Candy Daggett Young

I saw your page about the "Pleasure Island" and noticed that it had Daggett's Chocolate Company. That was my grandfather's business.

Fred L. Daggett, Founder of Daggett’s Chocolate Company, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Fred L. Daggett was born in 1870 in Jay, Maine. He founded his own business at the age of 21.

He started in a little Chelsea, Massachusetts store back in 1891 with his wife and two helpers. It grew to be the third largest package candy manufacturer in the nation. All by himself, Fred L. Daggett rose from his little retail store to the owner of a company that employed over 600 employees and made better than 10 million pounds of candy a year.

It made little difference whether you purchased Daggett’s Chocolates, Page and Shaw, Lowney’s, Apollo, Gobelin, Handspun, Old Homestead or some 30 other name chocolates, they were all owned by Fred L. Daggett. As Mr. Daggett’s business kept growing, he kept buying out other candy concerns. He retained the old firm names but took over the manufacture of these candies in his own plant. So by 1952, he had a seven story key building on Main Street in Cambridge, plus surrounding buildings which took almost a half million square feet of floor space, including refrigeration space for the storing of some five million pounds of candy.

From Monday through Friday, he was at the plant at eight o’clock every morning and often there in the evening. Asked the secret of keeping young, he replied, “I’m always looking ahead, I keep trying to come up with new ideas. Business is a challenge and the challenge keeps me right on my toes.” Fred L. Daggett died in 1957. He was certainly a prominent figure in the industry.

He rented the building that he owned to the Polaroid Company in Cambridge near the Daggett Chocolate Company where Polaroid got their start. The building was owned by Fred. L. Daggett. After his death, several of his employees went on to become Presidents of different famous candy companies. One in particular was John M. Whitaker, who began his career with the Daggett’s Chocolate Company and later became vice president of the Nestle Corp. In White Plains, N.Y. and then was president of the New England Confectionery Company in Cambridge until his retirement from there when he became vice president of the Nickerson Companies on Cape Cod. References: “Boston Sunday Advertiser,” July 27, 1952, and “The Boston Globe,” June 16, 1981.”Saturday Evening Post”, February 6, 1954. Family History of the Warren, Stone, Dayton, Routh, Wurster, Daggett and Young Families, by Candy Daggett Young, 1982, Gateway Press.

Written and compiled by Candy Daggett Young, granddaughter of Fred L.Daggett Daggett.

If your grandfather died in 1957, I wonder who made the decision to participate at Pleasure Island?

My father, Richard C. Daggett and his first cousin, Richard Muzzy. Daddy moved to Louisiana, but he still owned it. His first cousin, Richard Muzzy stayed in Boston and ran it. Richard Muzzy has died but my Dad is still living. My Dad would know all the details.