Albert P. Halfhill

Halfhill was born on November 25, 1847, in Morrow County, Ohio, near the village of Cardington. He was the son of Moses Halfhill and Lydia Halfhill (née Kingman). His father was a farmer. Halfhill had two brothers. He was educated in the public schools of Mercer and St. Mary's, Ohio, as he grew up.[1]

Halfhill's first job was as a teacher for two years in Deep Cut, Ohio. He was next a clerk in a hardware store at St. Mary's where he started his business career. He then was a partner with August Decker for a few years in a dry goods business at St. Mary's. He then moved to Van Wert, Ohio. In 1875 in that city he purchased a grocery story that he operated with Lester Paterson.[1] While there, he married Sarah Elizabeth Phillips on January 11, 1874.[2] He moved with his wife to Mankato, Minnesota, in 1884. At that time he was one of the founders of the wholesale grocery firm of Patterson, Halfhill, & Zimmerman.[3][4] He sold a line of groceries throughout the state of Minnesota for several years as a branch of this firm.[3] Halfhill's wife's health failed in 1892 and they decided to move to Southern California for a better environment.[5][6]

Halfhill and Robert Ward, a Los Angeles merchant, decided to buy the machinery of San Francisco's Golden Gate Packing Company, which had just gone out of business. Neither Halfhill nor Ward had enough money to do this, so approached Joseph H. Lapham, a wealthy merchant, with this business proposition. They bought the fish-packing machinery and formed the Southern California Fish Company with Lapham as its president. Halfhill, Ward, and Lapham were the stockholders of this new firm. In 1893, they constructed a new two-story fish packing factory plant on Terminal Island at San Pedro Bay, where they used their machinery to pack sardines.[1][7][8][9]

Cannery worker filling tuna cans in Long Beach, California

The sardine-packing business was prosperous for ten years. In 1903, the sardine harvest failed in San Pedro Bay for some unknown reason. Halfhill then looked for some other seafood to keep his plant running. In his travels, he had picked up a can of Italian canned tuna and brought it back to his plant to see if he could copy it.[8] Halfhill then began experimenting in packing fish that were plentiful in the Pacific Ocean. He found that coast-rock cod, albacore, and halibut were bountiful.[3] Halfhill then experimented with the idea of removing natural fish oils and substituting them with salad oils, like olive or cottonseed oil.[10][11][12] He then cooked this preparation tuna with compressed steam and it resulted in a white meat with the texture of chicken.[2][13]

Halfhill first canned tuna as a commercial product this way in 1907.[14][15][16] He sold 250 cases (packaged in three-quarter pound cans) of cooked Albacore tuna with his unique formula in 1908 to a grocery store owner in Los Angeles named H. Jevne.[17] The product at first did not sell well, but Jevne promoted it and the public discovered they liked the mild taste of the white meat.[18] His employees and customers did not know it was Albacore tuna, as that was considered a fish not to eat.[1] He labeled his product chicken of the sea and was the first to use this slogan.[19][20][21][22] It became a successful seller in New York before California.[6] Canning companies of Southern California were selling 115,000 cases of canned tuna by 1912.[6] That production doubled two years later.[19]

Albacore was unattractive and called the "hog of the sea".[1] It was not usually eaten at all prior to Halfhill coming up with a process that made the meat more desirable.[23] He discovered that steaming the albacore tuna after replacing its fish oil resulted in a white meat of a texture like chicken.[24] Halfhill then used the tagline "chicken of the sea" to promote sales.[25][24][26] Halfhill's primacy was proven in a later court case: he used it in 1908 and again when he sold his canned tuna to the Seaman Brothers of New York in 1909.[20]

From 1912, Frank Van Camp and other fish packers built canneries throughout California and Oregon for the manufacture and sale of this cooked canned tuna.[19] Starting in 1914, they took up the brand names Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea, and StarKist.[19] Halfhill built the Halfhill Tuna Packing Company in Long Beach, California, in January 1915.[1] It was an extensive canning factory for the time, with a secret brand process for packing tuna.[27] Halfhill constructed this new company with his sons Charles and Harry, using the funds they had from the sale of their holdings of Southern California Fish Company.[28] In December he had built in Tacoma, Washington, a fleet of eight fishing boats for gathering tuna 200 miles out into the Pacific Ocean.[29]

The Halfhill Tuna Packing Company was changed in 1919 to Halfhill Packing Corporation.[1] Halfhill is considered the father of the tuna-packing industry.[3][11][30][31][32] Captain Halfhill (an honorary title bestowed to him by his competitors) retired in 1922. His sons, Charles and Harry, took over the operations which sold about 200,000 cases of tuna, sardines, and mackerel yearly to major cities throughout the United States.[1][9] Halfhill died at the age of 76 on May 7, 1924.[1][33] At the time canned tuna was produced by 36 tuna canneries on the west coast of the United States.[18] The chicken of the sea style of cooked canned tuna Halfhill initiated became a staple in the American diet by 1926 when the price became lower.[14]

• Albert P. Halfhill at Find a Grave