Could modern peanut butter have been invented in Ark City?

The late Edith Joyce Davis recalled as a child of 10 riding on a horse-drawn wagon as Arkansas City’s original “peanut butter man” made his rounds in the late 1890s.

Long before peanut butter became one of the world’s favorite spreads, R.H. Brock was delivering his tasty peanut paste throughout Ark City and to customers in Winfield and Geuda Springs. He also shipped buckets of peanut butter to customers in New York and Iowa.

For many years, Ark City residents have referred to him as the inventor of peanut butter, although that’s hard to prove. He certainly is one of the first people in the U.S. to have set up a peanut factory to grind peanuts into a buttery paste.

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg patented a process in 1895 for creating peanut butter from raw peanuts. He marketed it as a nutritious protein substitute for people who could hardly chew on solid food. Dr. Ambrose Straub of St. Louis, Mo., patented a peanut-butter-making machine in 1903.

But a Traveler writer, in its Jan. 25, 1899 edition, objected to an Oklahoma City Times Journal item about a “new article of food” in India, where a factory was put in operation for manufacture of butter from oil of peanuts.

“Wake up brother,” the Traveler stated. “Arkansas City has been using peanut butter for the past year, made by Rev. Brock, of this city.”

(Read more: The Arkansas City Traveler)