CANDY MAKERS: One of the fascinating thing about our recent
columns about old stores in Bradford is how many were candy
shops.
John DeWitt “Dick” Walters of Plano, Texas, writes about his
aunt Belle McIntire Crawford who had a candy shop outlet between
the main entrance and the coffee shop in the Emery Hotel at the
head of Main Street.
He writes, “Belle employed several ladies making her brand of
candies. The candy-making business was in a two-story garage
building just behind her house on East Main Street just across from
Jerome Avenue. One of the ladies was a Grace Reck that lived just
two houses from my aunt. She also employed two or three other
ladies.
“And I can still see those ladies dipping candies in a mound of
soft chocolate. And every day they would add more molten soft
chocolate to the hardened mound.
“Perhaps there are still people in and around Bradford and other
parts of the United States that remember the assortment of candies
that made great gifts at various times of the year to sweethearts,
wives and girl friends.
“Naturally my mother, who was Belle’s sister, and me along with
my three sisters did not lack for candy.
“Also, I would like to point out, as I recall being told, that
at one time my Aunt Belle was an employee of The Bradford Era. This
was before her candy business. As I understand it, she was a
society editor for the Era and one of her jobs was to go down to
the various railroad depots there in Bradford and meet different
passenger trains to see what people had been to Buffalo, New York
City, etc. and, of course, write up the newsy news for the society
pages.
“Belle was born in 1886 and died there in Bradford on Dec. 16,
1934.
“Belle’s husband was Lon Crawford. When he working there in
Bradford he was the superintendent for the Kendall Refinery.”
NEW TWIST: Bob Slike Jr. has an interesting twist on a Bradford
store, Bovaird & Seyfang. In front of the store was a wooden
post full of holes – supposedly machine gun holes left over from
Bradford’s gangster days. That’s what his dad told him!
