J. L. Kraft was born on December 11, 1874, near
Stevensville, Ontario, Canada, located just north of
Fort Erie, to
Mennonite parents Minerva Alice née Tripp (1848–1933) and George Franklin Krafft (1842–1914), a farmer of
German descent. He was the second of eleven children. Kraft was educated in the Stevensville area (S.S. No. 9) and worked nearby at Ferguson's General store in Fort Erie from 1901 to 1902. According to Ruth Kraft Anderson, daughter of Kraft's brother Will, the name was originally spelled with two
fs, but Kraft decided to remove one
f when he began the company. Kraft immigrated to
Buffalo,
New York (directly across the
Niagara River from Fort Erie), in 1902, taking a position as secretary and treasurer of the
Shefford Cheese Company. He became a partner in the company the following year, but his partners abruptly dissolved the agreement while he was on a business trip to
Chicago—either to inspect the local branch of the company or to supervise it. Stranded, Kraft used his remaining $65 in capital () to rent a horse and wagon and established a business that bought cheese wholesale and sold it to local grocers. A year later, he would write to a friend: "I haven't got a comparatively large business now, but I know what I can do and in less than five years I am honest in saying I expect to have one of the best wholesale cheese businesses in this City." Kraft was an amateur jewelry maker and would look for unpolished jade on the road, which he would shape, polish, and set into rings. The rings were then given as awards to outstanding employees, and they often became family heirlooms. Kraft even wrote a book on jewelry called
Adventure in Jade and owned jade mines in Alaska and California. He was "deeply involved" in the North Shore Baptist Church in Chicago In the mid-1920s, Kraft began a venture to create a fashionable golf and tennis resort community in
Lake Wales, Florida, along with Carl and Bertha Hinshaw. The Florida land bust and the stock market crash in October 1929 spelled the end of the Kraft connection. The
Chalet Suzanne opened in 1931, the worst year of the
Great Depression, and has been run by successive generations of the Hinshaw family ever since. Even though Kraft bowed out of the development, a 1920s-era
Spanish Revival house on the property continues to be called the Kraft House.
Kraftwood In 1926, Kraft Foods opened a manufacturing plant in
Antigo, Wisconsin. At the time there was a train route running from the north woods to Chicago which facilitated both industrial shipping and personal transport for the area. It reminded Kraft so much of his childhood home that he decided to purchase some land there. This decision would lead to building a sprawling estate, and spending his summers there with his wife Pauline, his family and friends. Kraftwood was built along the edge of Lake Mashkinosiew, just 20 miles north of downtown Antigo. Kraft was a close friend of the president and founder of the
Orange Crush company, C. J. Howel. Howel, his wife and daughter Annie Jo spent every summer at Kraftwood from 1927 to at least 1934. ==Personal life==