Born in 1864 in Osage, Iowa, George Everett Haskell was one of five children and was left fatherless at age four, when Josiah Haskell died from an illness contracted during his service in the Civil War.
Subsequently, Gilbert Rice, owner of a mill in Cedar Rapids, sent him to Cedar Valley Seminary, a combination high school and junior college that also numbers Hamlin Garland as an alumnus.
After graduating in 1884, he worked for two years as a clerk before going ‘west’ from Osage to Fremont, to take a position as a bookkeeper for the Fremont Butter and Egg Company.
In 1889, Haskell by then a bookkeeper of the Fremont firm, opened branch for the company in Beatrice, Nebraska. Haskell purchased the company’s Nebraska plant when the company folded in 1891. He renamed it the Beatrice Creamery Company of Iowa.
In 1901 the company adopted the trademark Meadow Gold for its butter. From the early date, Beatrice was a leader and innovator in the dairy business.
It is reported to have been the first company to package butter in sealed cartons. The company pioneered the use of aluminum foil milk caps and was an early innovator in the marketing is homogenized milk.
In 1909, Beatrice purchased the plant of the Lincoln Ice & Col Storage Company. By the 1930s, its 32 plants produced 27 million gallons of milk and 9.5 million gallons of ice-cream per year.
George Haskell’s great service to the dairy industry and his country ended in 1919, when he died at age fifty-four.
George Everett Haskell of Beatrice Food
