Charles William Post (October 26, 1854 – May 9, 1914) was an American innovator, breakfast cereal and foods manufacturer and a pioneer in the prepared-food industry.

[1] Post graduated from public schools in Springfield, and then enrolled at Illinois Industrial University, where he remained for two years before leaving without a degree.

[2] After a brief stay in Independence, Kansas, Post returned to Springfield, where he remained for over a decade working as a salesman and manufacturer of agricultural machinery.

Post suffered a mental breakdown in November 1885, the result of the stress and overwork which accompanied his job as a farm implement manufacturer.

Post made a break with his previous life, moving to Texas in 1886, where he came into association with a group of real estate developers in Fort Worth, who were attempting to establish a new community on the eastern outskirts of a town called Riverside.

In 1888, Post began a real estate development of his own in Fort Worth on 200 acres (81 ha) that he had obtained, platting the land for streets and homes and constructing two mills.

[7] In 1906, Post invested some of his substantial earnings from his food products manufacturing into Texas real estate, purchasing a massive 225,000-acre (91,000 ha) tract in Garza and Lynn Counties.

Shade trees were planted, farm parcels laid out, and a hotel, a school, churches, and a department store were constructed for the new Garza County seat.

[8] Post was a staunch opponent of the trade union movement and was remembered by the National Association of Manufacturers as one who "opposed bitterly boycotts, strikes, lockouts, picketing and other forms of coercion in the relations between employer and employee".

[11][13] Marjorie Merriweather Post later married financier E. F. Hutton and owned a 177-acre (72 ha) estate on Long Island's North Shore called "Hillwood."