Pioneer Canners: How the Baxter Canning Companies Made a Maine Brand

John Goff, historian, presents the HC Baxter & Bros historic world-wide canning industry founded and operated out of Brunswick, Maine. This slideshow was created for the June 9, 2022 presentation at the Pejepscot History Center in Brunswick. John subsequently screened it for the Baxter/Comee family on July 19, 2022 which is this recording.

John Goff is a retired architectural historian & restoration architect who coordinated a preservation survey of Brunswick in the early 1980s...and also published SAMUEL B. DUNNING: BRUNSWICK'S FIRST ARCHITECT in 1984.

"Pioneer Canners: How the Baxter Canning Companies Made a Maine Brand"
Between 1888 and the mid-20th century, the H.C. Baxter & Bro. packing and canning company was headquartered in six different locations in Brunswick and controlled a colossal commerce that managed factories and food-canneries in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa, and parts of Canada. By the 1920s, this firm, founded by the older half-brother of Maine’s Governor Percival Baxter (donor of Baxter State Park) became also the largest corn producer in the world. The Baxter canneries employed hundreds of Maine citizens from various walks of life and heritages. John Goff shares the story of this fascinating philanthropic family, its company and workers, as well as the legacy it left on mass-produced foods, global explorations, the “BAXTER’S FINEST” brand, and Brunswick’s architectural heritage.

The HC Baxter & Bros canning empire was begun by James Phinney Baxter as Portland Packing Company. His eldest son Hartley Cone Baxter began the HC Baxter & Bros partnership with his brothers Rupert, James and Clinton. Hartley's son John Lincoln Baxter became president of the Snowflake Canning Company which then passed to JLB's son John Lincoln Baxter, Jr (Jack) who in 1965 merged the company with Lamb-Weston of Portland, Oregon and became VP of Lamb-Weston, merging Lamb-Weston with Amfac, a Fortune 500 company, in Hawaii and becoming VP of the food division of Amfac until his retirement. According to Jack re HCB & Bro: "In the beginning it was a big frog in a little pond and over time became a little frog in a big pond."