Hood (H.P. & Sons) Milk Company is established.

It begins as a milk route operated by Harvey Perley Hood in Charlestown. The company expands when when Hood buys a New Hampshire dairy farm and runs a milk train to Boston to serve retail customers in 1854 [1856, 1866-Wilson]. Incorporated in 1890, it becomes the largest daily company in New England, moves to 500 Rutherford Avenue in 1892,* and builds a new plant there in 1929.* The company introduces the first glass milk bottles in the U.S. in 1895, opens its first ice cream stand on Beacon Street in the early 1900s, and introduces the Hoodsie ice cream cup in 1947 (1915-Halloran). Renamed H.P. Hood, Inc. in 1972, the company is purchased by Agway Corp. in 1980, and by John Kaneb in 1995. It closes the Charlestown plant and moves to Chelsea in 1996 and to Lynnfield in 2006.