Founder of Hershey's Was Unschooled

Founder of The Hershey Company. Mr. Hershey is also known as “The Chocolate King”. Hershey’s is one of the world’s biggest confectionery manufacturers.

“Like many rural young people of the time, Milton was expected to help out on the family farm, and he learned early on the value of hard work and perseverance. Henry Hershey rarely stayed anywhere very long, and was prone to leaving his wife and child for long periods. Because of this, Hershey had a very limited education with no schooling beyond the 4th grade.”

“In 1871, Milton Hershey left school for good and was apprenticed to a local printer, Sam Ernst, who published a German-English newspaper. He did not like that kind of work and he thought it was very boring. One day at work there, he accidentally dropped his hat in one of the machines. Because his boss was hot-tempered, he was fired shortly after. He was worried to see how his parents would react. His father asked Ernst to take him back, and he did decide to give him a second chance, but Mattie Snavely, his aunt, and his mother had a different idea. They wanted him to learn the trade of candy making instead. So, his mother arranged for the 14-year-old Hershey to be apprenticed to a confectioner named Joseph Royer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Over the next four years, Hershey learned the craft of creating confections. In 1876, he moved to Philadelphia to start his first confectionery business.”