George Huntington Hartford

George Huntington Hartford
Hartford in the mid-1870s
Born	(1833-09-05)September 5, 1833 Augusta, Maine, U.S.
Died	August 29, 1917(1917-08-29) (aged 83) Spring Lake, New Jersey, U.S.
Resting place	Rosedale Cemetery
Known for	The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company
Spouse	Marie Josephine Ludlum
Children	Maria Josephine Clews George Ludlum Hartford Edward V. Hartford John Augustine Hartford Marie Louise Hoffman
Parent(s)	J. Brackett Hartford Martha Soren

George Huntington Hartford (September 5, 1833 – August 29, 1917) headed the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P) from 1878 to 1917. During this period, A&P created the concept of the chain grocery store and expanded into the country's largest retailer. He joined the firm as a clerk in 1861 and quickly assumed managerial responsibilities. When A&P's founder, George Gilman, retired in 1878, Hartford entered into a partnership agreement and ran the company until the founder's death in 1901. In the settlement of Gilman's estate, Hartford acquired control of the company and ultimately purchased the interests of Gilman's heirs.^[1]

Hartford was born on a farm in Augusta, Maine, and started his retail career at age 18 in Boston. By 1861, he lived in Brooklyn, New York, where he married Marie Josephine Ludlum (1837–1925). They had three sons and two daughters. Although he was known to be a private person, Hartford was elected mayor of Orange, New Jersey, in 1878 and served for 12 years. Hartford retired from the active management of the business about 1907 or 1908 and turned the firm over to two of his sons, George Ludlum Hartford (1864–1957) and John Augustine Hartford (1872–1951). He continued as an advisor while they expanded the firm, which had become the country's largest retailer by 1915.

Hartford died in 1917, aged 84, and was interred at Rosedale Cemetery, in Orange, New Jersey. Hartford's estate was worth $125 million. The press respected that he was a private man, and there were few obituaries about him.^[1] "To immortalize outstanding American merchants", Joseph Kennedy in 1953 commissioned a bronze bust of Hartford, four times life size, along with seven other men, in what came to be known as the Merchandise Mart Hall of Fame in Chicago.^[2]

By 1930, A&P operated approximately 16,000 stores and became the first retailer to report combined revenue of US$1 billion.^[3] The Time magazine published on November 13, 1950, had Hartford's sons George and John on its front cover.^[3] Time wrote, "the familiar red-front A & P store is the real melting pot of the community, patronized by the boss's wife and the baker's daughter, the priest and the policeman. To foreigners A & P's vast supermarkets are among the wonders of the age; to the US middle class, they are one of the direct roads to solvency. 'Going to the A & P' is almost an American tribal rite."^[3]

Time also wrote in 1950, "Of every dollar the U.S. spends on food, about 10¢ is passed over A & P counters—a massive yearly total of $2.9 billion. Next to General Motors, the A&P sells more goods than any other company in the world." The New York Times, in an editorial on September 7, 2011, wrote that Hartford's sons George and John "were among the 20th century's most accomplished and visionary businessmen".^[4] The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial on August 29, 2011, wrote, "Together the brothers, neither of whom had finished high school, built what would be, for 40 years, the largest retail outlet in the world."^[5]