H.J. Heinz never forgot his Sharpsburg roots and friends.

Although he was born in 1844 in Pittsburgh, his family moved to Sharpsburg when he was 5, and he grew up along the Allegheny River.

As a young man he had served as Sunday school superintendent at what was then called Grace Methodist Protestant Church in the borough. He later became involved with national and international Sunday school programs, traveling as far as Japan in support of the effort.

"It had been his habit for a number of years to visit one or more Sunday schools each Sunday, wherever he might happen to be," The Pittsburgh Gazette Times reported on May 15, 1919. On May 4, "the last Sunday he was able to get out of the house, he made a visit to his old school at Grace Church ... and was very cordially greeted by the older members as well as by the children ... ."

The anecdote about Heinz's final visit to Sharpsburg was included in the newspaper's front-page story the day after his death on May 14. He was 74 and the Gazette-Times reported the cause of death as pneumonia. Heinz passed away at "Greenlawn," his mansion in Homewood, after a four-day illness.

In the days before antibiotics, pneumonia vied with tuberculosis as a leading killer.

He became ill on Sunday, May 11. "On Monday and Tuesday his condition seemed a little improved and Tuesday evening was the source of much encouragement," his obituary stated. "[T]he following morning about 10 o'clock he suffered a setback and became unconscious ... ." He died shortly before 4 p.m.

One of Heinz's sons, Howard Heinz, was absent from the bedside, the newspaper stated. He was in Constantinople, now Istanbul, Turkey, serving on a U.S. government commission overseeing distribution of food in the war-ravaged country.

A born entrepreneur, H.J. Heinz had been his father's bookkeeper by age 16. The following year he sold produce raised on the family's four-acre Sharpsburg garden plot and had begun to bottle horseradish. He delivered his products via horse and buggy, making $2,400 that season, according to the newspaper. That is the equivalent of about $53,000 in modern currency.

By 1919, his product line had extended well beyond horseradish. The newspaper said he headed "the Largest Pickling and Preserving Corporation in the World." The main plant of the family-owned business was on Pittsburgh's North Side, and it had 16 branch factories.

In an editorial two days after his death, the newspaper praised Heinz's successful efforts to nurture an unrelated business in a Pittsburgh economy that was centered on steel.

"There was no talk of diversification of industries when he laid the very modest foundation of his manufacturing and commercial house, yet what he has done stands as a demonstration that diversification is altogether practicable," the newspaper opined. The editorial also praised his community work.

"The same sagacity and enterprise which he brought to the upbuilding of his business, MR. HEINZ contributed unselfishly in the promotion of civic welfare work and the development of altruistic and religious endeavors.

"In Sunday school work he was so active not only at home but throughout the world that it is not exaggeration to say that no other man could be so much missed from this important educational field. He was so useful in so many ways ... that a whole company will have to be called to fill the void left by his going away."

Heinz is buried in Homewood Cemetery.

Two other Pittsburgh giants might have felt a chill when they read about the passing of their fellow industrial baron, especially if either put any credence in the superstition that prominent deaths come in threes.

Andrew Carnegie, Pittsburgh's King of Steel, died at 83 on Aug. 11, 1919, at his home in Lenox, Mass. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.

His longtime partner-turned-enemy, Henry Clay Frick, the King of Coke, died Dec. 2, 1919, at his home in New York City. He was 69. Like Heinz, he was buried in Homewood Cemetery.

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