailor’s menu.”

The Reflector reported that the company was constructing forty “bunk houses” for “an estimated 200 Mexican field laborers.”  The workers would harvest the cucumber crop and then would be offered jobs “in the tomato fields.” The newspaper article described the laborers both as “Mexicans” and “migrant workers,” However, the fact that the company was building housing meant that they were fulfilling the contract requirements for government-placed Bracero workers.  The Bracero Program was a government-sponsored program that imported seasonal farm workers (Braceros) into the United States between the years 1942 and 1964. The program was designed to fill agriculture shortages that started during World War II.  According to an Indianapolis Star article, these field workers made $3.10 to $3.50 per day.  The poster below “Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program 1942-1964,” is from the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC.

“Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program 1942-1964,” from the National Museum of American History.

The Bremen Enquirer reported additional Bracero Program information on living conditions, noting that employers must guarantee “adequate housing, health and sanitary facilities.” This meant only three workers, or a four-person family, could live in a 12 by 14-foot space with “facilities for cooking, sleeping, laundry, bathing and adequate sanitary toilets and means of waste disposal.”

Interesting aspects of Marshall County history are available to you at the Museum. Visit us Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 4.  Remember how, once upon a time, those H. J. Heinz pickles and ketchup products came from your county.

Fatal 1911 Accident at Tippecanoe

Fatal 1911 Accident at Tippecanoe

by | Nov 12, 2025 | Railroad, Tippecanoe

We have quoted verbatim from the Argos Reflector newspaper of November 9th, so please excuse the fact that reporters of that era did not miss the opportunity to create great drama when writing the news.

“Last Thursday evening the people of our neighboring community of Tippecanoe, seven miles east of here, were shocked to learn of a distressing accident that happened at the crossing of the Nickel Plate tracks near the depot. Daniel Fawley, a farmer living east of Tippecanoe, was struck by the westbound passenger train and his lifeless body was hurled against Agent Elliott with a violence that resulted in the latter’s death Sunday evening. It seems that Mr. Fawley, having alighted from the eastbound passenger train that arrives there about six o’clock, started to cross the main track to go uptown. Now, the fatal defect in the railroad company’s system of taking on and leaving off passengers at this place is that the eastbound train takes the siding which compels passengers to board from and alight upon the main track. This brazen disregard for the safety of human life is much emphasized by the fact that the westbound passenger train is due to pass here at the same time. When Mr. Fawley started across the tracks, unconscious of the approach of the train from the east, he heard a warning cry from W.C. Elliott, the veteran agent at this station. Just as he turned his head the locomotive struck him with the results above mentioned. The body of Mr. Fawley was badly mangled, being hurled 25 feet or more and death was practically instantaneous.

W.C. Elliott had been in the service of the Nickel Plate as agent for nearly 30 years, or since the completion of the road, and had come to be regarded as a landmark of the place and had won the respect and regard of all who knew him. His life hung in the balance of uncertainty til Sunday evening when the soul of this faithful servant left its earthly tenement. Mr. Fawley lived alone on his farm. He leaves one child, Mrs. Clyde Stockberger. Mr. Elliott was about 70, a soldier of the civil war and a Mason. His body was taken to Indianapolis for burial. In the unequal struggle between Duty and Dividends the latter has scored another point. But it shall not ever be thus. The awakening conscience of the people will assert itself and such death traps as this one will be relegated to the junk pile of oblivion.”

To learn more about trains in Marshall County, visit our museum from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. To see our model trains run, visit our train room from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays!