Artist: Joseph Allworthy (1892–1991)
George Henry Hammond
HAMMOND, GEORGE HENRY (1838–1886), inducted 1953
George Henry Hammond, a pioneer in refrigerated railcar transportation, first tested his revolutionary fresh meat distribution methods at his small packing company in Detroit, Michigan. In 1868, Hammond received a patent for a refrigerator car design with a cold air circulation system and soon built a new plant along the Michigan Central Railroad, in a town that would be called Hammond, Indiana. His railroad car design was known as the Hammond-Davis reefer (William Davis was the man who engineered it; George Hammond was the man who financed its development). By 1875, the George H. Hammond Co. was selling $2 million worth of meat a year. Within a decade, Hammond’s new plant in Omaha, Nebraska, was slaughtering over 100,000 cattle a year, operating a fleet of 800 refrigerator cars, and generating $15 million in sales. Hammond was the first to pack reefer cars on seagoing ships, to export dressed beef to Europe; and he found additional success by producing oleomargarine, a butter substitute, from beef fat. The background of his portrait by Joseph Allworthy features a refrigerated railcar.
Source: Saddle & Sirloin Guidebook 2026, p. 103