E107 Breisch-Williams Question

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Posted By: Frank Wakefield

The American Caramel Company was incorporated in Pennsylvania on March 28, 1898, as a consolidation of the Breish-Hine Co., of Philadelphia, and the P C Wiest Company of York Pennsylvania. In 1900 the Lancaster Caramel Company was acquired.

Lancaster had been founded by Milton S. Hershey in 1886. It was Hershey's first successful company. The Hershey Chocolate Company became a subsidiary of Lancaster in 1894. Milton Hershey sold the company for $1,000,000 to American Caramel, but he kept Hershey Chocolate. He used the proceeds to build his designed community of Hershey.

When American Caramel made this acquisition, it gave them about 90% of the caramel and caramel specialty business in the US, and a large export trade, they had several trademarks and brands.

Williams Caramel of Oxford, PA distributed the cards we know as E103s.


Realistically, American Caramel had a trust / monopoly similar to the Duke's American Tobacco... and American Caramel had most of the caramel companies all held by one corporation. Breisch and Williams would have been late 19th century candy companies that had already been absorbed by 1903/4ish, I would think.