Gustavus Franklin Swift
- Kaethe Maguire
- Jan 14, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 28, 2025
It’s hard to live in New England and not have heard of Swift Meats, but did you know that the Swift family goes all the way back to about 1637 in West Sandwich, now Sagamore?
I won’t get into the origins of the Swift family right now, but in full disclosure the first William Swift to our shores was my 9th great grandfather, so I admit to having a deep interest.
The famous, creative inventor in the family was Gustavus Swift. He was the ninth of the 12 children of William Swift and Sally Crowell. He was born on a farm in West Sandwich.
He invented the reefer car, a refrigerated train car that made all the difference in bringing dressed meats all over the country rather than sending cattle a thousand miles to a meat processing plant in the wild west. The advantages were great in that the cattle often lost so much weight over their journey that many died.
After the Civil War Chicago became the major railroad center, but getting the animals to the processing centers was still by hoof! Shipping live animals by rail car didn’t work as so many died in transit. Much of the animal is inedible anyway. Fresh meat was almost impossible to get because of the lack of refrigeration. Everything was salted or smoked before it went to a butcher shop.
The goal was to slaughter and dress the meat before shipping, but without cooling it would spoil.
Gustavus’ brothers, Noble and Edwin, lived and worked on a farm in West Sandwich where they raised and slaughtered cattle, sheep and hogs. Thus, Gustavus hoped to find a way of packing meat already dressed. Noble had a butcher shop and Gustavus worked there at age 14. He was not a student! So he was sent to work for his elder brother. His brilliant mind was probably bored by school.
From there he just took off with the financial help of a couple of uncles. He bought livestock at a market in Brighton and drove them to Eastham, a 10-day journey. Denying the cattle water over the trip, when they reached their destination, they gouged on water and thus increased their weight.
Gustavus met his future wife, Annie Higgins, in Eastham. They would eventually move to Brighton, where he opened his own butcher shop.
After that he partnered with others and moved a great deal. He was on his way as an astute cattle buyer and he eventually moved to Chicago in 1875 to the huge Union stockyards.
He quickly became the leader of the pack in Chicago. He had partnered with James A. Hathaway, a known Boston meat dealer, back in 1872. By 1878 Hathaway and Swift linked with Swift’s brother, Edwin.
Obviously Swift knew that if he was to expand and be able to ship his meat around the country, he needed some sort of cooling process for the meat. This was always a goal.
As early as the 1850s attempts were made to ship produce. These were the very first "ice box" railcars. Having tried this with meat they found that if the ice touched the meat it discolored it. The idea was abandoned until Swift revisited it with a new design.
By 1878 Swift hired an engineer Andrew Chase to help him create a rail car using his own design of a well-insulated, ventilated area with the ice compartment on the top of the car. He also worked out a plan for the packing of the meat within the car to prevent any shifting when the train sped around curves. The meat was packed tightly at the bottom of the car to keep the center of gravity low.
The ability to ship dressed meat quickly around the country without spoilage made fresh meat possible and thus less expensive. This allowed the poorer members of society to finally have some meat protein in their diet. This was called the era of “cheap meat.”
Additionally, Swift pioneered the use of animal by-products for the manufacture of margarine, soap, glue, fertilizer, hair brushes, buttons and knife handles as well as some medical products such as pepsin and insulin. The list of successes is long and the improvements daunting. This design for the chilled reefer car was eventually repeated all over the world.
Swift eventually settled in a grand mansion in Chicago and is buried there, but his brother, Noble, is buried right next to our town line at the Sagamore Cemetery that was of course originally part of Sandwich.
To his credit, Gustavus donated huge sums of money to colleges, churches and the YMCA. One of the recipients of his generosity was Northwestern University. Tragically, his beloved brilliant daughter Annie May died while a student there.
Gustavus and his wife Annie Maria Higgins had 11 children. Two died before reaching adulthood.
Swift and Co. was incorporated in 1885 by Gustavus with $300,000 in capital stock.
When he died in 1903 his company was valued at between $125 and $135 million dollars with a work force of 21,000. Three years after his death, the value of the company’s stock topped $250 million.
Kaethe Maguire is a member of the Friends of the Sandwich Town Archives, a dedicated, all-volunteer, 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to supporting and promoting the archives’ collections and the rich, diverse history of the town of Sandwich.
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