Fun Fact Friday with Special Collections – Edwin Bennett Ogden Jr. Collection

The Edwin Bennett Ogden Jr. Collection consists of business records of Edwin B. Ogden, who was active in the rice brokerage field. He had close connections with the Godchaux Family and Louisiana State Rice Milling Company. The collection was donated by Mrs. Edwin Ogden, Jr. Please note that the collection is currently being reprocessed. This involves looking back at the already processed collection and bringing it up to current standards of archival practice.

Edwin Bennett Ogden Jr. was born in Chattanooga Tennessee, 1904 to his parents Edwin Ruthven Bennett Ogden and Mary Curlett Broderick Ogden, he has four siblings. After he completed his high school education at St. Joseph’s Catholic High in Natchez, Mississippi. Ed Ogden joined his family in Havana, Cuba, where they moved in 1922. He joined the family business, Ogden and Company, a merchandise brokerage firm specializing in food products and various countries such as, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Spain, along with the United States. In the 1940’s rice became a major product of the firm.

In 1936, Ogden married Nancy Hamilton Allen of New Orleans, Louisiana. They had four daughters: Nancy, Mary, Anne Louisa, and Ellen. In 1960, a year after the Cuban Revolution, the Ogden Family moved back to the United States, to their ancestral roots home of Natchez, Mississippi. Ogden then started Ogden and Company in Natchez, continuing the firm’s history as a merchandise brokerage firm. Ogden also expanded his interest in cattle-farming, land-woodland-wildlife conservation, and politics. Ogden died in 1981 and is buried at the Ogden Family Cemetery on Greenfield Plantation in Natchez, Mississippi.

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