Hanging from the Family Tree: A Swedish Fisherman's Daughter

Aurora Henrietta (Ora)Hanson was the seventh child born to Olof Hanson and Mary Hepke. She was born in 1876 in Michigan and married William Snyder on 24 Mar 1894 in Chicago, IL. About 1909 she began a candy business that became a Chicago fixture for 50 years. Our family connection is that my husband Dave Peterson is the great-grandson of Ora Snyder's older sister Lizabet. Below I have collected some articles about her and her candy company. There appears to be some confusion about the number of children Ora and William had and I can only document a daughter Edith, born in 1895.

March 31, 2009

Chocolate dipped

I had the chocolate symposium (held a few weeks ago at the museum) and Women’s History Month on my mind when I came across this image from the museum’s photo history collection of glass plate negatives by Underwood & Underwood. Thanks to a morning spent with ProQuest (thank you Smithsonian Libraries!) I was able to learn a bit about the remarkable woman who is pictured. I’m guessing that readers who know something about Chicago history are going to fill in the gaps!

Here’s what I learned: Mrs. Ora Snyder (nee Hanson) of Chicago was the mother of several children when her husband took ill in 1909 and had to quit his job. To make ends meet, she began making candy and selling it to the children down the street after school. She very quickly took her sweets to a different location in “the Loop” (Chicago speak for the historical downtown district) where her business really took off. By the time this photograph was made in 1925, she owned eight shops. In 1931, she was the first woman elected as President of the Associated Retail Confectioners of the United States.

In a Chicago Daily Tribune article from December 20, 1942, she explained how war rationing affected business. “Mrs. Ora Snyder said her stores were 1000 orders behind and purchases are being limited to five pounds per customer. Even using more honey and maple sirups [sic] . . . the company cannot meet the vastly increased demand.” She explained, “People, because of sugar rationing and chocolate shortages, have fewer sweets at home and are turning to candy to fill the need.”

After the war, when supplies were more accessible, she continued expanding her business. When she passed away at age 72 on July 18, 1948, she owned sixteen shops, one of which was a seven-story building. In another Tribune article, in 1959, son-in-law Seymour W. Neill was running the company of twenty-four shops, requiring some 380,000 pounds of sugar and 350,000 pounds of chocolate per year. He’s quoted as saying, “One thing that has become almost a lost art amid the mechanization is hand chocolate dipping. Snyder’s still employs about 20 who do hand dipping but they’re hard to find.”

If you have stories about Snyder’s and the woman who turned a small kitchen-based business into a Chicago-based chain, please share them in the comments.

Shannon Perich is Associate Curator for the Photographic History Collection at the National Museum of American Histor

Mrs. Snyder's Home Made Candies

Chicagoans used to salivate at the words Mrs. Snyder’s Home Made Candies.

That reaction was the result of Mrs. Ora Snyder’s recipes for candy and for business success: use high quality ingredients and hire high-quality staff; sell fresh candy; provide good value for the price; give your customers what they want.

These ingredients are basic fare in today’s business classes but Mrs. Snyder didn’t learn them in business school. She developed and tested her recipes on-the-job. Like many entrepreneurs of her day, she started with limited capital and without a business plan. She could of failed but she refused to.

Her story begins in the kitchen . . .

Ora learned to make candy as a child. But in 1909, when she was a worried wife and mother, she turned to it for economic stability. At night, her kitchen produced whipped crème chocolates, fudge, divinity, and other confections. By day she sold them in some unused space belonging to a Chicago peanut & coffee roaster. Her individual sales were small, five-, ten-, and fifteen-cents. But her volume grew quickly. After four months in business she was making $500 a month, about $9,600 in today’s dollars.

Ten years later she had four stores in Chicago's Loop. She was the subject of articles in national magazines and a co-founder of a national trade organization. Twenty years later she had ten shops. Newspapers covered her plans and purchases. She lectured at conferences. Lists of prominent, successful businesswomen published in Fortune magazine, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and other publications all included her.

By the time she died in 1948, Ora’s candy-kitchen-factory was cooking up confections to fill 16 retail shops daily. That’s quite a successful recipe.