Henry J. Heinz

Henry John Heinz (October 11, 1844 – May 14, 1919) was an American entrepreneur who co-founded the H. J. Heinz Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He helped push through the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. His descendants have been active in philanthropy and public life, and his wealth established the Heinz Foundations.

Heinz was born in Birmingham, Pennsylvania, to John Henry Heinz and Anna Margaretha Schmidt. His father, originally Johann Heinrich Heinz, was the son of Johann Georg Heinz and Charlotte Louisa Trump. The Trump family came from Kallstadt in the Palatinate, then part of the Kingdom of Bavaria. John Henry emigrated to Birmingham in 1840, worked making bricks, and married Anna in 1843. She had recently arrived from Kruspis, Hesse-Kassel. When Henry was five, the family moved to Sharpsburg, where his father started his own brickmaking business. Anna, raised in the Calvinist faith, was the daughter of farmer and church administrator Johann Adam Schmidt and Dorothea Thiel. Her husband was Lutheran, and they raised Henry in that faith.

Heinz began packing food on a small scale in Sharpsburg in 1869, founding Heinz Noble & Company with L. Clarence Noble. They sold bottled horseradish, soon adding sauerkraut, vinegar, and pickles. The company went bankrupt in 1875. The next year, Heinz started F & J Heinz with his brother John and cousin Frederick. The business grew, and in 1888 Heinz bought out his partners, reorganizing it as the H. J. Heinz Company. It was incorporated in 1905, with Heinz as its first president, a role he held until his death. The "57 varieties" slogan debuted in 1896, even though the company then sold over 60 products. Heinz said he picked "5" as his lucky number and "7" as his wife's. At his death in Pittsburgh at age 74, the company operated more than 20 food processing plants, plus seed farms and container factories.

Heinz successfully lobbied for the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. During World War I, he worked with the Food Administration. He served as a director for many financial institutions and chaired a committee on flood protection for Pittsburgh.

He married Sarah Sloan Young on September 3, 1869. She was of Scots-Irish descent and raised Presbyterian. They had five children: Irene Edwilda (1871–1956), Clarence Henry (1873–1920), Howard Covode (1877–1941), Robert Eugene (1882, lived about a month), and Clifford Sloan (1883–1935). The children were raised Presbyterian.

Later in life, Heinz attended Methodist and Presbyterian churches and worked closely with Baptists. While visiting England, he stopped at the graves of John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, and John Wesley, and visited a chapel Wesley founded, writing that he felt he was on holy ground. His will began with a confession of faith in Jesus Christ as his savior.

Heinz died at home on May 14, 1919, from pneumonia. His funeral was held at East Liberty Presbyterian Church, and he was buried in the Heinz Family Mausoleum at Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh. A bronze statue by Emil Fuchs was dedicated at the Heinz Company building on October 11, 1924. He is the grandfather of H. J. Heinz II, great-grandfather of U.S. Senator H. John Heinz III, and great-great-grandfather of Henry John Heinz IV, André Thierstein Heinz, and Christopher Drake Heinz.