Black Jacks

The Gibraltar, The Black Jack, and George Pepper The Gibraltar, the nation’s first commercial candy, was made by a woman named Mary Spencer around 1800. By 1806, she was selling the candy in her new shop – the first commercial candy company in the United States. When Mary Spencer died, her son sold the business to a man named George Pepper, hence the name – Ye Olde Pepper Companie. George Pepper made the Black Jack stick to match the Gibraltar although they are considerably different kinds of candy. Here's what one author had to say about them in an article entitled In By-Gone Days, published in 1886: "They had in Salem two kinds of candies called Black Jack and Gibraltar, the latter "the artisocrat of Salem confectionery." It (the Gibraltar) gazes upon chocolate and sherbet and says "before you were, I was. After you are not, I shall be." You never soiled your fingers when you ate Gibralter, but you might smear yourself with Black Jack. Gibraltar was not precisely conservative; it changed as to its flavors, so once a charming old Salem Dame said: "I known I must be growing old, because a peppermint Gibraltar is so comforting to me." We are to believe that these two confections are still Salem Institutions, for Mrs. Bates intimates that Witch Hall, the Museum, and Chart-street burying ground might all go, but while there was a house left in Salem village Black Jack and Gibraltar would stick." ---In By-Gone Days, New York Times, June 13, 1886 (p. 5) Bob Burkinshaw, whose father bought the store from George Pepper, still owns and operates Ye Olde Pepper Companie with his family. Here’s what he told Susan when interviewed for her book “Sweet as Sin.” “My father used the recipes he got from his father who got them from George Pepper. The Gibralter is made exactly the way Mrs. Spencer made them and the Black Jack the same way as Pepper. The Black Jacks are still rolled by hand and cut with a pair of scissors and the Gibralters are pulled on a hook.”