A Legacy of Success

At age six, Henry John Heinz (1844–1919) started helping his mother tend a small garden behind the family home. At twelve, he was working three and one-half acres of garden, using a horse and cart for his three-times-a-week deliveries to grocery stores in Pittsburgh. He went on to found his own company and named it 57 Varieties. H. J. Heinz Company was incorporated in 1905, which today sells more than 1,300 products worldwide ranging from ketchup to baby food.

Henry Heinz was deeply involved in the promotion of the Sunday school in Pittsburgh and around the world. His company was noted for pioneering safe and sanitary food preparation and for being ahead of its time in employee relations, providing free medical benefits and swimming and gymnasium facilities. Women held positions of larger responsibilities in his business, including making them supervisors. Heinz earned his reputation for enhancing the working and living conditions of his workers.

In his will, Heinz said, “I desire to set forth at the very beginning of this will, as the most important item in it, a confession of my faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior. I also desire to bear witness to the fact that throughout my life, in which there were unusual joys and sorrows, I have been wonderfully sustained by my faith in God through Jesus Christ. This legacy was left me by my consecrated mother, a woman of strong faith, and to it, I attribute any success I have attained.”

Taken from The American Patriot’s Bible