On my way to The National Archives I’ve taken a little (?) detour to South Central Pennsylvania and the model company town of Hershey in Dauphin County. You can almost smell the cocoa on Chocolate Avenue, the main street of the “sweetest town in America” where even the streetlights look like Hershey’s famous chocolate kisses.
We visited Chocolate World for a mock factory tour. and saw and heard the screaming fast roller coasters at Hershey Park.
And on a quick stop to buy postcards at the Hershey Story building on Chocolate Avenue we found the Hershey Community Archives www.hersheyarchives.org, a collection of material about the Hershey founder that has expanded to include the entire Hershey legacy and the wider Hershey community. Imagine researching in the archives at basement level with the smells from “Chocolate Lab” cooking school drifting down from the building’s main floor.
Although the collection focus is on corporate and personal Hershey history, it also holds local newspapers, maps, plans, and hundreds of oral history interviews. I’ve never investigated a corporate archive, but I think the material would be useful for anyone with ancestors who worked for Hershey or lived in the company town.
I randomly clicked on an interview with Harry King in 1982. The transcript is fascinating, and the recording must be even better. Harry relates his career as an employee for Hershey Chocolate beginning in 1915 when he came to Hershey to work in the chewing gum manufacturing division and then goes into a wonderful digression about the streetcars, milk runs, and life in Hershey.
It kind of makes me hope that someday I might come across a few Hershey ancestors, and also makes me eager to check out other corporate archives for information that may include more information about my family.
Genealogy and chocolate – my two favorite things!
Hershey is a wonderful town. We took our children there when they were young. They loved the rides & the chocolate. Nice to learn they also have an archive.