Peter Eckrich & Sons

1894 – brand sold 2006

Peter Eckrich came to America at seventeen, a butcher's apprentice from Waldsee in Baden-Wurttemberg, where he was born on January 2, 1864, to Ignatz Eckrich and Marie Elisabeth Spindler Eckrich. He settled in Fort Wayne and in 1894 opened a small meat market, making the sausages he had grown up on in Germany. The market stood on East Lewis Street: the 1902 Fort Wayne city directory lists Peter Eckrich, meats, at 733 East Lewis, with his house next door at 731, and in April 1901 he had taken out a permit for a $3,000 brick residence at the corner of Francis and Lewis. A postcard of about 1910 shows the store at East Lewis and Francis with Eckrich himself behind the counter.

A second account of the origin survives and is printed here as it stands. Benjamin A. Eisbart's Quest Club paper "The Fort Wayne Airport: Is It Too Late?", read on November 9, 1990 and preserved in the Allen County Public Library's digital collections, states on its fifth page that the business "started in the kitchen of Peter Eckrich in 1908." That kitchen origin, in a paper about the airport, conflicts with the 1894 market founding carried by the company history and by the directory and newspaper record assembled by the Allen County Genealogical Society. Both accounts are of record; the documentary trail of directory listings, building permits and dated photographs runs from the 1890s, and nothing in it begins in 1908.

The business outgrew the counter quickly. Peter opened a second shop and then a plant to supply a wholesale trade. The firm became a wholesaler in 1907, and the plant that grew up at Osage and Richardson Streets, on the city's northwest side, anchored the company for the rest of the century. Peter's sons came into the business: Joseph and Clement, who settled in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where the company opened a second processing plant; Henry and Herman, who stayed in Fort Wayne; and John, of Jackson, Michigan. In 1925 the firm incorporated as Peter Eckrich and Sons. It closed its last retail operation in 1932 to concentrate on wholesale packing, and by then, on the company's own telling, Eckrich meats were nationally recognized.

Peter Eckrich died on March 30, 1942, not in Fort Wayne but in retirement at Coral Gables, Florida, at his home at 1041 Andalusia Avenue, where he had lived five years. The Miami News obituary of March 31, 1942, records a requiem mass at the Church of the Little Flower and the body's return by rail to Fort Wayne for burial, in the Catholic Cemetery, beside the city he had fed for half a century. His widow Diana, five sons and six daughters survived him.

The Fort Wayne plant carried the name through two more generations of owners and two brushes with disaster. On January 21, 1974, fire struck Peter Eckrich and Sons Meats at Osage Street and Richardson Street; the Allen County Public Library's photo archive holds the fire department's pictures of Pumper No. 1 at work and the delivery trucks being moved out. Eight years later, in the great flood, a News-Sentinel photograph of March 14, 1982, shows a man ferrying residents by boat under the Osage Street viaduct beside the plant; sandbags kept the water out, and the factory worked that day. The brand advertised heavily on the radio and television broadcasts of high school basketball that filled the Memorial Coliseum through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, which is where much of Fort Wayne heard the name most often.

The ownership line runs as the earlier record had it, with one link filled in. Beatrice Foods bought the company in 1972, thirty years after Peter's death. In 1986 Beatrice merged it into its Swift division as Swift-Eckrich. Beatrice's brands were then sold off through the late 1980s, a process that ended in 1990 with the sale of many of them, Eckrich among them, to ConAgra. ConAgra sold the Eckrich brand to Smithfield Foods on October 2, 2006. Smithfield, itself a subsidiary of the WH Group, keeps the label on smoked sausages, cold cuts, hot dogs, corn dogs, Vienna sausages, breakfast sausages and bacon, and refreshed the deli-meat packaging in 2020. Production had long since spread beyond Fort Wayne, and the company's headquarters functions sit with Smithfield in Virginia. What began as one immigrant's counter at 733 East Lewis survives as a national brand name whose first forty years belong to this city.

Sources:

1. "Eckrich," Wikipedia, drawing on company and press records (accessed 2026): founding 1894; wholesale 1907; incorporation 1925; retail end 1932; Beatrice purchase 1972; Swift-Eckrich 1986; Beatrice brand sales culminating in the 1990 sale of Eckrich to ConAgra; sale to Smithfield Foods, October 2, 2006; product line; 2020 packaging refresh.
2. Eckrich brand history, Smithfield Foods (eckrich.com, accessed 2026): Peter arrived in America at seventeen; opened the Fort Wayne market in 1894; a second shop and a plant followed; nationally recognized by 1932.
3. "Peter Eckrich (January 2, 1864 to March 30, 1942)," German Life magazine, January 2024: parents Ignatz Eckrich and Marie Elisabeth Spindler Eckrich of Waldsee; second meat market; plant in 1907; incorporation 1925.
4. Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana (ACGSI), "Peter Eckrich and Sons, Inc. Meat Packers" (acgsi.org, accessed 2026), collecting Allen County Public Library digital collections and dated newspaper items: the 1901 building permit (Fort Wayne News and Sentinel, April 5, 1901); the 1902 city directory listing at 733 and 731 East Lewis; the 1910 postcard of the store at East Lewis and Francis; the January 21, 1974 plant fire photographs; the March 14, 1982 flood photograph.
5. Benjamin A. Eisbart, "The Fort Wayne Airport: Is It Too Late?", Quest Club paper, November 9, 1990, page 5, Allen County Public Library Digital Collections: the conflicting claim that the business started in Peter Eckrich's kitchen in 1908.
6. The Miami News, March 31, 1942, obituary of Peter Eckrich: death at 1041 Andalusia Avenue, Coral Gables; requiem mass at the Church of the Little Flower; body sent to Fort Wayne for burial; widow Diana; five sons named with their cities; six daughters.
7. Obituary of Marilyn Galloup, LifeStoryNet (accessed 2026): the company opened a second processing plant in Kalamazoo, where her father Clement Eckrich, one of the five sons, made his home.