Colonel Sanders

In 1908, Colonel Sanders married Josephine King. They had three children, Harland, Jr., Mildred Ruggles, and Margaret. Josephine took the children to live with her parents when he kept losing jobs.

In 1947, he divorced Josephine, and two years later, married his secretary Claudia Ledington. After selling his franchise, the two began living in their bungalow in Mississauga, Ontario.

He dressed in a distinctive manner like a southern gentleman, initially wearing a black frock coat. He then began wearing a white suit, fitting a string tie. He sported a bleached goatee.

Colonel Harland David Sanders was the eldest of three children born to Wilbur David and Margaret Ann. Wilbur owned an 80-acre farm on which he worked until he broke his leg, and then became a butcher.

Harland was only five when his father died of hay fever. His mother began to work in a tomato canning factory and the responsibility to cook for his younger siblings fell on his tender shoulders.

After his mother remarried in 1902, his family relocated to Greenwood, Indiana. Unable to get along with his stepfather, he left home and school to work as a farmhand and horse carriage painter.

In 1906, with his mother's permission, he left Greenwood for New Albany, Indiana, where his uncle, an employee of a streetcar company, lived. He was able to secure Harland a job as a conductor.

Sanders arranged falsified date of birth to join the U.S Army in 1906. He was discharged three months later, on completion of his service commitments. He began living with an uncle in Sheffield, Alabama.

From 1907 to 1920, he moved from one job to another - he worked as a blacksmith’s help, fireman, lawyer (he had acquired a law degree through a correspondence course), insurance salesman and laborer.

In 1920, he established a ferry boat company, operated a ferry boat on the Ohio, and became the company’s minority shareholder. He was appointed secretary of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, but resigned.

He cashed his share to found an acetylene lamp manufacturing company that flopped. Moving to Kentucky, he worked as a salesman, then ran a service station that closed when the Great Depression set in.

In 1930, he began operating a service station for the Shell Oil Company in Corbin, Kentucky. He began to cook and serve chicken, ham and steaks to his customers in his living quarters nearby.

Kentucky governor, Ruby Laffoon, commissioned Sanders as a Kentucky Colonel. In 1939, food critic Duncan Hines visited his Corbin restaurant and recommended it in his culinary guide, ‘Adventures in Good Eating’.

Kentucky Fried Chicken helped Pete Harman's Salt City restaurant triple profits in 1952. The restaurant stood out as the only one to offer the dish and thus was able to beat competition.