For more than 200 years Ye Olde Pepper Candy Companie has been making sweets – you gotta believe that it knows what it's doing. The current owners (for only four generations) continue to use original 19th-century recipes for old-fashioned delights such as Black Jacks (flavored with blackstrap molasses) and Gibraltars (lemon and peppermint treats). Sweet!
In 1806, an Englishwoman named Mrs Spencer survived a shipwreck, and arrived in Salem with hardly a penny to her name. Her new neighbors were kind enough to lend her some cash to purchase a barrel of sugar. Mrs Spencer used the sugar to create 'Salem Gibraltar,' a candy that sated the sweet tooth of sea captains and sailing merchants. She sold the candy from the front steps of the local church, eventually earning enough to purchase a horse and wagon and sell her products in neighboring towns. In 1830, Mrs Spencer sold her by-then-successful company to John William Pepper, hence the current name.
