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I’m still trying to remember what the longer one was - I’ll have to post an update after I find that one. These pictures turned up because I had indexed them after the imprint on that short little guy:
“Hershey / Derby - Conn.”
I’d debated what connection this had with the chocolate company, but I’d convinced myself this probably had nothing to do with that. I’d set this one aside to do some poking around on, but apparently I never got around to it.
I say “apparently,” because the answer is interesting and was easy to find – had I spent enough time to type those three words into a search engine I would have had the answer.
Preservation Connecticut runs a website dedicated to documenting and preserving historic factories in the state, titled “Mills: Making Places of Connecticut.” One of the plants documented on their site is the Hershey Metal Products Company’s plant located in . . . well, of course, in Derby, Connecticut.
The record for the Derby plant is at https://connecticutmills.org/find/details/hershey-metal-products-co, and it includes a well-researched and well-written history of the company. With full credit where it is due and in the interests of making sure this information is preserved in two places rather than one, that site reports as follows:
“The Hershey Metal Products Company was established by Paul H. Hershey, a native of Hanover, Pennsylvania, in 1920. Hershey was trained as a machinist and toolmaker and for a portion of his early career worked in the mechanical engineering and sales fields of the metalworking industry. Upon founding his own manufacturing concern Hershey occupied a small shop on Caroline Street in Derby, but soon had to seek out a larger plant around 1925 when the company was incorporated.
“Upon incorporation, Paul H. Hershey held the dual role of president and treasurer, while his wife, Mary J.R. Hershey, served as the company’s secretary. The Hershey Metal Products Company experienced considerable success immediately following its founding, this largely led by Paul H. Hershey’s inventive mind and ability to design and bring new products to market. By the late-1920s and early-1930s these included a variety of stamped metal and screw machine products such as radio parts, jigs, fixtures, dies, and gauges. These were manufactured in its Hawkins Street plant, which the company expanded ca. 1930 and ca. 1940.
“Despite falling into temporary receivership in 1932, the Hershey Metal Products Company weathered the Great Depression and returned to profitability by the early 1940s. The company purchased an Ansonia, Connecticut, plant formerly occupied by the Ansonia Electrical Company around 1943, and by 1945 had erected substantial manufacturing and office blocks to this factory situated on the north side of Division Street just west of the Naugatuck River. During the early 1950s, the Hershey Metal Products Company shifted its manufacturing and administrative operations to this Ansonia branch, yet maintained its Hawkins Street complex for warehouse use. By 1960, the company had vacated its Derby property.”
The foregoing account appears to have been put together from stories in newspapers, which corroborate perfectly the foregoing account, beginning with notice of the company’s initial incorporation, notice of which was published in the Hartford Courant on July 25, 1925:
There’s one detail, however, that this account glosses over: this account states that Hershey went into “temporary receivership” in 1932, but weathered the depression and was profitable again by the 1940s. That’s not entirely true. The company went into receivership in 1932 and actually failed; Hershey started up again in 1934, reincorporating that year:
Otherwise, the accounts appear to be spot on, although an ugly and months’-long strike by the CIO in 1947 has been left out. Although the strike made national news for its intensity and violence and even resulted in a groundbreaking labor relations decision, none of the accounts written during that dark chapter spoke at all to the success of the company or the character of its officers, so I can understand why the authors chose to leave it out.
With the story now out and a tantalizing suggestion that Hershey might have actually been a manufacturer behind these usually unmarked, generic pencils, I’m wondering whether my little pencil is an advertising piece . . . or whether it bears a manufacturer’s imprint.
If this is an advertiser, it isn’t a very effective one. Without a full name, an address, or a phone number, I don’t know how someone stumbling across it would think to call Paul Hershey for their metal fabricating needs. Heck, I just assumed it might be a chocolate company thing and put it in the dead letter office.
Fortunately for history, Paul Hershey had a nephew named John Frey, who was successful enough that his philanthropy in later life, through the Valley Community Foundation and the Frey-Hershey Foundation Fund, resulted in more documentation concerning the foundation’s benefactors. Frey gave a detailed account of his uncle’s company at https://www.valleyfoundation.org/About/NewsPublications/ViewArticle/tabid/96/ArticleId/34/Frey-Hershey-Foundation-Fund.aspx, and his account includes the following statement:
“Hershey Metals products were diverse, from parts for commercial and military aircraft, including the indicator light for the Apollo spacecraft; to parts for everyday products, such as hand tools, mechanical pencils, electric brooms, and beer taps.”
The imprint on my Hershey pencil is a manufacturer’s imprint. Without a doubt. That statement is confirmed by the 1941 directory of manufacturers published by Chain Store Age, in which Hershey Metal Products is listed as a manufacturer of both fountain pens and mechanical pencils:
I’m not going to do that. Pencils like these were made in such great numbers that it’s very possible that the metal parts inside them were supplied by more than one supplier, rather than all emanating from one centralized source at the end of a rainbow. Next to a pot of pencils. So no, I’m not suggesting that Hershey Metal Products made all of these familiar pencils.
I’m just stating that now I know for a fact that Hershey made some of them.
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