Henry Perky

Henry Drushel Perky (7 December 1843 – 29 June 1906) was a lawyer, businessman, promoter and inventor. Perky is the inventor of shredded wheat.

He was born in Saltcreek township, Holmes County, Ohio, the fifth son of Daniel Jefferson Perky (ca. 1808-1862) and Magdalena Drushel (ca. 1812-1911), both of Pennsylvania. He married his wife Susanna Melissa Crow (1845-?) on 3 August 1865 in Mount Hope, Ohio. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in Nebraska. He was elected to the Nebraska State Senate in 1868 when only twenty-five years old (although other sources suggest he represented the eighth district from 1874–1876). The couple lived at Omaha, Nebraska and Wahoo, Nebraska before 1880. Henry went to Colorado for his health in 1880 where he was an attorney for the Union Pacific Railroad. Sue followed from Wahoo later that same year and, in Denver, Colorado, she gave birth to their only surviving child, Scott Henry Perky (1880-?).

Scott H. Perky went on to be a writer; the life of his father was the subject of one of his books. In 1920, he developed a round shredded wheat cereal, which he named Muffets. The Muffets Corporation was sold to the Quaker Oats Company in 1927.

In 1884, the assets — a patent and a half-finished car — of the bankrupt Robbins Cylindrical Steel Car Company were acquired by Byron A. Atkinson (1854-19?? ), a well-to-do Boston furniture dealer with some background as a machinist. To promote his cylindrical steel rail passenger car, Atkinson hired Henry Perky, who had quite a reputation for making money during times that ruined other businessmen. Their firm was the Steel Car Company.

While the railcar was being built, Perky was busy trying to find a place to build a huge plant for building steel cars. He first proposed Chicago, Illinois, but when this did not generate significant interest, in 1888 he proposed Lincoln, Nebraska, and there the car would be named the "City of Lincoln". This idea too failed to catch on, so Perky moved on.

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