A record of the 1837 exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, where confections were judged competitively, mentions "stick candy".

[3] A recipe for straight peppermint candy sticks, white with colored stripes, was published in The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-Cook, and Baker, in 1844.

[4] However, the earliest documentation of a "candy cane" is found in the short story "Tom Luther's Stockings", published in Ballou's Monthly Magazine in 1866.

Chicago confectioners the Bunte Brothers filed one of the earliest patents for candy cane making machines in the early 1920s.

McCormack's brother-in-law, Gregory Harding Keller, was a seminary student in Rome who spent his summers working in the candy factory back home.