Kilmer House

Johnson & Johnson was started by James Wood Johnson and Edward Mead Johnson early in 1886 with 14 employees.  Once he was free of his obligations to Seabury & Johnson, Robert Wood Johnson the first joined the new company toward the end of the year.  Here’s a list of the 14 original Johnson & Johnson employees who worked in New Brunswick, in the first building: 

W. H. Ritter
James Smith
Thomas Burley
Elmer Briscoe
Patrick Higgins
Harry Smith
M. S. Denman
Kate Coogan
Maggie Smith
Annie Keegan
Elizabeth Cahill
Teresa Smith
Agnes King
Lizzie Kennedy

It is interesting to note that these first 14 employees were divided evenly between men and women!  These original workers would have been manufacturing workers, since the new company’s sales office was located at 32 Cedar Street in New York City.  The sales office was established by Edward Mead Johnson; James Wood Johnson oversaw the manufacturing facility in New Brunswick.  Here is a picture of some early employees from 1891, though it is not known if any of the original 14 are in this photo. 

Here are some more early employees, from later in the Company’s history:

Most or all of the initial 14 Johnson & Johnson employees came from Seabury & Johnson in East Orange.  Incidentally, the original 19th century Seabury & Johnson buildings are still standing, and are home to a variety of current businesses called Manufacturer’s Village.  The historical information on their site is not quite correct (Seabury & Johnson was a separate company in which Robert Wood Johnson was a partner; it didn’t become Johnson & Johnson), but the site has some interesting photos of the building interiors, which show that they haven’t changed all that much since Robert Wood Johnson and his brothers were there.  Here’s a photo of Seabury & Johnson circa 1887 to compare it with.

Since this photograph was taken around 1887, the people shown here were very likely the co-workers of some of the 14 original employees who joined the Johnson brothers at their new company.  The very first Johnson & Johnson products were medicated plasters, which were one of the 19th century’s major medicinal products.   The Company quickly added aseptic surgical and wound dressings.  Here is a very early photograph of employees packing aseptic gauze products. 

How did being part owner of a cattle ranch lead one of the founders of Johnson & Johnson to develop the first First Aid kits?  During the 19th century, health care was hazardous at best and very little attention was paid to first aid and the proper treatment of wounds and injuries.  Robert Wood Johnson the first was part owner of a cattle ranch in Colorado, where he liked to spend vacations.  Johnson traveled to the ranch by train and, having an outgoing personality, he started a conversation with the chief surgeon of the Denver & Rio Grande Railway, who complained about the high accident and injury rates among the railroad workers who were laying track to complete the country’s coast-to-coast rail system.  Johnson became convinced that Johnson & Johnson could help fill the urgent need for easily accessible medical products to treat railroad injuries.  (When injuries occurred, medical supplies were often too far away to be of timely use.)  In 1888, he started asking the advice of additional railway surgeons, and in 1890 the Company produced a first aid kit, the “Railway Station and Factory Supply Case,” based on what they had recommended.  It was a large wooden case that held antiseptic dressings, surgical supplies, splints and other medical supplies, along with detailed instructions on how to treat injuries.  The kits were placed with local railroad station agents along rail routes so they quickly could be sent to the scene of an accident.  These early railroad first aid kits were named after the railway lines they were intended to serve, such as the New York City and Hudson River Railroad. 

But Robert Wood Johnson didn’t stop there.  He enlisted Scientific Director Fred Kilmer to come up with a definition of first aid, as well as the first-ever comprehensive First Aid manuals.  This was important because, at the time, there was no standard of emergency “first aid” care, and efforts to help the injured often did more harm than good due to lack of knowledge.  Kilmer, who was a thorough and conscientious scientist, extensively researched first aid by communicating first-hand with physicians who treated emergencies and winnowing through the sometimes conflicting information.  He published a series of bulletins on first aid, and later compiled the nation’s first-ever comprehensive First Aid Manual. Kilmer defined first aid as a “’bridge between the accident and medical and surgical assistance, over which the patient may be carried safely and securely from the scene of the accident or sudden illness to the doctor or hospital.’”  (Robert Wood Johnson, the Gentleman Rebel, by Lawrence G. Foster, p. 62)  The Company soon made first aid kits for use in homes, schools, offices, farms and factories, and later, for those new inventions, the automobile and the airplane.

Besides being the inspiration behind Johnson & Johnson First Aid kits, the coast-to-coast railroads also led to the division of the United States into separate time zones, which happened in 1883, three years before Johnson & Johnson was founded.