Rudkin, Margaret

Rudkin, Margaret (b. Fogarty) (1897–1967) businesswoman; born in New York City. She worked in a brokerage house in New York and in 1923 married one of the firm's partners. In 1929 the Rudkins developed an estate in Connecticut and named it Pepperidge Farm after its black gum trees. In 1937, to help her asthmatic son, she began baking bread using stone ground whole wheat and other "pure" ingredients. Her son improved, and the allergist's suggestion that she bake for other patients engendered a mail order business. By 1938 she was selling 4,000 loaves of Pepperidge Farm Bread a week; her baked goods line expanded and she opened bakeries in Pennsylvania (1949) and Illinois (1953). In 1960 she sold Pepperidge Farm to Campbell Soups for $28 million in Campbell's stock and continued to run Pepperidge Farm as an independent subsidiary. She published The Margaret Rudkin Pepperidge Farm Cookbook in 1963, and, with her son installed as president, she retired three years later.