Finding The Last Sam Breakstone, The Real One

In these two posts, I combed the historical data to find five men and one girl who's still in law school who are not Sam Breakstone.  Only three remain:

Sam Breakstone #7 doesn't have much going for him.  We have no records of his parents at all.  He was born about 1885 somewhere, as we all were.  His death is not recorded.  He married a woman who may have been named Rebecca in 1907. They had one son, Stanley, born May 10, 1908 in Chicago.  Stanley did not go on to marry or have children.  He died as a baby on June 27, 1909.  And that's all we know about this Sam Breakstone.  Let's hope his small family is resting in peace.

Senator Joe McCarthy was also born in 1908.
Why is it that all the wrong people die in infancy?

That's where he was born.
Are those signs in Yiddish?

Sam Breakstone #8 is born in 1898 in Manhattan.  He was married in 1918 in New York and died in 1981 in Vermont.  He had two girls in the 1920's.  Both of them got married but there are no records of any children or their deaths.

Sam's relations are interesting.  He was the son of a Morris Breakstone, born in 1870.  Morris Breakstone features heavily in the beginnings of Breakstone Brothers, but this seems to be a different person. His genealogy cannot be made to connect to Joseph and Isaac Breakstone.  This Sam just floats alone through time.  Perhaps he was a distant relative who got some work from Breakstone Brothers based on his name.  He couldn't have been that important to the organization because so little is known of him.

I am beginning to suspect that Sam may be too common a name for my tastes.

Sam Breakstone #9 is our very last suspect.  Right out of the gate, he's got a lot to recommend him.

First of all, he was born in New York in 1884, making him old enough to have participated in the early workings of the Breakstone's dairy distributorships in the late 1890's and been a meaningful contributor in the first two decades of the 1900's.

Second, he is the son of Judah (Julius) Breakstone.  Julius was born in Lithuania, like all close Breakstone relatives.  In fact, he was Joe and Isaac's cousin.  Sam was the 1st cousins once removed of Joe and Isaac Breakstone.

We know that, in 1904, a Samuel Breakstone and Abraham Levine began a small dairy company.  About that Sam, we know he had a sister, Sarah.  Sam #9 has a sister Sarah, and he would have been a good working age, 20, when such a concern was started.

Was this Sam Breakstone in competition with his cousins?  Was he running a satellite store, as several Breakstones did?  Was it eventually folding in to the entire Breakstone's operation?  Or was his a separate business that opened and eventually closed on its own?

These questions are, for now unanswered.   No one has yet been able to tell how Breakstone and Levine fit into the story of Breakstone Brothers.

Still, he's our best Breakstone yet.  But which one of these fine eight men and one woman was the inspiration for that character of Sam Breakstone as marketed by Kraft Foods?

The answer after this ...

Jon Lovitz as Michael Vale on season 23 of Saturday Night Live.


And now the moment of revelation.  According to unofficial Breakstone's historian Jeff Marx, the real Sam Breakstone was ...

None of them.

According to Rabbi Marx's research, Sam Breakstone was entirely made up by Kraft and their marketing agency.  He represented no person or amalgam of people who ever lived.  No stories survive in the family of any man similar to him.  No stories survive of any Breakstone being obsessed with his product to such a degree.  Instead, the Breakstones were pragmatists who worked to control as much of the production of dairy items as possible, and to distribute products as efficiently as possible, in order to make the most money.  Sam Breakstone tinkering in his kitchen is completely fictitious.

In contrast, Queen Amidala is 78% real.

Knowing that there was no Sam Breakstone is hardly the end of this inquiry.  It's important to learn how Kraft created the Breakstone character, why they felt so confident inventing history, and how they managed to be so successful.  Knowing Sam Breakstone didn't exist is the first step  Knowing how a fictional spokesperson is born is the next.  Knowing what informs the choices we make about what we eat is the goal.