A Piece of Dixon History: Dixon’s homegrown megasuccessful entrepreneur

Editor’s Note: Today’s column is the first in a three-part series about the meteoric rise of George Page, Dixon’s homegrown megasuccessful entrepreneur.

DIXON – In the history of the Dixon area, it’s likely that no other homegrown native has reached the pinnacle of business success as George Ham Page.

You’ve heard of Page Drive and Page Park? That’s the guy.

You’ve heard of Hazelwood and Reynoldswood? George Page owned and developed both properties.

You’ve heard of Borden’s milk factory? George built it. But his success reached global proportions, and few today remember him. Here’s his story.

‘First white child’

If you drive 3 miles west of Dixon on Palmyra Road, you’ll find a historical marker on the south side of the road. The inscription says George H. Page, “the first white child born in Palmyra town,” was born in a log cabin near that spot on May 16, 1836.

Palmyra-area citizens placed that marker in 1909 to honor this man. In describing him as the first white child; they distinguished him from the natives who “still roamed the countryside” when his mother and father arrived here from New Hampshire in 1834.

His father was John Ham Page, and his mother was Julia (Fellows) Page. Michael Fellows (b. 1810), Julia’s brother, was the first Lee County recorder and a respected Dixon leader for whom Fellows Street is named. George’s relatives in the Fellows family proved instrumental in launching his career.

Educated by Fellows

George received his basic education at a log schoolhouse built on his father’s property about 1842. The first teacher in that schoolhouse was George’s uncle Samuel Fellows.

Samuel left Palmyra about 1853 and became one of the founders of the Iowa Conference Seminary at Mount Vernon, Iowa, now known as Cornell College. When George was ready for college, he attended that seminary, where another uncle, Stephen N. Fellows, was a teacher. George, Samuel and Stephen all hailed from Palmyra.

After finishing college, which was a rare achievement in those days, George returned home to Palmyra to work on his father’s farm. But when the Civil War broke out in 1861, George served the Union as a clerk in Washington, D.C., while his younger brother, Charles Page, served as a renowned war correspondent for the New York Tribune.

Off to Switzerland

Toward the end of the war, President Lincoln appointed Charles to be the U.S. consul to Switzerland. In 1866, at Charles’ urging, George and David Page followed Charles to the picturesque Swiss mountains and lakes.

There, in Cham, Switzerland, a town of fewer than 5,000, the three Page brothers, Charles, George and David, “embarked in the business of condensing milk, which was the first undertaking of the kind in Europe.” A tight-knit family, little brother William (b. 1854) later joined them, as did other Dixon relatives, including those of the Fellows family.

The condensed milk miracle

Gail Borden, an American, had invented the process of condensing milk in 1856. The canned product allowed the processed milk to last for years without refrigeration. During the Civil War, canned condensed milk became vital to soldiers in the field, which soon resulted in a global demand for this miracle product.

So, after the war, the Page boys set out to establish a European market. George became the general manager of their company, named the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company, as their product sold under the name Milkmaid.

Under George’s strong leadership, the company grew and expanded rapidly. In Cham, the Swiss nicknamed him “General,” and described him as “imbued with a spirit of impetuous pioneering and a doer such as only the American prairie can produce.”

George was a whirlwind of innovation. Always interested in nature, he imported 40,000 fruit trees from America and introduced the Jonathan apple to Europe. He was the first to import the Jersey breed of cattle and to plant giant U.S. sequoia trees in Switzerland.

In 1875, the still single 39-year-old George married a stunning 22-year-old Swiss girl, Adelheid Schwerzmann. Living in Cham, they had one son, Fred H. Page, born in 1877.

European exponential expansion

By 1881, in just 15 years, the Pages’ business had grown from “almost nothing to $3,000,000″ in annual sales, which is about $100 million in today’s dollars. Operations expanded far beyond Cham, as the company now had six factories in Switzerland and England, with offices in London and Paris.

By 1888, the company had added factories in Germany and Middletown, New York. As the Telegraph then reported, “The Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company supplies about half the condensed milk of the world.”

Coming home to Dixon

Even though George’s parents were both gone by 1870, he still felt attracted to his hometown on the Rock River. In a visit to Dixon in 1881, George told his relatives and friends that he had no intention of residing permanently outside of America.

By the late 1880s, George Page had lived apart from Dixon for a quarter century. But his heart never left. In Switzerland he had surrounded himself with other Dixon-Palmyra relatives, and he kept in touch with his friends back in his Illinois hometown.

In fall 1887, George came back to America in search of a suitable location for another condensed milk factory. His search included a close look at Dixon, where he found “a place fully as good for the business as any that he had visited in the West.”

In part 2, we’ll learn of the rise of Swissville and the building in Dixon of “the largest condensed milk factory in the world.”

• Dixon native Tom Wadsworth is a writer, speaker and occasional historian. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament.