text: History Milton S. Hershey, creator of The Hershey Company, was a chocolate industrialist and had founded the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania. On November 15, 1909, he and his wife, Catherine Hershey, signed over a  piece of farmland, forming the Hershey Industrial School. The school accepted "poor, healthy, white male orphans" between the ages of four and eight, allowing them to stay until the age of eighteen. The first four boys were admitted in September 1910.
  In 1918, following Catherine's death three years prior, Milton put most of his fortune—including his share of his company's stock—into a trust for the school, valued at $60 million altogether.  The school grew quickly, with about 60 boys in 1915, 352 boys in 1931, and 1034 boys in 1937. Non-sectarian Christian religious training was mandatory.
  In 1933, the age range of admitted orphans was expanded from 4–8 years to 4–14. In 1934, a junior-senior high school building was opened at the site with a capacity for 1500 students. Hershey resigned from the school's board in 1944, a year before his death. By then the school had acquired about 10,000 acres of land. The school's name was changed from Hershey Industrial School to Milton Hershey School in 1953, reportedly to eliminate the possibility of "industrial" connoting a reform school.