Boyd Hitchner and his wife, Anne, of Haddonfield, NJ, love to return to West Pittston to see friends and family and to dine at their favorite local restaurant, Agolino’s. If the name Hitchner sounds familiar, it should. Boyd is a direct descendent of the one-time famous Hitchner Biscuit Co. family.
Many from Greater Pittston who grew up in the Garden Village and surrounding towns may remember the biscuit company. If you never heard of it, you may have seen the name written on the side of the four-story apartment complex on Exeter Avenue, across from the West Pittston Borough Building where the bakery was once housed.
Hitcher, 78, was in the area Dec. 8 to promote his book, “The Hitchner Biscuit Company of West Pittston, Pennsylvania, A Small Town Treasure” at the West Pittston Library. The book, published in November, is a 10-year project where Hitchner explains in depth the biscuit company’s beginnings founded by his great-grandfather, Joseph Hitchner, in 1872 in Pittston at the Eagle Steam Bakery.
The Hitchners traveled back to Boyd’s hometown and he couldn’t think of a better place to promote his book.
“I love it; I love coming back to West Pittston. I see a lot of change; I’ve seen the damage that the floods have done, but the people are nice, the people are good and we love to stop and eat at Agolino’s,” he laughed. “I still love the whole area.”
West Pittston native Jane Firestine was among the 35 people who stopped by the library to hear Hitchner. Firestine’s father and uncle had a food market a few blocks from the Hitchner Biscuit building on Exeter Avenue and, for many years, they sold biscuits, cookies and cakes made by the Hitchner company.
“They (Hitchners) sold the cookies to the Firestine brothers, Butch and Ernie, where Boyd’s aunt and uncle, Ruth and Ken, used to shop frequently in our store,” Firestine recalled.
According to Hitchner, the Hitchners invented two items — the Lorna Doone cookie and the TidBits cheese cracker. The cookies and crackers were so popular, Nabisco Brands offered to purchase Hitchner and its products in 1898. A year after the acquisition, a fire broke out at the bakery and Nabisco pulled out of West Pittston.
With Nabisco out of West Pittston, the Hitchners decided to build another bakery at the Exeter Avenue location. The four-story bakery opened a year after ground was broken. The two most popular items, Lorna Doone and Tidbits, were renamed Scotch Lassies and Nick Nacks, respectively, allowing the business to prosper once again.
In its heyday, the biscuit company made 300 varieties of cookies, baked and distributed in 23 facilities around the country, distributed to 43 states and employed 250 to 300 workers in the West Pittston bakery alone.
During World War II, the bakery operated three shifts and the cookies would make their way to Hawaii before heading to the Pacific Theater to help feed the troops in Asia.
“The bakery decided to get involved in the war effort and they had to pledge that half of production to the war effort, allowing them to get all the sugar they wanted,” Hitchner said. “Sugar was rationed during the war and Hitchner was allotted as much as they wanted to make product.”
Over time and several decades later, it was becoming increasingly harder to produce products cost effectively, forcing the bakery to close in 1951.
“They didn’t owe anybody any money, paid off the stockholders, gave the employees a nice annuity and closed their doors and that was the last baking by the Hitchner family in West Pittston, Pennsylvania,” Hitchner said.
West Pittston Library Director Anne Bramblett was excited to host the Hitchner program. She and Hitchner had recently met at a West Pittston High School Grand Reunion function.
“Mr. Hitchner approached me and said he wrote a book about the Hitchner Biscuit Co. and asked if we could sell the book and he offered to do a program on the book,” Bramblett said.
Bramblett was pleased with the turnout for the program. “It’s usually the local history programs that do well.”
Hitchner brought along memorabilia posters, advertisements and two tins of cookies that were over 50 years old.
The 331-page soft-covered book, has 230 photographs included and can be purchased at the West Pittston Library as well as on amazon.com, ebay.com and barnesandnoble.com for $21.99.
