Frank and Charles Menches
At which county fair did Frank and Charles Mences claim to sell the first hamburger?
Hamburger
Another claim from 1885 comes from Frank and Charles Menches who claim to have sold a ground beef sandwich at the Erie County Fair in Hamburg, New York. During the fair, they ran out of pork sausage for their sandwiches and substituted beef. Kunzog, who spoke to Frank Menches, says they exhausted their supply of sausage, so purchased chopped up beef from a butcher, Andrew Klein. Though historian Joseph Streamer wrote that the meat was from Stein's market not Klein's; despite Stein having sold the market in 1874. The story notes that the origin of the hamburger comes from Hamburg, New York not Hamburg Germany. Yet Frank Menches's obituary in "The New York Times" states that these events took place at the 1892 Summit County Fair in Akron, Ohio.