About Madam Joe

Julia Hunt was born in Bavaria, Germany, on December 25, 1807. At the age of 24, she married Joseph Atzeroth, immigrating to the United States in 1841 and settling in Florida in 1843.

In 1876, Mrs. Atzeroth planted a coffee plant in her four-acre garden. After four years of careful cultivation, her tree produced the first pound of coffee raised in the continental United States.

She sent this historic harvest to the Commissioner of Agriculture in 1879, along with a letter noting her belief that “it can be successfully grown further south where frost never comes.”

In recognition of her extraordinary achievement, Mrs. Atzeroth sent her historic coffee harvest to the President of the United States. In return, she received a gold piece — a token of honor acknowledging her as the first person to successfully cultivate coffee on American soil.

The President who received that first American-grown coffee was Rutherford B. Hayes — a man known for his love of coffee and his belief in American ingenuity. That a Bavarian immigrant, tending a four-acre garden in Florida, could produce something worthy of the White House table speaks to the spirit at the heart of Madam Joe Coffee.

Forever remembered as America’s first coffee producer.