Charlie Nagreen
Why did Nagreen originally make sandwiches out of pork at the Seymour Fair?
Hamburger
Hamburger Charlie Nagreen History of the hamburger in the United States History of the hamburger Seymour, Wisconsin
Hamburger-Charlie_Nagreen Charlie_Nagreen-Abstract History_of_the_hamburger_in_the_United_States-History History_of_the_hamburger-Controversial_origins Seymour,_Wisconsin-History
One of the earliest claims comes from Charlie Nagreen, who in 1885 sold a meatball between two slices of bread at the Seymour Fair now called theOutagamie County Fair in some attributions. The Seymour Community Historical Society of Seymour, Wisconsin, credits Nagreen, now known as "Hamburger Charlie", with the invention of the hamburger. Nagreen was fifteen when he reportedly made sandwiches out of pork that he was selling at the 1885 Seymour Fair (now the Outagamie County Fair), so that customers could eat while walking. The Historical Society explains that Nagreen named the hamburger after the Hamburg steak with which local German immigrants were familiar.
Charles "Hamburger Charlie" Nagreen (1870-1951) was an American claimant to the title of inventor of the hamburger. This claim is supported by various local history organizations, but not widely accepted; see History of the hamburger in the United States. Born in Hortonville, Wisconsin, at 15 Nagreen was a vendor at the 1885 Seymour Fair. After not experiencing success selling meatballs, he had an idea. Knowing that the visitors to the fair would be hungry after gazing at the exhibits but wouldn't be able to walk and eat, he smashed a meatball and placed it between two slices of bread. His idea was a success and he returned every year until his death in 1951. The name of the Hamburger came from the idea of "Hamburg steak", or ground beef. Since this was a popular item in Seymour at the time of the 1885 fair, Nagreen decided to call the sandwich the "Hamburger". 
 Fletcher Davis 1880 History. The Texas historian Frank X. Tolbert attributes the invention to Fletcher Davis of Athens, Texas. Davis is believed to have sold hamburgers at his café at 115 Tyler Street in Athens, Texas in the late 1880s, then brought them to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. An article about Louis' Lunch in "The New York Times" on January 12, 1974, stated that the McDonald's hamburger chain claims the inventor was an unknown food vendor at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Tolbert's research documented that this vendor was in fact Fletcher Davis. Dairy Queen spokesman Bob Phillips made a similar claim for Dairy Queen in a commercial filmed in Athens in the 1980s calling the town the birthplace of the hamburger. Menches Brothers 1885 Residents of Hamburg, New York, which was named after Hamburg, Germany, attribute the hamburger to Ohioans Frank Menches and Charles Menches. According to legend, the Menches brothers were vendors at the 1885 Erie County Fair (then called the Buffalo Fair) when they ran out of sausage for sandwiches and used beef instead. They named the result after the location of the fair. But, Frank Menches's obituary in "The New York Times" states instead that these events took place at the 1892 Summit County Fair in Akron, Ohio. Charlie Nagreen 1885 The Seymour Community Historical Society of Seymour, Wisconsin, credits Charlie Nagreen, now known as "Hamburger Charlie", with the invention of the hamburger. Nagreen was fifteen when he reportedly made sandwiches out of meatballs that he was selling at the 1885 Seymour Fair (now the Outagamie County Fair), so that customers could eat while walking. The Historical Society explains that Nagreen named the hamburger after the Hamburg steak with which local German immigrants were familiar. Oscar Bilby 1891 There is good evidence that the first hamburger served on a bun was made by Oscar Bilby of Tulsa in 1891. "In April of 1995, the Dallas Morning News reported Oklahoma author says Tulsa beats out Texas as the birthplace of delicacy. Michael Wallis, author of "Route 66, The Mother Road", was quoted by the newspaper to say he had discovered Tulsa's place in culinary history. The discovery was made while researching the state’s tastiest hamburgers. What better place to start than the restaurant that has been voted Tulsa's best burger more often than any other restaurant since 1933…Weber’s Root Beer Stand. Mr. Wallis’ research revealed that Oscar Weber Bilby was the first person to serve a real hamburger. On July 4, 1891, ground beef was served on his wife’s homemade buns. The Fourth of July party took place on his farm, just west of present day Tulsa. Until then, ground beef had been served in Athens, Texas on simple slices of bread, known presently and then as a "patty melt". According to the Tulsa-based author, the bun is essential. Therefore, in 1995, Governor Frank Keating cited Athens, Texas' feat of ground beef between two slices of bread to be a minor accomplishment. The Governor's April 1995 Proclamation also cites the first true hamburger on the bun, as meticulous research shows, was created and consumed in Tulsa in 1891. The Governor's Proclamation cites April 13, 1995 as Tulsa as "The Real Birthplace of the Hamburger." Louis' Lunch 1895 The Library of Congress credits Danish immigrant Louis Lassen of Louis' Lunch, a small lunch wagon in New Haven, Connecticut, for selling the first hamburger and steak sandwich in the U.S. in 1895. Louis' Lunch flame broils the hamburgers, the original way, in antique 1898 vertical cast iron gas stoves manufactured by the Bridge and Beach, Co., St. Louis, Missouri. The stoves use hinged steel wire gridirons to hold the hamburgers in place while they cook simultaneously on both sides. The gridirons, made by Luigi Pieragostini, were patented in 1938. 
The exact origin of the hamburger is unknown and may never be known with any certainty. Most historians believe that it was invented by a cook who placed a Hamburg steak between two slices of bread in a small town in Texas, others credit the founder of White Castle for developing the "Hamburger Sandwich" but since records are scarce from that time we will never know for sure. However, all claims made by the potential inventors of the hamburger occurred between 1885 and 1904, focusing all attention of its creation onto these two decades. Despite the various stories about the origins of the hamburger, there are common elements in all of the narratives, most notably that the hamburger was born as a food associated with major events such as amusement parks, fairs, conferences, and festivals. All the hypotheses also share the presence of street vendors. One of the possible fathers of the hamburger is Charlie Nagreen (1870–1951) of Seymour, Wisconsin, who at the age of 15 sold Hamburg steaks from a street stall at the annual Outagamie County Fair. Nagreen said he began by selling Hamburg steaks, but these did not have much success because people wanted to freely move around the festival without the need to eat them at his stand. In response to this, in 1885 Nagreen decided to flatten the hamburger steak and insert it between two slices of bread, so that the public could move freely from booth to booth while eating his sandwich, an innovation that was well received by his customers. This became known as the "Hamburger Charlie", and Nagreen's creation was sold at the festival until his death in 1951. To this day, his accomplishment is celebrated annually with a "Burger Fest" in his honor in his hometown of Seymour. Another alleged inventor of the hamburger is the cook Fletcher Davis (better known as "Old Dave"), who claimed to have had the idea of putting ground beef between two pieces of Texas Toast when one of his customers was in too big of a hurry to sit down for a meal. The customer walked away with his Hamburger Steak and seems so content that Old Dave offered his new carryout meal as a staple menu item at the end of 1880 in Athens, Texas. Fletcher had a stall with his wife at the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904. Texan journalist Frank X. Tolbert mentions a salesman named Fletcher Davis who served hamburgers in a café at 115 Tyler Street in Athens during the late 1880s. The locals claim that Davis was selling beef sandwiches during that time, without having a clear name for his invention. During the 1980s, the Dairy Queen ice cream chain filmed a documentary about the birthplace of the hamburger featuring Davis' story. The story of "Old Dave's Hamburger Sandwich" is also found mentioned in Ronald McDonald's book "The Complete Hamburger" a collbrative effort with Richard McDonald the Founder of McDonald'sIn the same year that Charlie Nagreen claimed to have developed his "Hamburger Charlie", the brothers and street cooks Frank and Charles Menches of Akron, Ohio claimed to have sold a ground beef sandwich at the Erie County Fair. According to the brothers, the name of the hamburger derived from the town Hamburg, New York in Erie County, the first place in which it had been sold. This statement has been very poorly documented or substantiated, and in the case of an oral tradition, it is not without its contradictions. Its famous description of the secret ingredients used in the recipes, such as coffee or brown sugar, is primitive. Another version of the creation of the hamburger is that of German cook Otto Kuasw, who created a very popular sailors' sandwich made of a fillet of beef patty fried in butter, served with a fried egg, between two toasted buns in 1891, at a post in Hamburg, Germany. The sandwich was called the "Deutsches Beefsteak", German for "German beefsteak". Many of the sailors traveling on ships between Hamburg and New York requested a similar "Hamburg style" sandwich at American steakhouses. There are many additional claims as to the origin of the hambuger. Some enthusiasts claim the hamburger could have been created in New Haven, Connecticut in 1895, but this claim has no supporting evidence to back the opinion. A local newspaper claims that Louis Lassen, a Danish immigrant who arrived in America in 1880, sold butter and eggs as a street vendor. In 1974, in an interview with "The New York Times", he recounted how he created a hamburger steak sandwich with small strips of beef for a restaurant known as Louis' Lunch. Lassen's family claims 1900 as the year of his invention. Revealed in a public confrontation between the grandson of Louis, Kenneth Davis Lassen Fletch, and his uncle, documentation signed under notary in 1900 demonstrates the development of the hamburger, as it stresses the difference between a "hamburger steak" and a "hamburger sandwich". Louis' Lunch flame broils the hamburgers in the original vertical cast iron gas stoves manufactured by the Bridge and Beach, Co., St. Louis, Missouri in 1898. The stoves use hinged steel wire gridirons to hold the hamburgers in place while they cook simultaneously on both sides. The gridirons were made by Luigi Pieragostini and patented in 1938. 
Seymour was founded in 1868 and named after Governor Horatio Seymour of New York. Seymour is said to have once been called Squeedunk, which means "little settlement" or "village". William and John Ausbourne were the first settlers in Seymour. They had traveled from western Outagamie County on the Wolf River during the summer of 1857, making their way to the mouth of the Shioc River and moving to a spot where the Black Creek flows into the Shioc. After finding no more roads to follow, the Ausbournes settled in the present location of Seymour, which was occupied by Native Americans at the time. There they built a log house, the only residence in Seymour for two years. Their closest neighbors lived in Osborn. Over the years more settlers came to Seymour. Willis and Dan Mungers arrived in 1864. They built a house on what is now Main Street and their daughter Sally lived in a frame house on what is now South Main Street. Erastus C. Buttles came during the spring and established a farm in the western part of the county. Leaonard and Avery Carter arrived in Seymour in 1876, along with Charles Eichler, the first German settler in the area. As more settlements were established in the area, the population grew. On March 1, 1877 Seymour became a recognized town, along with the towns of Osborn and Freedom. During the early 1880s, construction of the Green Bay and Lake Pepin Railroad was completed. In 1883 a station was built in Seymour, and soon Seymour was recognized as the smallest incorporated city in the nation. When the settlers had built their houses, they turned to education, electing a school superintendent and an establishing a school tax.. The schoolhouse was a simple one-room building with no floor and a shake roof. Sunday school soon began in the same building. Between 1887 and 1889 George E. Mendell published the first newspaper, "The Aurora", which lasted only three years. On July 8, 1886 the "Seymour Press" made its first appearance, and was published by the Van Vuren family for over 80 years. It was then sold to the Shellman Publishing Company of Oconto Falls, and is still published today. "Hamburger" Charlie Nagreen served the world's first hamburger at the Seymour Fair of 1885 when he decided to flatten a meatball and place it between slices of bread to increase portability. The Seymour Community Historical Society was officially incorporated on October 11, 1975. A dedicated group of local historians led by Tom Duffey, Rita Gosse, and Bill Collar established the society with the assistance of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Since its inception, SCHS members have been active in collecting and preserving records and physical objects relating to the city of Seymour and the surrounding area. On July 21, 2012 the new Seymour Community Museum opened. The new facility built for $1.2 Million dollars which was entirely funded by private donors. 