Kerr Group, Inc. (1992-1996) Businessman and entrepreneur
Alexander Hewitt Kerr (below) organized this company in
Portland, Oregon in 1903 under the name Hermetic Fruit Jar
Company. The official name was changed in 1904 to Kerr
Glass Manufacturing Company.

Kerr offered the ‘Economy’ brand of mason jar produced for
them by the Illinois-Pacific Glass Co.

The company, with offices in Portland, Oregon, was called the
Hermetic Fruit Jar Company. Kerr Glass owned and operated
seven glass plants in various locations throughout the United
States by 1975. Its products were sold nationally by employees
of the company from its twenty-seven sales offices.

(September 4, 1862 – February 9, 1925)

President Franklin Roosevelt (left) and Basil O’Connor
count dimes at the White House desk in 1944, after the
President founded March of Dimes to fight polio.
(March of Dimes)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an adult victim of polio, founded the
National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which he later
renamed the March of Dimes Foundation, on January 3, 1938.

Wrigley’s Spearmint is a brand of Wrigley’s chewing gum. It
was launched in 1893.

Gum was originally marketed by being given away free with
the purchase of baking soda. It became so popular that it
was then eventually sold separately as a desired commodity.

The Buster Brown story began in 1878 when George Warren
Brown turned the city of St. Louis, Missouri into the center
of the shoe manufacturing world.

The Brown Shoe Co. really took off when a sales executive at
Brown, John A. Bush, acquired the name and character rights
to the Buster Brown comic strip character in 1904, and the
Buster Brown shoe company was born (the Brown last name
was purely a happy coincidence).

The shoes became instant hits, and the legend grew stronger
with each decade.

George Warren Brown (1852 – 1921)