Russell Stover (May 6, 1888 – May 11, 1954) was the founder of the Russell Stover Candies.
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Stover was born in a sod house south of Alton, Kansas in Osborne County, Kansas. His family moved to Iowa City, Iowa where he attended Iowa City Academy and a year and a half at Iowa State University where he studied chemistry.
In 1911 he married Clara Lewis and they moved to a 580-acre (2.3 km2) farm in Saskatchewan, Canada, which they received as a wedding gift. In 1912 they moved to Winnipeg and then went to work for a Minnesota candy company and then candy company A.G. Morris in Chicago. In 1918 he moved to Des Moines where he worked for Irwin Candy Co. and they moved to Omaha, Nebraska.[1]
On July 31, 1921 Christian Nelson of Onawa, Iowa pitched the concept of mass producing a chocolate covered ice cream treat called the I-Scream Bar. Seven companies had rejected it earlier because it easily melted. Nelson patented it on January 24, 1922. The agreement was signed on the letterhead of Graham Ice Cream Company of Omaha.[2]
Stover went into partnership with Nelson renaming it the Eskimo Pie and taking out the stick to make it a sandwich. The pie immediately became so successful they couldn't keep up with demand and licensed it to 1,500 manufacturers in exchange for 4 cents for every four dozen sold.
The treat was marketed under the brand of Russell Stover Company. The New York Times claimed they were receiving $30,000 a week in royalties in the first year.[3]
Many manufacturers then came up with similar but different processes for making the pies and at one point they were paying $4,000/day in legal fees to defend their patent which they ultimately lost.[4]
They sold the company for $30,000 in 1924 and moved to Denver, Colorado where they operated "Mrs. Stover's Bungalow Candies" which operated out of Clara's kitchen in their bungalow. In 1925 they opened a candy factory in Denver and another one in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1931 he moved the headquarters to Kansas City.[5]
When he died in 1954 it was producing 11 million pounds of candy annually through 40 Russell Stover shops and in about 2,000 department stores.[6]
His wife would operate it until 1960 when it was sold to Louis Ward who would transform the regional brand into an international company. The Ward family still owns the brand which keeps the Russell Stover brand.
