Chocolate Arrives in America

Considering that America was the home of the cocoa bean, chocolate arrived relatively late in the American Colonies, in about 1755. In 1765, Dr James Baker and John Hannon set up a chocolate factory on the banks of the River Neponset in Massachusetts, which in 1780 became the Walter Baker Company (Walter was James’s grandson). It is claimed that this was the first chocolate factory in the United States. The name Baker’s is synonymous with quality in the United States, as they produce a range of chocolate bars from the unsweetened to semi-sweet to German-style sweet dark dessert chocolate (it is called Baker’s German Sweet Chocolate).