Born: 15 March 1887, United States
Died: 12 September 1973
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Marjorie Merriweather Post inherited the General Food Corporation in 1914 and served as a director until 1958. Although she was very involved with the management and expansion of the company, it would have been considered unseemly for a woman to be running such a large enterprise and so her husband, E.F. Hutton, was the chairman of the board. When Marjorie first heard about Clarence Birdseye’s new techniques of preserving foods, she wanted to purchase his company and begin selling frozen foods across the country. Hutton was against the idea, causing a significant delay. In addition to the lost profits, Birdseye’s company was becoming more valuable and therefore more expensive when General Food did eventually buy it for $23.5 million in 1929 (around $408 million today). Once they did, their frozen food products were an immediate and massive success.