Clara Stover
{{Short description|American businesswoman and chocolatier}}
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{{Infobox person
| name = Clara Stover
| image = Mrs. Clara Mae Stover.jpg
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name = Clara Mae Lewis
| birth_date = {{birth year|1882}}
| birth_place = Oxford, Iowa, U.S.
| death_date = {{death year and age|1975|1882}}
| death_place = Kansas City, Missouri
| other_names =
| occupation = Candy maker, company owner
| years_active = 1910sā1960
| known_for = Co-founding with husband Russell Stover the Russell Stover Candies company
| notable_works =
}}
Clara Mae Stover (1882ā1975) was the wife of candy maker Russell Stover, and co-founder of Russell Stover Candies. A lifelong participant in the business, she ran the company for six years following Russell's death.{{Citation needed|date=August 2022}}
Early life
Clara Mae Stover was born in Oxford, Iowa, in 1882.{{cite web|last1=Coleman|first1=Daniel|title=Clara and Russell Stover, Candymakers|url=http://www.kchistory.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/Biographies&CISOPTR=128|website=Missouri Valley Special Collections|publisher=Kansas|access-date=November 15, 2016|ref=2007}} She was raised on a farm with three sisters, and strongly influenced by one of her grandmothers{{which|date=January 2023}} to be self-reliant.
Clara and Russell Stover met as students at the Iowa City Academy in Iowa City, Iowa.{{when|date=January 2023}} They were married in 1911. They bought a 580-acre wheat and flax farm in Saskatchewan, Canada, but the heavy rains destroyed their crops.
Career
=Introduction to candy industry=
Russell Stover was hired by a candy company in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Some years later the couple returned to the United States, where Russell worked for confectioners, in Des Moines, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois, during the balance of the 1910s.{{Citation needed|date=August 2022}}
=Naming the "Eskimo Pie"=
File:Christian Kent Nelson.jpg" inventor Christian Kent Nelson, who partnered with Russell Stover to create the chocolate-covered ice cream bar (Image, 1922)]]
Iowa schoolteacher Christian Nelson had the idea of enrobing a block of vanilla ice cream with melted chocolate. He partnered with Russell Stover, then studying chemistry at the University of Iowa, to develop a workable process of doing so without melting the ice cream. In 1921 a patent was granted, allowing Nelson's concept to be mass produced. At a dinner party, Clara suggested calling the novelty an "Eskimo Pie", which became a national sensation. Russell was soon offered licensing agreements, which he accepted, and buyout offers into the millions of dollars, which he refused; instead, he focused on suing imitators. Ultimately he waited too long, imitators thrived, the initial craze wore down, and licensed sales plummeted into the mere thousands of dollars.[https://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Russell-Stover-Candies-Inc-Company-History.html International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 12. St. James Press, 1996]
=The Russell Stover Candy Company=
The Stovers relocated to Denver, Colorado, and used their meager earnings to create their own confectionery company, "Mrs. Stover's Bungalow Candies". With success came factories in Denver and Kansas City, Missouri. By 1932, all operations were relocated to Kansas City, sales having increased from 20,000 to 11 million pounds.{{cn|date=January 2023}} In 1943, the company was renamed "Russell Stover Candies".[https://www.russellstover.com/rsc-timeline Russell Stover Chocolates Timeline]
=Later years with the company=
In 1954, Russell Stover died. At the time there were 40 company-owned stores and their candy was sold in 2,000 pharmacies and department stores nationwide.{{Citation needed|date=August 2022}} Clara took over and ran the business until 1960. That year, Louis Ward, a box-maker who had been supplying packaging materials to the company, purchased a controlling interest and took the business public.
Personal life
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Clara Stover died in Kansas City in 1975, where she had lived with her husband. Her cremated remains are interred with those of her husband and daughter at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Kansas City.
References
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Category:People from Johnson County, Iowa
Category:Businesspeople from Iowa
Category:20th-century American businesspeople
Category:20th-century American businesswomen
Category:American company founders