Michael Cudahy: The Irish Immigrant Who Built Cudahy Packing in Omaha

Who Was Michael Cudahy?

Michael Cudahy was born in 1841 in Kilkenny, Ireland, and died in 1910. His family emigrated to Milwaukee in 1849 to escape the Great Irish Famine. The Saddle and Sirloin Portrait Foundation profile supplies the core of his biography.

He became one of the packers who turned Midwestern livestock into a national industry, founding Cudahy Packing Company in Omaha in 1890.

From a Milwaukee Packing House to Superintendent

At 14 he went to work for a Milwaukee meatpacker. He rose to inspector and then superintendent of the Plankinton and Armour packing house. That meant he learned the trade on the killing floor and in the cellar, before moving into management.

By 1875 he was a partner in Armour & Company and superintendent of its Chicago plant at the Union Stock Yards. The Encyclopedia of Chicago entry on Cudahy Packing adds that the Cudahy brothers met Philip Armour in Milwaukee and followed him to Chicago in the 1870s.

Omaha and the Birth of Cudahy Packing

In 1887, with Armour's backing, the Cudahys started an Armour-Cudahy plant in Omaha, Nebraska. Omaha sat close to the cattle country of the plains, which cut the distance livestock had to travel.

In 1890 Michael Cudahy traded shares with Armour to create the independent Cudahy Packing Company, also in Omaha. Armour's former partner was now a competitor.

How Big Did Cudahy Packing Get?

His brothers Patrick and John developed the Milwaukee business, and Cudahy Packing later had major operations in Kansas City, Sioux City, Wichita, Memphis, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. A cleaning products plant was built at East Chicago, Indiana, in 1909.

By the mid-1920s the company had more than $200 million in annual sales and about 13,000 employees nationwide, according to the Chicago encyclopedia. Headquarters moved from Omaha to Chicago in 1911, the year after his death.

Cudahy Packing After the Founder

After World War II, headquarters moved from Chicago back to Omaha and then, in 1965, to Phoenix, where the company became Cudahy Co. General Host purchased it in the 1970s, and the company was dismantled afterward.

The Saddle and Sirloin profile adds that the firm was one of the 500 companies in the first S&P 500 in 1957.

Honors and Recognition

Cudahy was inducted into the Saddle and Sirloin Portrait Foundation between 1936 and 1948. His portrait was painted by Othmar J. Hoffler, who lived from 1893 to 1954.

The profile credits the Cudahy family with helping modernize meatpacking and with shifting production from barreled pork to cured meats.

More on his induction appears in the Portrait Foundation page on Cudahy, and the same page records the family's shift to cured meats.