A memorial to the man who invented the hamburger in Seymour, Wisconsin.
Yes, that’s right. The hamburger, America’s favorite food, was invented in Seymour, Wisconsin by an enterprising young man with the name Charles R. Nagreen. But he’s better known to the residents of this small Wisconsin town as Hamburger Charlie.
The Story of Hamburger Charlie
The year was 1885. The place was the Seymour Fair. The person of interest was our boy Charlie, then just 15 years old.
One fateful August morning, Charlie left his home in Hortonville and traveled with his team of oxen to the small town of Seymour (then the smallest incorporated town in the United States), some 25 miles to the northeast.
According to the legend, Charlie made the trip to the the Seymour fairgrounds because he had one big idea — he planned to sell meatballs to all those hungry fair-goers.
As ideas go, it was a pretty good one. But there was just one problem. There was a lot to see and do at the Seymour Fair, and no one wanted to take the time and sit down for a meatball lunch. And since meatballs aren’t the easiest of foods to eat while strolling around, Charlie’s initial sales were not quite what he had hoped for.
Hamburger Charlie invents the hamburger
And that’s when Charlie had another idea. He smashed down two of those meatballs, added some onions, and put the whole thing between two slices of bread (perhaps taking inspiration from the legend of the Earl of Sandwich) so people could carry around their meal while taking in the events of the fair. His invention was a huge success.
Charlie called this culinary delight the hamburger. He named it after the Hamburg steak, a dish of ground beefsteak that was made popular thanks to Wisconsin’s German immigrant community — and the name stuck.
At the Seymour Fair just one year later, hungry attendees were clamoring for those hamburgers. And Charlie was there, giving the people what they wanted. In fact, for 65 years he could be found in the same spot at the Seymour Fair (now known as the Outagamie County Fair) — as well as many other county fairs during Wisconsin’s summer fair season — right up until he died in 1951 at 81 years of age.
In all that time, Charlie’s hamburger didn’t change much. At one point in the early years he added a pickle to the top and switched to a bun instead of bread slices. But aside from those small modifications, Hamburger Charlie served the same hamburger he did on that momentous day in 1885.
Hamburger Charlie Statue
The 12-foot-tall statue of Hamburger Charlie stands on Depot Street in downtown Seymour, right next to the train depot originally built as part of the Green Bay and Lake Pepin Railroad and just four blocks away from the original site of the Seymour Fair.
Created by David Oswald of Sparta’s FAST Fiberglass in 2004, the statue stands atop a four-foot-tall plinth and features an a spot-on likeness of Nagreen dressed in his official uniform — a classic apron over white pants and shirt accessorized with a red tie and suspenders. And, of course, he sports a white soda-jerk-style paper hat atop his head. His left hand is extended outward, offering all visitors a single hamburger.
A series of plaques attached to the base accompany the statue. One of the plaques reveals Charlie’s classic hamburger recipe: “A thick patty of chopped beef, fried in butter, onions, and dill pickles on a tasty bun.”
The other plaque displays “Charlie’s Chant,” which he would call out to fair-goers as they walked along midway, enticing them over to enjoy a hamburger hot off the grill.
“Hamburger, hamburger, hamburger hot,
with an onion in the middle an da pickle on top,
makes your lips go flippity flop,
come on over, try an order,
fried in butter, listen to it sputter.”
Home of the Hamburger
Seymour is very keen on the fact that the hamburger was invented here, and you’ll find signs at the town’s borders proclaiming that you’re entering the “Home of the Hamburger.”
As such, in addition to the statue of Hamburger Charlie, you’ll find other hamburger-related sights and events within Seymour.
Our Latest Exploration …
- Bathtub Spring
In southwestern Wisconsin you can find an endless supply of fresh water flowing into a roadside bathtub — a place known as the Bathtub Spring.
Hamburger Hall of Fame
A short distance away from the statue of Hamburger Charlie you’ll find the Hamburger Hall of Fame (part of the Seymour Community Museum), started by Jeffrey Tennyson, author of Hamburger Heaven, in 1996.
It’s a showcase for the world’s largest collection of hamburger memorabilia with more than 1500 hamburger-related items that Tennyson collected before sadly passing away in 2006 (RIP).
The museum is open on Sunday afternoon from 1:00 to 5:00 between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
Burger Fest
Since 1989, the town has held a celebration known as Burger Fest on the first Saturday in August to celebrate Charlie Nagreen’s legacy.
Burger Fest includes a burger parade, preparation of a giant, 250-pound burger (that’s shared among attendees), plenty of smaller burgers, a giant balloon rally, a car show, and a ketchup slide and even someone performing as a real-life Charlie Nagreen.
The Charlie Grill
Down Depot Street in the other direction the street you’ll see “The Charlie Grill,” a giant (22 feet x 22 feet) grill that cooked the World’s Largest Hamburger at Seymour’s 2001 Burger Fest.
This award-winning burger measured 20 feet square and weighed in at 8,266 pounds. This beat the town’s previous record-setting burger of 5,445 pounds grilled during the inaugural Burger Fest in 1989. The accomplishment has been surpassed a few times since, most recently in 2017 in Pilsen, Germany.
Contention of Invention
Seymour is just one of many places across the United States that claim to be the birthplace of the hamburger.
Here are a few others:
Athens, Texas. Sometime in the 1880s Fletcher “Old Dave” Davis started serving ground beef in-between slices of bread at his lunch counter. He got recognition for his invention at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. As result of this, Athens bills itself as the “Original Home of the Hamburger.”
Hamburg, Pennsylvania. Sometime in the mid-1880s. Frank & Charles Menches (from Akron Ohio) operated a traveling lunch stand. While set up in Hamburg, they ran out of sausage meat for their sandwiches. But they had plenty of beef, so they used that instead and they named what turned out to be a popular creation after the town.
Tulsa, Oklahoma. 1891. Oscar Weber Bilby was the first person to serve hamburgers on a bun. Although there’s no historical documentation, that didn’t stop Oklahoma’s governor Frank Keating from proclaiming April 13 as “The Real Birthplace of the Hamburger in Tulsa Day” in 1995.
New Haven, Connecticut. 1895. Louis Lassen sold sandwiches of boiled ground beef, grilled vertically between two slices of white bread (like a toaster) from his lunch wagon. In 2000, Lassen and his restaurant were recognized by the Library of Congress as the inventor of the hamburger (after a push from Rosa L. DeLauro of Connecticut’s 3rd District). His restaurant, Louis’ Lunch, still stands on Crown Street in New Haven, making it the longest continually operating hamburger restaurant in the U.S. If you’re in the area, you should definitely pay it a visit.
So who invented the hamburger?
But none of that really answers the question of who really invented the hamburger.
Is it possible that back in the late 19th century, in a time when life moved more slowly and news was largely confined to local events, that in different locales, around the same time, geographically separated yet equally enterprising individuals took inspiration from the sandwich (which had been around for more than 100 years) and put a piece of grilled ground beef between two pieces of bread and served it to a delighted public?
Yes, it’s totally possible. When one applies the multiple discovery hypothesis (also known as the simultaneous invention hypothesis), that happenstance becomes even highly probable.
Who, then, invented the hamburger? Well, they probably all did. Each and every one.
However, the origin story of most concern to this author (and most Wisconsinites) is the tale of young Charlie Nagreen in Seymour, Wisconsin.
So that answers the question of who invented the hamburger. But for anyone left asking about the birth of the cheeseburger, that’s another matter entirely.
Header image: Statue honoring Hamburger Charlie Nagreen in Seymour Wisconsin.
Hamburger Charlie Statue
- 209 Depot St, Seymour, WI 54165
- GPS Coordinates: 44.51243192,-88.32817974
- What3Words: ///rescuer.vehicle.tuition
