Under his leadership, the company introduced standardized manufacturing processes, expanded its sales force, and increased its research efforts to develop new drugs.
Colonel Lilly remained in the South after the American Civil War, relocating his family to a Mississippi cotton plantation in 1865.
In the meantime Josiah returned to Greencastle and lived with his grandparents, Gustavus and Esther Lilly, while his father attempted to reverse his financial difficulties and find other employment.
[3][4] Josiah's father found work as a pharmacist and drugstore proprietor in Greencastle and Indianapolis, Indiana, before opening a pharmacy in Paris, Illinois.
Colonel Lilly married Maria Cynthia Sloan in 1869, and young Josiah soon joined his father and stepmother in Illinois, where they remained until the family moved to Indianapolis in 1873.
[2][3][5] Within a few years Eli Lilly and Company became a very successful business that was known for manufacturing high-quality prescription drugs, especially gelatin- and sugar-coated pills and capsules and fruit-flavored elixirs.
[6][7] In 1880, Colonel Lilly sent Josiah to the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, now known as the University of the Sciences, to increase his son's technical expertise so he could help develop the family business.
Josiah graduated from the school in 1882, and returned to Indianapolis, where his father soon named him superintendent of the Lilly manufacturing laboratory, a position that J. K. held until in 1898 when he became company president.
The growing company rapidly expanded, adding new employees and relocating to larger quarters in a complex of buildings at McCarty and Alabama Streets, south of downtown Indianapolis, in 1881.
Among Lilly's employees were his young sons, Eli and Joe, who ran errands and performed other odd jobs after school.
[11][12] One of its most significant projects occurred in 1922 when he signed an agreement on behalf of the company to form a partnership with a Toronto firm, Connaught Anti-toxin Laboratories, that resulted in the first commercial, mass-production of insulin.
His eldest son, Eli, succeeded him as president in 1932; J.K. continued as its chairman of the board and focused more of his time on philanthropy.
J. K. served on the board and became its largest contributor, while his son, Eli, managed the private family endowment for its first twelve years.
When Eli was about eight years old the family moved to a home on North Pennsylvania Street, where a second son, Josiah Jr. (Joe), was born on September 25, 1893.
In addition to their main residence in Indianapolis, the Lilly family maintained a cottage at Lake Wawasee in Kosciusko County, Indiana.
J. K. built his own family cottage, called Anchors Aweigh, on the Lilly’s lakeside estate across the road from the golf club from 1936– 38.
[27][28] J. K. also established an apple orchard on property he purchased in 1896, 7 miles (11 km) north of downtown Indianapolis, at Seventy-First Street and College Avenue.
In 1927 Lilly had a Tudor Revival-style, private performance hall built in the orchard and had a custom-built pipe organ installed.
[31] Lilly's son, Eli, donated his father's home in Indianapolis's Crows Nest neighborhood, as well as his own to Indiana University.
[32] J. K.'s legacy at Eli Lilly and Company included the introduction of uniform standards for manufacturing products, a significant increase its sales staff (more than 500 percent), and establishing its first branch offices in New York and New Orleans.
[33] In 1921, during J. K.'s tenure as president, Eli Lilly and Company obtained the rights to mass produce insulin, in cooperation with University of Toronto scientists, once the production methods were perfected and approved.
The exhibition, which was on display from October 2016 to January 2018, includes a recreation of the first Lilly laboratory on Pearl Street in Indianapolis and a costumed interpreter portraying a teenaged J. K.