C. A. Everhart & Co.

Charles A. Everhart was born in Wisconsin; he came to Fargo in 1895, and started the C. A. Everhart & Company a business that produced wholesale confectionary products. The first factory was located at 17 Roberts Street.

In 1901 the company built a larger three story factory located at 813-15 N.P. Avenue. Today due to address changes, the location would be the north side of N.P. Avenue, between 7th and 8th Streets North. The factory was approximately 30,000 square feet, and was equipped with steam heat.

According to an article in the 1902 Northwestern Journal of Progress magazine, the company manufactured “everything known in the confectionary line, from the plainest stick candy to the finest cream chocolates, marshmellows, bittersweets, putting their goods up in fancy packages which they sell to dealers only.”

In 1905, Charles Everhart sold out the business to J. D. Grant Candy Company. In that same year Frank Chaney, a man who had been an employee at the Everhart factory since he was 16, opened his own candy shop at 64 5th Street N. Soon George Everhart, brother of Charles, joined Mr. Chaney and started the Chaney-Everhart Candy Company. In 1914, the Chaney-Everhart Candy Company bought out the Pioneer Candy Company, which was then being produced out of the old Everhart factory at on N.P. Avenue. At that point the business was renewed in the old factory under the Chaney-Everhart brand.

Frank Chaney died in December, 1930 of a stroke. The business continued on with George Everhart, but it was no longer listed in the city directories after 1932. The factory building on N.P. Avenue was destroyed by fire on December 28, 1942.

Sources:
Fargo and Moorhead City Directory. Fargo, 1881-1927.
Polk’s Fargo and Moorhead City Directories. St. Paul, MN: R.L. Polk and Company
Special Extra Number Descriptive of and Illustrating Fargo, N.D., of the Northwestern Journal of Progress. [S. l.: Northwestern Journal of Progress, 1902?]