The following is an extended version of the article that appears in our July 2025 issue.
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Photo illustration by Ryan Rich
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The Pin Money Pickles factory built in 1898 (Photo courtesy The Valentine)
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A vintage Pin Money Pickles crate from The Valentine’s collection (Photo courtesy The Valentine)
July is National Pickle Appreciation Month. Though brands like Claussen, Grillo’s and Mt. Olive are recognizable household names today, about 150 years ago, a Richmond-based company sold some of the country’s most popular pickles.
Renowned for its sweet, savory and piquant flavors, Pin Money Pickles was the creation of Ellen Kidd (born Ellen Gertrude Tompkins in 1852). She started making pickles as a teenager in the late 1860s and was at the company’s helm for over six decades, with Pin Money Pickles becoming a staple at grocers and restaurants across the globe.
Kidd was born into Richmond’s aristocratic society. Her father, Edmund W. Tompkins, was a politician and an importer of luxury goods including Champagne, cognac, English cheese, French mustard, coffee, vinegar and pickles. The Tompkins family held enslaved people and employed servants, whose labor contributed to the family’s financial status and success.
Ellen Kidd (Photo courtesy Library of Virginia)
Kidd shared her father’s business sense and penchant for progressive political organizing. She was a founding member of the League of Equal Suffrage and the Virginia League of Women Voters, and an officer in several women’s clubs and societies. Active in real estate and philanthropy, she was the first woman ever to manage a major food manufacturing company and the first female member of the Richmond Chamber of Commerce.
Pickles were her passion from a young age. When Kidd was 16, she made pickles with her grandmother, Fanny Taylor Tompkins, using a recipe from Kidd’s great-grandmother, Ann Day Taylor. Soon, Kidd began making her own pickles and experimenting with different ingredients and techniques. She entered them in state fairs, winning numerous awards, and they became beloved by friends and neighbors. Some even insisted on paying for them, encouraging Kidd to take the funds for “pin money.” An archaic term, pin money refers to funds given to or earned by young women that could be spent on small items. The name stuck, and Kidd formally founded Pin Money Pickles.
In 1872, Kidd married her late sister’s widower, John Bouldware Kidd. He left his job to work as a Pin Money Pickles salesman, traveling across the country and offering samples to prospective clients. Initially, Kidd made the pickles in a large copper kettle on the stove, but in 1898, she built a factory directly behind her home at 706 E. Leigh St. Her husband died in 1910, and that same year, she built a five-story factory on Marshall Street that allowed her to produce 1,000 barrels of pickles a day.
Legend has it that soon after the company started, Kidd received an order for five barrels of pickles from a merchant. Thinking it was a mistake, she sent five gallons. The merchant sent a reply along the lines of, “Madam! I said five barrels. FIVE BARRELS! I could eat five gallons myself!” The endorsement was used in marketing for years.
The company offered free samples by mail, BOGO coupons and a money-back guarantee in the newspaper. The pickles came in uniquely shaped bottles that are collector’s items today. Beyond having them stand out on grocery shelves, Kidd’s strategy was to land her pickles in places frequented by travelers so they could take the product worldwide. By the 1900s, they were on the menus at hundreds of hotels, restaurants, steamships, railroad dining cars and deli counters and were sold internationally as far away as Australia.
Image courtesy Library of Virginia
Pin Money Pickles was considered a premium brand. The company offered over two dozen classic and unusual products, including sweet mixed pickles, chow chow, martynia, hot pepper relish, golden pickled cauliflower, cucumber chips, peaches, gherkins of various sizes and flavors, cocktail onions, walnuts, pickled watermelon rinds and cubes, baby melons, and (one of their biggest sellers) West India burr gherkins. Salty, sour, sweet and savory — there was something for everyone.
Kidd insisted on using top-quality ingredients, salts and spices and only wood-aged cider vinegar from Virginia apples. The company commissioned 150 farms in neighboring counties to grow produce, including special cucumber varieties for Pin Money, and set up on-site brining stations to kick-start the production process and keep the pickles crisp.
After decades of successful operations, in 1927 Kidd retired to the Shenandoah Apartments at 501 N. Allen Ave. She remained president of the company until her death in 1932. Pin Money Pickles moved to Gloucester after being purchased by Stewart Wilson (S & G Wilson Salad Dressing) in the 1950s. The John E. Cain Company bought the business in the early ’60s, offering limited varieties of Pin Money Pickles before absorbing the brand into Cain’s Pickles in the 1970s.
The brand was briefly revived in 2019 by Michael Hild, a Richmond developer who opened The Butterbean Market & Cafe and other food and beverage businesses in Manchester, but operations stalled after Hild was charged with and later convicted of felony fraud.
The exact recipe for Pin Money Pickles is unknown, but documents in Kidd’s collection of papers at the Library of Virginia suggest it was a slow, involved process that took several weeks — as one brochure said, “Twentieth century ‘hurry-up’ methods cannot be used.”
Though Pin Money Pickles are now just a memory, the popularity of pickles endures this month more than ever. If you’re looking to celebrate your pickled passions locally, try a briny bloody mary with Rowdy Ranch Spears from Hangry Pickles. Plate up a nice salade nicoise with Little Bitty Dilly Beans from Dayum This Is My Jam. Crack open a jar of chow chow from Wild Earth Fermentation to send a backyard barbecue over the top. Tuck into a basket of fried pickles at GWAR Bar or Galaxy Diner. Pickle your watermelon rinds. And don’t forget to tip Sweet Pickles, “Richmond’s Premier Pickle Queen of Drag.” Happy Pickle Month!
Pin Money Pickles Replica Recipe
This recipe was adapted from one published in the Buffalo Sunday Morning News by a reader in Wisconsin, who claimed it produced pickles that could rival any from the Pin Money Pickle Company.
- Pack freshly picked young cucumbers in an earthenware crock and layer with healthy handfuls of sea salt and cover with cold water. Put weights on top and let them sit for 24 hours. Then, stir from the bottom with clean, bare hands every other day for two weeks. The resulting brine should be strong enough to float an egg.
- Check the pickles, discard any soft or spotted ones. Throw away the brine, wash the pickles and soak them in fresh water for 48 hours, changing the water after the first day.
- Line a porcelain or copper kettle (or large stainless steel pot (nonreactive pots only) with green vine leaves and pack in the pickles, sprinkling a teaspoon of alum* between layers.
- Cover with three layers of vine leaves, fill with cold water and simmer gently for 5 hours without boiling. Transfer pickles to ice water and make your pickling solution.
- For the pickling solution, heat wood-aged Virginia apple cider vinegar and mix into every gallon: 1 cup sugar, 36 whole peppers (Calabrian chile peppers or another skinny mildly spicy pepper), 12 whole cloves, 6 dried allspice berries, 12 blades of mace and 1 teaspoon of celery seed. Boil in a nonreactive pot for 5 minutes. Drain the water from the pickles and transfer the pickles to a crock. Pour the hot spiced vinegar over the drained pickles into the crock.
- Repeat heating the vinegar and pouring it over the pickles every 2 days for a week. Cover tightly and store in the dark or a root cellar.
- Age the pickles 6 months to a year to develop flavor.
*Alum, or potassium aluminum sulfate, is an aluminum salt commonly used in 17th-century pickling recipes to maintain crispness. Alum reacts with the pectin and tannins of the fruit or vegetable to strengthen cell walls. It is not required for pickling, and it doesn’t work for quick pickles. Some organizations like the National Center for Home Food Preservation no longer recommend it due to health concerns associated with aluminum. The FDA still approves its use in limited quantities as a food additive.
