Le Belle Chocolatiere, the Trade-mark of Walter Baker's

Yesterday, the sun was shining and it was a rather warm day for the month of January. My sister Fran stopped by and asked if I wanted to go on an adventure...an adventure into our past. I'm never opposed to adventures and did I not accomplish all my mundane household chores on Saturday leaving Sunday as a "free day"? Although Fran didn't tell me where we were going, when we headed north on Route 3 heading towards Boston, I suspected we were going to capture the sun at the Scituate seashore. But that didn't pan out.....as we passed that exit on the highway. We continued north getting off at the East Milton exit and wove our way towards Dorchester Lower Mills.

"Fran, I know where we are going....your taking me to Walter Baker's, aren't you."

Walter Baker's is a reknowned chocolate company, situated on the Neponset River in Dorchester, several miles from our grandmother's house. Our Dad, as well as my cousin Terry's father, Uncle Joey, had worked at Baker's after the war until it was bought out by General Foods in 1965 and moved to Dover, Delaware. Uncle Joe, being a supervisor, decided to move with the company, Dad chose not to though we took the long week-end trip paid for by the Company to check out the area surrounding Dover. That trip also provided my first tour of Washington, D.C. and Kennedy's grave at Arlington National Cemetery.

For the most part, the Walter Baker's brick buildings have sat abandoned for the past forty years. But the smell of chocolate wafting through Lower Mills remains strong in my consciousness... and so I was excited about the prospects of walking around this old mill site.

We parked our car behind an old abandoned warehouse and first climbed the pudding rock hill overlooking the site. As children, Fran and I had roamed around this hill many times waiting for the whistle to blow to end Dad's shift. We were surprised the hill was still here....

Walter Baker's began as a chocolate mill in 1765. John Hannan, an Irish chocolate maker, constructed the mill on the Neponset River. In 1779, Hannan closed up the business and pretended he was going to the West Indies for a supply of cocoa. Unbeknowth to his wife, who he abhored, he left for Ireland. Although his wife tried to maintain the business, she was unsuccessful and soon sold out to a James Baker, a chocolatier, in 1780. It was his son, Edmund, who expanded the business during the War of 1812 when chocolate couldn't be imported from England and Germany. In 1824, Edmund's son Walter took over the now large-scale business and rebuilt all the buildings with Quincy granite. In 1852, Walter died and left the business in his will to his brother-in-law Sidney B. Williams and a nephew, Henry L. Pierce. Under the management of Williams and Pierce, Walter Baker & Company, grew into a plant of more then forty acres on both sides of the Neponset River. Many ofthe buildings were constructed over the dams that had been built earlier in the century.

In 1881, while traveling in Europe, Henry Pierce saw the pastel of La Belle Chocolatiere by Swiss artist Jean Etienne Liotard in a gallery in Dresden, Germany. Immediately, he decided to adopt "this chocolate server" as the trademark for Walter Baker's.

Liotard's model for the pastel was Anna Baltauf, the daughter of a Viennese knight and a chocolate server, who later married Austrian Prince Ditrichstein. The Prince fell in love with Anna one day when he chanced to go in a House of Chocolate shoppe. He later married her and had the pastel commissioned.

Fran and I climbed gingerly down the face of the hill to one of several dams that hold back the Neponset River. In recent years, it has been suggested that all these dams, built in the 18th century will be removed, letting the river once more run free. As yet, that has not happened.

For now, many of the mill buildings, constructed at a time before environmental laws, straddle the river. I was fascinated by the many moss-covered decayed bridges.

I felt the need to walk where others had led many years before when the Mill was young and I wondered if my Dad had chanced to walk in this very place. Was this not a bridge to my past? Although Fran urged me not to go, I slipped through the bars of the iron gate.

Later, we crossed over to the other side of the street walking under an enclosed walkway. Standing on top of a crane, I was able to take several shots. Suddenly, I noticed a guard and so slipped silently into a building. With hand signals, I cautioned Fran to do the same.

Then we discovered a building open to the sun and wind....a shadow of the past.

As we walked around the old Mill, Fran and I talked about the man who shaped us...the father who loved us unconditionally and who always was willing to share a story or an ear. He was just a common laborer, manning a chocolate vat in an old mill, but somehow he managed to make his daughters feel like they were his own Les Belles Chocolatiere!

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While we were roaming around the last building, taking shadow shots, we ran into a young man, Andrew Sawicky. We soon learned he was a historian and had written a book about Walter Baker's, which will be published this summer. We exchanged email addresses and he gave me a site where I could download some images that were in the public domain. All in all, he was most helpful and told us he would look into getting us permission to go inside some of the buildings. Fran and I are most excited that this will become reality.

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."

-- Henry Ward Beecher