Some family recipes get framed. These kept getting dipped in chocolate.
In Virginia, one candy-making tradition has moved through three generations without getting stuck in the past.
A grandmother started the recipes. Her daughter turned them into a business, and the next generation kept the chocolate making going.
The company changed over the years. Storefronts shifted, classes expanded, and new treats joined the lineup.
The old recipes stayed.
So what exactly survived three generations? And why is the family still making it today?
Three Generations Started With One Family Kitchen
The story begins before there was a storefront, a company name, or a chocolate class on the calendar.
Mary Conner made candy for her family and passed those skills to her daughter, Evelyn Dixon.
Evelyn eventually turned that knowledge into a business.
In 1985, she started what became The Williamsburg Chocolatier as a part-time seasonal operation. The early setup was small, but the recipes already carried family history with them.
Then another generation joined in.
Evelyn’s daughter, Maryann Dixon Boho, came into the business in 1992. By that point, she was learning techniques that had already traveled through two generations before reaching her hands.
Maryann became the third generation in the family candy-making tradition.
The business grew, but the family line remained easy to follow.
A grandmother made candy. Her daughter kept going. Then her granddaughter turned the same craft into part of her own work.
That kind of continuity is easy to understand when you see it written out.
It is even easier when chocolate is involved.
Instead of preserving the recipes as family memorabilia, each generation kept making them.
The company eventually grew beyond its seasonal beginnings, but the family connection remained at the center.
Chocolate may melt easily. Apparently, this tradition does not.
Mary Conner’s Recipes Never Stayed In The Recipe Box
Old family recipes have one annoying habit.
They can disappear.
A card gets misplaced. Somebody changes the ingredients. The person who knows the method stops making it, and suddenly everybody remembers the dessert but nobody remembers exactly how it worked.
That did not happen here.
Recipes associated with Mary Conner continued through the family and remain part of The Williamsburg Chocolatier’s story today.
Maryann has specifically connected current chocolate making with recipes that came from her grandmother.
That makes the words “family recipe” much more literal.
The instructions traveled with the people who actually made the candy.
Mary taught Evelyn. Evelyn built the business. Maryann learned the same craft and carried it into the third generation.
There is also something refreshingly practical about that kind of inheritance.
No display case is required.
If a recipe is still being made, the history shows up in the kitchen.
That continuity becomes especially clear when a confection still follows the same family line decades after the first batch.
You do not have to wonder whether the old recipes were simply saved for sentimental reasons.
They are still useful. They are still being made. And that is a much better fate than gathering dust in a drawer.
Hand-Dipped Easter Eggs Keep One Old Recipe Moving
Easter brings one of the clearest links back to Mary Conner.
Hand-dipped chocolate eggs remain part of The Williamsburg Chocolatier’s seasonal work, and Maryann has identified them as one of the family recipes that came from her grandmother.
The process is still hands-on.
That means these are not simply chocolate shapes attached to an old family story. The dipping itself continues to be part of how the confection is made.
The Williamsburg Chocolatier has also kept the Easter tradition active through workshops.
James City County included a Mini Easter Egg Workshop taught by the chocolatier in its 2026 programming, giving participants a chance to work directly with the same seasonal idea.
There is something fitting about teaching that particular confection.
The recipe moved through a family because one generation showed the next what to do.
Now the technique can leave the family kitchen and become something other people try with their own hands.
Chocolate eggs may sound like a small piece of a forty-year business.
Look closer and they carry nearly the whole story.
A grandmother made them.
Her family kept making them. Decades later, the dipping still continues. That is a lot of history for something that fits in one hand.
The Business Has Been Making Chocolate Since 1985
The Williamsburg Chocolatier officially began in 1985.
Evelyn Dixon started the company as a seasonal, part-time business, using the candy-making tradition she had learned from her mother.
Maryann joined in 1992, and the operation developed into a full-time, year-round business.
A retail store later opened in Williamsburg in 1994.
That shop became a place where chocolates were made and classes could be held, giving the company a physical home for about a decade.
The original store closed in 2004, but the business continued rather than disappearing with the storefront.
The current retail connection runs through Williamsburg Bazaar at the Williamsburg Premium Outlets.
You can find it at 5625 Richmond Rd, Suite F120, Williamsburg, VA 23188.
The company has changed shape more than once over the decades.
It began seasonally, moved into a permanent shop, expanded its educational side, and later continued through a different retail arrangement.
The address changed.
The family line did not.
More than four decades after Evelyn started the business, the name is still attached to chocolate being made, taught, and sold in Williamsburg.
That is a long run for any small business.
For one built from family candy recipes, it makes the timeline even sweeter.
Chocolate Lollipops Have Been Around Since The Early Days
Not every long-running chocolate needs an elaborate backstory.
Sometimes you put chocolate on a stick and let common sense handle the rest.
Chocolate lollipops were among the company’s early products and remain part of The Williamsburg Chocolatier’s lineup.
Their longevity fits nicely with a business built around keeping old ideas alive rather than constantly replacing them.
They also show another side of the company’s history.
The family recipes may carry the deepest personal connection, but the business itself developed its own recognizable products once Evelyn began selling chocolate commercially.
Lollipops were part of that early assortment.
Years later, they still make sense.
They are simple, portable, and leave plenty of room for different shapes and designs without needing to reinvent the basic idea.
Other confections have joined the range over time, including peanut butter cups and chocolate-covered creations.
The menu can change and expand without every piece needing to compete with the family history.
Some chocolates carry a grandmother’s recipe.
Others simply prove that an idea does not have to be complicated to survive forty years.
Honestly, chocolate on a stick was never facing a serious design problem.
Chocolate Classes Took The Family Craft Beyond The Counter
The closing of the original retail store in 2004 did not end the hands-on side of the business.
It gave that side more room to travel.
The Williamsburg Chocolatier expanded into classes, workshops, private programs, and other events, bringing chocolate making directly to groups instead of keeping every lesson inside one shop.
Maryann continues to teach those skills.
Christopher Newport University included her in its 2026 Lifelong Learning program, with a session on the history of The Williamsburg Chocolatier and a hands-on chocolate-making workshop scheduled for June.
James City County also listed current seasonal classes taught by the chocolatier, including the Easter egg workshop.
Teaching follows the same basic pattern that kept the family tradition alive in the first place.
Mary Conner taught Evelyn.
Evelyn passed the knowledge forward to Maryann.
Maryann now teaches chocolate techniques outside the family too.
The scale has changed, but the basic action has not.
Somebody learns by doing.
Then somebody else gets a turn.
That keeps the craft from becoming something people only hear about.
It stays practical, messy, edible, and very much alive.
For a business rooted in recipes passed from one generation to another, a room full of people learning how to work with chocolate fits naturally into the story.
Four Decades Later The Family Tradition Is Still In Motion
A forty-year chocolate business could easily turn its history into something static.
The Williamsburg Chocolatier has gone the other direction.
The family recipes remain part of the present. Seasonal Easter eggs are still hand-dipped. Chocolate lollipops connect back to the company’s early lineup.
Workshops continue to put the craft directly into other people’s hands.
And Maryann remains the third generation linking all of it together.
The details have changed since 1985. The first operation was seasonal, and a Williamsburg retail store came later.
That storefront eventually closed, while classes, events, and new retail arrangements carried the business forward.
Through all of those changes, the original family story stayed remarkably easy to follow.
Mary Conner made candy.
Evelyn Dixon learned from her and started the business.
Maryann Dixon Boho joined her mother and kept the recipes moving into another generation.
That chain of names matters because the recipes never became anonymous.
You can still trace the tradition from grandmother to daughter to granddaughter without losing the thread.
Chocolate gives that history a surprisingly practical form.
You can talk about family tradition all day.
It becomes much more interesting when somebody is still dipping it by hand.
So if you had to start with one piece of this Virginia chocolate story, would you choose the old family Easter egg or the classic chocolate lollipop?