--- title: "How a Connecticut mother’s bread for her asthmatic son became Pepperidge Farm, sold for $28 million" url: https://badiyaa.com/margaret-rudkin-pepperidge-farm-history/ published: 2026-10-18T04:20:00+01:00 modified: 2026-10-18T02:31:05+01:00 section: History publisher: Badiyaa --- # How a Connecticut mother’s bread for her asthmatic son became Pepperidge Farm, sold for $28 million Margaret Rudkin was selling 4,000 loaves a week within a year of her 1937 start; the 1961 stock deal with Campbell Soup is worth roughly $316 million in September 2026 dollars. In 1961 the Campbell Soup Company paid about $28 million, in its own shares, for Pepperidge Farm, a bakery that had started 24 years earlier with whole wheat loaves Margaret Rudkin baked in Fairfield, Connecticut, for a son with asthma. A one-line version of that story is circulating again this week. The records behind it are fuller, and in a few places they disagree with each other. ## A farm, a diagnosis and a coffee grinder Rudkin was born Margaret Fogarty in Manhattan on September 14, 1897, the eldest child of an Irish American family. She finished high school as valedictorian, worked at a bank in Flushing, Queens, and then joined the Wall Street brokerage McClure, Jones & Co., where she met the stockbroker Henry Rudkin. They married on April 8, 1923, and had three sons. In 1929 the family settled on an estate in Fairfield that they named Pepperidge Farm, after an old pepperidge, or black gum, tree on the grounds. By 1937 the Depression had squeezed the household, and Henry had been badly hurt playing polo. Their youngest son, John, had asthma and severe allergies. His doctor suspected additives in processed food and put him on simple, minimally processed meals. Rudkin had never baked a loaf. Working from her grandmother’s recipe, she made a stone-ground whole wheat bread with whole milk, butter and honey, grinding the wheat in her kitchen coffee mill. Her own explanation was practical: “Natural foods and natural sugars and the wheat germ contained in old-fashioned whole wheat bread might help this child who needed special food.” ## From 24 loaves a day to a factory The physician started sending the bread to other patients, and a household remedy became a business. Early on, Henry carried 24 loaves a day into Manhattan for Charles & Co., a specialty grocer. Rudkin charged 25 cents a loaf when ordinary bread cost 10, yet by the end of her first year she was selling 4,000 loaves a week, baked in ovens fitted into an empty horse stable on the farm. The bakery reached Norwalk, Connecticut, around 1940, and on July 4, 1947, the company opened a modern plant built to her own design. Henry quit Wall Street in 1949 to run the finances while she ran production and staff, which grew past 1,000 workers in the 1950s. Trips to Europe in that decade fed new lines, among them the Milano and Brussels cookies, and Goldfish crackers followed in 1962. ## The sale, and what $28 million means now The sources agree on the buyer and the currency: Campbell paid in stock, not cash. Most give the year as 1961 and the price as $28 million; one biography says $28.2 million, and one business profile dates the decision to 1960. Rudkin took a seat on Campbell’s board, the first woman to hold one. To put the deal in current money, Badiyaa used the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index for all urban consumers (CPI-U, 1982-84 = 100) from [the agency’s published monthly series](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SA0?years_option=all_years): - 1961: monthly readings run from 29.8 to 30.0, for an annual average of about 29.9. - September 2026, the latest month published: 336.940. - Ratio: 336.940 divided by 29.9 is about 11.27. - Sale price: $28 million times 11.27 comes to roughly $316 million; starting from $28.2 million gives about $318 million. - The 1937 loaf: with a 1937 average of about 14.4, a 25-cent loaf works out to about $5.85 in September 2026 money, against about $2.34 for the 10-cent loaf it competed with. The index measures consumer prices, so these figures show purchasing power, not what the business would sell for today. ## What is documented, and what is lore The arc of the story holds up across the company’s own history, the Fairfield Museum and History Center, Connecticut Humanities and reference biographies. Several details do not line up. The farm is 123 acres in one account and 125 in two others, and the move is dated 1928, 1929 or 1931, depending on whether a source counts the land purchase, the move or the year it became the permanent home. One business profile lists both a 1940 move to Norwalk and a new purpose-built bakery in 1947, while the museum dates the move out of the house to 1947. The doctor is the clearest case. Most accounts make him an early champion who wrote a letter of endorsement and handed loaves to patients. The company’s version instead counts him among the skeptics who doubted a nutritious bread could also taste good. And the scene of Rudkin winning over a grocer by letting him taste a slice appears in the record only as a rumor. ## Timeline **1897:** Born in Manhattan, September 14. **1923:** Marries Henry Rudkin. **1929:** Family settles at Pepperidge Farm in Fairfield. **1937:** First loaves for her son; sales begin. **1940:** Bakery moves to Norwalk. **1947:** Modern plant opens on July 4. **1961:** Sale to Campbell Soup for about $28 million in stock. **1962:** Goldfish crackers launch. **1963:** Her cookbook is published. **1967:** Dies in New Haven, June 1. ## After the sale Rudkin appeared in the company’s television ads, lectured at business schools in the US and Europe, and in 1963 published The Margaret Rudkin Pepperidge Farm Cookbook, which the Fairfield Museum credits as a national best-seller. Henry died on April 22, 1966. She died of breast cancer at Yale-New Haven Hospital on June 1, 1967, at 69, and is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. The Fairfield Museum and History Center includes her in its online Wonder Women of Fairfield exhibit, alongside family photographs of the estate on Sturges Highway.