Albert M. Todd

Albert May Todd (June 3, 1850 – October 6, 1931), colorfully known as "The Peppermint King of Kalamazoo," was an American chemist, businessman, and politician from the state of Michigan. A philanthropist and advocate of public ownership of utilities, Todd made his fortune as the founder of the A.M. Todd Company, a world leader in the production of peppermint oil and other botanical extracts. Todd was also a renowned bibliophile, portions of whose collection now grace the holdings of several American universities.

Albert May Todd was born June 3, 1850 near Nottawa, Michigan in St. Joseph County, the tenth and last child of Alfred and Mary Ann Hovey Todd, who had come to Michigan from upstate New York. The Todd family were farmers of extremely modest means, supporting themselves on 45 arable acres of an 80-acre homestead.

Todd received his primary education in one-room schoolhouses before attending and graduated from Sturgis High School in the neighboring town of Sturgis. He later studied chemistry at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Peppermint was an early agricultural staple in southern Michigan and Todd at an early age was fascinated by the crop, attempting to cultivate it and to distill it. Together with his brother Oliver, Albert Todd began growing mint on a small scale and working to invent and improve new methods for its distillation into peppermint oil — a process which remained crude at that date. After graduation from Northwestern he traveled to Europe and made a study of mint cultivation on that continent, bringing home varieties of the plant which were in cultivation there.

Todd returned to southwestern Michigan where in 1869, at the age 19, he established the A.M. Todd Company with a view to commercially extracting flavorings and essential oils from mint.

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