Jim McKee: Was peanut butter invented in College View? | News

While most everyone now realizes that the Reuben sandwich was not in fact invented at Omaha’s Blackstone Hotel, there are a few that still cling to the improbable tale that peanut butter was born in a former village in Lancaster County, now part of the city of Lincoln. In fact, there are some intriguing whiskers on the tale that make it seem almost possible.

As Union College developed, residents of Lincoln, University Place, Bethany and Havelock discovered that, for a few cents, they could take a trolley car excursion to College View. A frequent stop before heading home was Dave Weise’s home on the south side of today’s Prescott Street, where they sold salted peanuts. As Seventh-Day Adventists became vegetarians, Weiss began importing ever-larger quantities of the versatile peanut as a protein source and meat substitute. The entire community was soon to be known as Peanut Hill.

In 1884 Canadian Marcellus G. Edson perfected grinding roasted peanuts into what he called peanut paste. Dr. J. H Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan, then developed a machine to grind raw peanuts. An employee named Dunlap accidentally ground the nuts too finely into what Dr. Kellogg termed “peanut butter and so it was named.”

Kellogg patented the process in 1895 at the same time he opened the Nebraska Sanitarium in Union College’s boys’ dormitory and gave the college bakery the formula for what he called granola. Granola became a Union College-based cereal and within a few years David Weiss was listed in the Lincoln City Directory as a peanut butter manufacturer.

James Frederick Garvey was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1880 and moved to Lincoln in 1895. Garvey, who had worked at a number of varied jobs, founded the J. F. Garvey Company in 1905 which, by 1910, was listed as being in the grocery specialty business “manufacturing food and household products” at 233 North Ninth Street in the general area now occupied by Barry’s Bar. A decade later the east side of the 300 block of South Ninth Street was beginning to have new brick buildings including 301 S. Ninth, 313 S. Ninth intriguingly home of the Lincoln Steam Paste Co. and 315 S. Ninth where the Hisom Remedy Company was located.

In 1920 the Garvey Company purchased the Lambert Machine Company’s French burr stonemill which allowed their ad to say they were now “doing a splendid peanut butter business covering five states.” Two years later Mr. Garvey got a bit of local press by being a founding member of the National Peanut Butter Manufacturers’ Association. although peanut butter was the primary Garvey product, an ad later the same year said they were then only in the wholesale business and referred to their products as condiments.

George William Mechling was born in Lincoln in 1910, graduated from Lincoln High School and in 1930 was a student at the University of Nebraska. After marrying Capitola E. Wright of Kansas, Mechling worked primarily in various sales positions. James Garvey died in December of 1942, and with no clear explanation, Mechling acquired the J. F. Garvey Company business with plant and office in several buildings centered at 321 S. Ninth Street and listed himself as president and manager.

In 1949 the front page of The Lincoln Journal was full of the three-alarm fire at George Mechling’s J F. Garvey three-building plant on South Ninth Street. The fire which was reported at 9:50 a.m., Sept. 29, probably started in a peanut roaster and because all three buildings were filled with combustible oils, the fire spread rapidly.

Quickly seven of Lincoln’s eight fire companies were called out. The fire was called the “biggest in memory for use of the city’s equipment.” Although two semi truckloads of peanut butter were saved, the factory’s basement was reportedly filled to the street level with water.

In the mid-1950s the J. F. Garvey Co./Garvey Food Products Co. listed themselves as manufacturers and packers of food products including Clown brand peanuts, P-Nut-O Peanut Butter, Allnut Peanut Butter, peanut candies, fancy nuts, Peanola cooking oil, mustard, vinegar, jams, jellies and gelatin desserts with offices in Lincoln, Omaha and Wichita, Kansas. Also, at about the same time, a retail store at 224 S. 13th St. called the Nut House, opened with Esther Zwick as manager while Louis Zwick was listed as an employee of J. F Garvey Co., leaving one to wonder if the Nut House was a branch of the Garvey Company. The Chamber of Commerce meanwhile announced that Lincoln was producing 250,000 pounds of peanut butter per week.

The Mechling family also operated a large antique store in an old grocery store in Sprague  and developed Mechling’s Wilderness Park Estates north of the Bess Walt branch library with one notable street named Capitola Drive, honoring George’s wife.

The name Peanut Butter Factory survives on the former company’s building complex and joins the memory of Lincoln’s downtown as compartmentalized by the smells of coffee roasting, bacon/meat packing and my old favorite—peanut butter.

Historian Jim McKee, who still writes with a fountain pen, invites comments or questions. Write to him in care of the Journal Star or at jim@leebooksellers.com.