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1865–1868 · THE DRUGSTORE FORMULA
The formula: The first Fort Wayne invention of national reach came out of a drugstore at Columbia and Calhoun streets. Griswold's 1917 pictorial history dates the beginning to 1865: Joseph C. Hoagland, a Fort Wayne druggist, "compounded a combination of chemicals to meet the needs of the housewife," samples were distributed to Fort Wayne homes and met with popular favor, and Thomas M. Biddle and Cornelius N. Hoagland were his associates in the beginning of the manufacture. The federal court record fixes the commercial start a year later: in Royal Baking Powder Co. v. Raymond (1895), the court recited that in 1866 the firm of Biddle & Hoagland "commenced the compounding and selling of baking powder" at Fort Wayne, and that the word "Royal" had been used as its mark from July 1865. The product was a single-action powder of cream of tartar, bicarbonate of soda and starch. The Hoaglands carried it to Chicago and then to New York, incorporating the Royal Baking Powder Company there in 1868; by the end of the century it was, in the Old Fort News's words, "a household name and the most widely distributed baking powder in the world." Precision matters here: baking powder itself was not invented in Fort Wayne — Alfred Bird had made one in England in 1843. What was invented in the Columbia Street drugstore was the Royal formula and the brand that outsold the world. A lodger completes the building's record: the young telegraph operator Thomas A. Edison lived upstairs at Columbia and Calhoun in 1864, a passer-through whose own Fort Wayne inventions were none.
Sources:
- Griswold, The Pictorial History of Fort Wayne (1917), Vol. I, "Activities of 1865" — the 1865 beginning, Hoagland's compounding, Biddle and Cornelius Hoagland as associates.
- Royal Baking Powder Co. v. Raymond, 70 F. 376 (7th Cir. 1895) — Biddle & Hoagland compounding and selling at Fort Wayne from 1866; the "Royal" mark from July 1865.
- Old Fort News, Vol. 79 (2016), as quoted in Melinda Haines, "Invented in Fort Wayne, Indiana," Quest Club paper, 25 October 2024 — the drugstore at Columbia and Calhoun, the formula's developers, the brand's world distribution.
- Wikipedia, "Baking powder" and "Joseph C. Hoagland" — the 1866 formula, the move from Fort Wayne to Chicago and New York, incorporation in New York in 1868.
- Visit Fort Wayne, Allen County Historic Sites — Edison's 1864 lodging above the Columbia and Calhoun drugstore.