My Ancestor and the Chocolate Factory

Introduction: In this article, Katie Rebecca Merkley finds that newspapers help her understand the life of an ancestor who worked in a chocolate factory more than a century ago. Katie specializes in U.S. research for family history, enjoys writing and researching, and is developing curricula for teaching children genealogy.

Everyone in my family loves chocolate – some claim to be chocoholics. When I randomly found a Hershey/Hirschi line in my FamilySearch Family Tree, I began to claim that “chocoholism” ran in the family. However, I could never easily find this Hershey/Hirschi line again, and I had never bothered to verify the generations between me and the first Hershey ancestor. This claim was as liquid as hot cocoa.

When I saw in the 1920 census that my 3rd-great-uncle worked at a chocolate factory, I realized this was a more solid claim to chocoholism than the Hershey/Hirschi line. This claim is as solid as a chocolate bar.

In 1920, Milton Garner, age 17, was living in Warwick, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with his parents, Phares and Susan Garner, and his siblings. (1) All the working Garners, except for Milton, were employed in a cigar factory. Milton worked as a laborer at a chocolate factory.

When I mention to people that a relative in Pennsylvania worked at a chocolate factory about a century ago, they always ask if he worked for Hershey’s. A search on Google Maps indicates that the commute would be approximately an hour on modern roads. (2)

Given the unlikelihood of a 17-year-old having his own car in 1920, it seems improbable that he would have worked for Hershey. Given the abundance of chocolate factories in Pennsylvania, there was undoubtedly a closer one to him. A colleague local to the Warwick area confirmed that there is: it’s Wilbur’s Chocolate Company, which has been around a while. (3)

Research on Wilbur’s Chocolate Company revealed that they had acquired Ideal Cocoa and Chocolate Company, which was established in Lititz near the turn of the century. (4) In 1927, Ideal merged with the Brewster Chocolate Company, forming Brewster-Ideal. Meanwhile, Wilbur’s acquired permission to sell Suchard chocolates from Switzerland and changed their name to Wilbur-Suchard. A few years later, Wilbur-Suchard bought out Brewster-Ideal. (5)

The mergers occurred after Milton Garner’s time at the chocolate factory, as evidenced by his 1927 marriage record, which states that his occupation was that of a silk weaver. (6) Warwick Township surrounds Lititz, so it seems reasonable to assume that people commuted between the two in 1920. (7) It seems highly likely that Milton Garner worked for Ideal Cocoa and Chocolate Company in 1920.

Business Merger Announcements

The above-discussed merger of chocolate companies was posted in newspapers. Here are some of the ones I found in GenealogyBank’s Historical Newspaper Archives.

The Ideal and Brewster merger was announced in August 1927. Brewster was established in Newark, New Jersey, 55 years prior, in 1872. Ideal was organized in Lititz in 1900.

The merger with Wilbur was announced in December of that same year. H.O. Wilbur and his sons established their company 63 years prior, in 1864. The article describes the acquisition of Wilbur to sell Suchard chocolate from Switzerland, followed by the acquisition of Brewster-Ideal. These combined acquisitions created the fifth largest chocolate company at the time.

These mergers occurred the same year Milton married. It seems safe to assume that newspaper articles about the mergers of the chocolate companies into Wilbur’s would have also been posted locally for Milton. He and other former employees at Ideal Cocoa and Chocolate Company may have had much to say about the mergers. The chocolate company they worked for had now become Wilbur-Suchard.

Newspaper Ads

Bowman & Co., a department store in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was offering samples of Ideal Cocoa and Chocolate’s hot cocoa in February 1904. This newspaper ad was run multiple times. At this time of year, it would have been cold enough that free hot chocolate would have enticed people into the store offering it.

At Easter that same year, another department store, Dives, Pomeroy & Steward, located in Reading, included “Hershey’s and Ideal Sweet Chocolate Rabbits and Eggs” in its candy selection. Milton would have been a baby or toddler at that time. Would his parents have given him and his siblings Ideal Easter chocolates?

Cassel’s grocery store advertised Ideal Cocoa and Wilbur’s Dutch Cocoa together in March 1919 in Reading. The 1920 census does not indicate how long respondents had been employed by their current employers. Milton would have been 15 or 16 at this point. It seems plausible that he may have begun his career at Ideal Cocoa and Chocolate around this time.

Ideal Cocoa and Chocolate is credited for the creation of the almond bar. (8) Below is an ad for it, published in 1920, the same year Milton Garner is known to have worked for Ideal. Perhaps he helped produce these.

I found many more Ideal Cocoa and Chocolate ads in GenealogyBank’s Historical Newspaper Archives. To go through them all would make this article unreasonably long. You may be able to find ads for your favorite chocolate brand or ads for chocolate brands your ancestors may have enjoyed.

Major Fire Damages Chocolate Factory

A 1925 newspaper article reported a fire at the Ideal Cocoa and Chocolate Factory, detailing the amount of inventory lost: $40,000 worth of chocolate was destroyed in that fire. Based on the price of chocolate at the time and the assumption that all the damage was inventory, the lost chocolate would have been 800,000 pounds. (9) No doubt, the monetary loss was devastating for the chocolate company. It is unknown if Milton was still working there at the time, but the article did not report any deaths or injuries as a result of the fire.

While I didn’t find my ancestor Milton Garner mentioned by name in these newspaper articles about chocolate, they helped me better understand the world of chocolate factories in Pennsylvania in the early 20^th century. That world was a part of his life, and therefore these articles helped me imagine something about his life I would not otherwise have known. Newspapers can do that for you – not only provide specific details about your ancestors, but also descriptions of the times they lived in and the world they knew.

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Note on the header image: chocolate bars in their most common dark, white, and milk varieties. Credit: Lynnereal; Wikimedia Commons.

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(1) 1920 U.S. Census, population schedule, Warwick Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, E.D. 135, sheet 6B, Milton Garner in household of Phares Garner; FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/: accessed 27 August 2024), image 260.
(2) Google Maps. (2024) Warwick, Pennsylvania to Hershey, Pennsylvania. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Warwick,+PA/Hershey,+PA/@40.1783206,-76.6279973,10z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c663e75c5c8d55:0xfb73b82251b8b725!2m2!1d-75.7838155!2d40.1650973!1m5!1m1!1s0x89c8bb5eccb2aff3:0x7467ff30c8a65e56!2m2!1d-76.6502468!2d40.2859239!3e0?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MDgyNy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D: accessed 30 August 2024.
(3) Kristin Wenger, in discussion with Katie Garner, Zoom, September 2024.
(4) Lititz 1756-1956 (publisher unknown: publisher unknown, 1956), 73. ; Historical and Pictorial Lititz: With Numerous Illustrations (Lititz, PA: Express Printing Company, 1905), 215.
(5) Cory Van Brookhoven, “The Sweet History of Wilbur Chocolate,” From Brunnerville to Broad Street, January 23, 2021, https://frombrunnervilletobroadstreet.wordpress.com/2021/01/23/the-sweet-history-of-wilbur-chocolate/.
(6) Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, marriage certificate no. 6564 (1927), Milton C Garner and Elizabeth M Martin; Lancaster County Archives, Lancaster, PA.
(7) “Warwick Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warwick_Township,_Lancaster_County,_Pennsylvania: accessed 10 March 2025).
(8) Mike Blumenthal, “Wilbur Chocolate Company notes,” page 3; report to Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 17 March 2003; [Wilbur Chocolate Company notes], Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
(9) price of chocolate, calculations of price per chocolate, Perplexity, (https://www.perplexity.ai/search/how-many-pounds-of-chocolate-c-dmgCPvQIRH2H8FIfuBbwNQ: generated 2 April 2025); generated from query “How many pounds of chocolate can be purchased with $729,330.29 in today’s money.”