Nelson Morris
Nelson Morris (January 21, 1838 – August 27, 1907) was the founder of Morris & Company, one of the three main meat-packing companies in Chicago along with Armour & Company and Swift & Company. Biography Morris was born Moritz Beisinger on January 21, 1838, to a Jewish family in Hechingen, Kingdom of Württemberg. His family raised cattle. In 1848, his family's property was confiscated during the German revolutions of 1848–49 and young Moritz was sent to the United States to live with an uncle in New England. In the US, he changed his name to Nelson "Nels" Morris. At the age of 15, he left his uncle to work in a succession of jobs first as a coal miner in Pennsylvania and then on a canal boat which took him to Buffalo and then on a lake ship which took him to Michigan City, Indiana, and finally to Chicago in 1853 where he worked at a stockyard. Leveraging his skills learned by observing his father in southern Germany, he became very successful as a cattle trader which allowed him to buy a slaughterhouse and butcher shop; and eventually a lucrative relationship with the Union Army during the American Civil War.