Did you know that at the turn of the century there was an industrial scale maple operation deep in the heart of the Adirondacks?
Join me, Matthew Thomas, on April 25, 2024 at the Alice T. Miner Museum in Chazy, NY for a presentation on the path to uncovering the history and remains of the Horse Shoe Forestry Company’s maple sugaring operation and learn about this unique moment in maple sugar history.
This program is free and open to the public. Coffee and snacks (maple-flavored, of course!) will be served.
The sugar devil, also known as a sugar auger or fruit lifter, is one of those sort of maple sugar related antiques that really catches your attention, both for the simple elegance of its design and symmetry and for its frightening appearance as some sort of medieval weapon or torture device. It should come as no surprise that sugar devils are highly desired by collectors of maple sugar related items.
Maybe it is just the attention grabbing name “sugar devil” that makes folks want to own something that feels a little bit taboo or dangerous. The equally popular names “sugar auger” or “fruit lifter” provide a bit of insight into how and for what these giant corkscrew-like tools were put to use. Sugar devils were used to break up the dense, dried, and hard sugar and fruit that was once packed tightly in casks, kegs, or boxes in much of the 19th century.
Image showing the variety of the shapes and styles of sugar devils and fruit lifters. Photo courtesy of Bob Roger.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, maple sugar was often sold packed into wooden casks. When the sticky sugar had sufficiently dried, it formed a nearly impenetrable cement that required a strong tool to break up into smaller chunks that could then be further reduced into usable pieces for granulation or dissolving in water to make a syrup. Sticky, sugar-rich, dried fruit that was similarly packed in casks, required a powerful tool to permit access to manageable amounts when purchasing from a store or cooking at home.
Bob Roger’s guide to fruit lifters and sugar devils.
For those wanting to learn more about sugar devils, a very useful guide to the varieties and patent history of different shapes and styles of sugar devils or fruit lifters has been put together by tool and corkscrew collector Bob Roger. Mr. Roger has kindly permitted me to share his most up to date version of this guide here, with the request that any use be purely for educational purposes.
You can view and download a PDF copy of Mr. Roger’s guide titled Fruit Lifters (a.k.a. Sugar Devils) by clicking on THIS LINK or by clicking on the image above. An earlier version of Mr. Roger’s guide was posted in 2007 on the website The Daily Screw, an interesting but no longer active website dedicated to the corkscrew collector.
You can read my latest maple history contribution to the December 2023 edition of the Maple Syrup Digest newsletter at this link or by clicking on the image of the article. The Maple Syrup Digest, it is the official quarterly publication of the North American Maple Syrup Council.
This article looks at the short ten-year history of a unique laboratory constructed in Burlington, Vermont by the United States Forest Service. Named in honor of Vermont Senator George D. Aiken, the lab was created for the purpose of conducting research and outreach on topics important to the growth and promotion of the maple syrup industry. Staffed with foresters, biologists, and economists, this lab focused its attention on improvements in marketing maple products and developing more efficient technologies and methods for processing sap and syrup.
You can read the article at this link or by clinking on the accompanying image.
Maple history fans might be interested in Lanark County Kitchen: A Maple Legacy from Tree to Table, a recently published book about maple sugaring families in Lanark County, Ontario.
Written by Arlene Stafford-Wilson, this 2023 book presents a series of short and concise histories of thirteen legacy maple producers, families that have been making maple products for many generations in Lanark County. Stafford-Wilson is the author of a number of books on life and times in Lanark County, with more information on those available at her website www.staffordwilson.com.
This pocket size book (4.75” x 8.0”) spans 165 pages and covers a range of sugaring families and stories from small homegrown hobbyists to the big names in the county, such as Wheeler’s Maple with their large sugarbush, pancake restaurant, and famous maple and logging museums. The book starts off with a few brief introductory chapters presenting basic details about maple sugaring, syrup grading, and syrup judging that serve as useful contextual materials for the later chapters and histories. There are no illustrations in the book, it is only text, but each family’s chapter includes one or two maple-related recipes that were provided by those families.
Each family history is as much a record of their local genealogy as it is a recounting of the history of their maple operation, with most of the families sharing a common thread of being the descendants of Irish or Scottish immigrants that arrived in Ontario in the early to mid-1800s. Another common thread in almost all the histories in the book is a retelling of the devastating effects and subsequent recovery from a severe ice storm in 1998, as well as a derecho wind storm in 2022.
Like the well-known Wheeler’s Sugar Bush, another notable chapter covers the story of Brien and Marion Paul’s sugaring operation. The late Marion Paul is an especially notable figure in Ontario maple history as the only woman from Ontario and the only producer from Lanark County in the International Maple Hall of Fame.
It is great to see the documentation and publication that highlights local maple sugaring stories and families. The one thing that surprised me in reading the book was no mention of Claudia Smith’s book When the Sugar Bird Sings: The History of Maple Syrup in Lanark County.Admittedly, When the Sugar Bird Sings was published 25 years ago; however, it is still very much worth finding a used copy and having on the maple history shelf in one’s library. It is not common that a single county in the United States or Canada has one book written specifically on the history of maple sugaring in that area, and now Lanark County has two! Stafford-Wilson’s Lanark County Kitchen adds another layer of detail to the history of Lanark maple sugaring, especially when combined with When the Sugar Bird Sings.
Individual copies of Lanark County Kitchen: A Maple Legacy from Tree to Table cost CAD$25.00 may be ordered from the United States and Canada by contacting Arlene Stafford-Wilson directly at – lanarkcountybooks@gmail.com.
Example of Old Colony Maple Syrup label from Quebec Maple Products, LTD, 1934 trademark registration.
In the history of maple syrup brand names, “Old Colony Syrup” was a label used for over one hundred years by as many as six different companies in both the United States and Canada. The Old Colony brand was first used in the early 1900s by two unrelated syrup blending companies in Chicago and Boston. The name was later used in Canada and the United States from the 1920s to the early 2000s, handed down through a series of related companies.
Printing block for Scudder’s Syrup Company’s Old Colony Syrup label (image reversed).
The earliest example of the use of the Old Colony was a blended cane and maple syrup from the Scudder Syrup Company of Chicago, Illinois. The Scudder Company offered a variety of brands of blended cane and maple syrup starting in 1894, with Old Colony Syrup first appearing around 1896. The Scudder Company was one of many syrup blending companies operating in Chicago at this time and the Old Colony brand was one of their minor labels compared to more widely sold Scudder’s Canada Sap Syrup and later Scudder’s Brownie Brand Syrup.
Undated paper label for Old Colony Brand Cane & Maple Syrup from Bay State Maple Syrup Company.
The next early example of the use of the Old Colony name as a syrup brand comes from the Bay State Maple Syrup Company owned by C.M. Tice, operating out of Boston, Massachusetts. Like with the Scudder Company, the use of Old Colony by the Bay State Company was a minor label among other more prominent and popular syrup brands, such as Verhampshire, Fleur-de Lys, Mount Washington, and Mount Mansfield syrups. Since research has only uncovered examples of the label and no dated advertisements or other references, there is little information on the Bay State Company’s use of the Old Colony name and what years it was in use. We do know that the Bay State Company was most active from around 1905 to 1920.
However, the most long-lived and significant use of the Old Colony brand for packaging maple syrup began in 1920 with the Canada Maple Products Company in Toronto, Ontario. Unlike the first two examples of Old Colony Syrup, which were blends of cane and maple syrup, the Old Colony Syrup of the Canadian Maple Products Company was 100% pure maple syrup.
Maples, LTD., advertisement for Lion Brand Pure Maple Syrup from Toronto Daily Star, March 19, 1912.
The Canadian Maple Products Company was a syrup packing and maple products company that began around 1911 under the name of Maples, LTD. Initially, the company sold pure maple syrup and maple butter under the name of Lion Brand, which was only available in Canadian markets. Beginning in 1915, they changed the name of the maple butter to “Old Tyme Maple Butter.”
Early advertisement from Canadian Maple Products, LTD, for Old Colony Maple Syrup – Canadian Grocer, December 16, 1921.
In 1920, the Thornton Huyck family purchased Maples, LTD. and changed the name to the Canadian Maple Products Company, LTD. At this time, the company introduced the name Old Colony syrup name along with a colorful label featuring a yellow background, blue bands, and a splash of red maple leaves.
Advertisement for Old Colony Maple Syrup and Old Tyme Maple Butter – Canadian Grocer. April 1,1921.
In 1929 Thornton Huyck sold Canadian Maple Products Company, LTD., and its Old Colony and Old Tyme brands to the Cary Maple Sugar Company from St. Johnsbury, Vermont. The Cary Company was undertaking a massive expansion in Vermont and Québec, buying smaller syrup companies and expanding their footprint across the region. One of the Cary Company’s efforts was the construction of a modern three-story plant in Lennoxville, Québec for the processing and bottling of maple sugar and maple syrup. In preparation for operating the Lennoxville plant, the Cary Company also acquired a number of other maple syrup businesses from the surrounding Eastern Townships region of Québec, including the Boright Brothers and the Jenne Maple Syrup and Sugar Company, both from Sutton, Québec. As part of their sale to the Cary Company, the Boright Brothers and the Jenne Company sold their syrup manufacturing and bottling equipment and shipped it to Lennoxville. In addition, both Robert M. Boright and Frank Jenne became managers and key employees of Cary’s new Lennoxville plant.
Three story Cary Maple Sugar Company plant in Lennoxville, Québec circa 1929.
The Cary Company’s rapid expansion became a factor in the firm becoming over extended, contributing to the Cary Company’s colossal failure and bankruptcy in 1931. With the Cary Company in the midst of a reorganization, Robert Boright was elevated from general plant manager to the role of President of the entire Cary Company in the United States and Canada. With Boright’s shift to President, Frank Jenne become the Lennoxville plant manager.
Colorful 1930s-era one gallon round can for Old Colony Pure Maple Syrup from Québec Maple Products, LTD.
After a year of year of overseeing the operations and getting the Cary Company back on its feet, Robert Boright resigned his position as President and in late 1932 started his own company called Québec Maple Products, LTD. Conveniently, the newly constructed Cary Company plant in Lennoxville was for sale, which Boright purchased along with the former Canadian Maple Products Company brands of Old Tyme and Old Colony Syrup, with Frank Jenne continuing on as plant manager and a minor partner to Boright.
Early Québec Maple Products, LTD. glass bottle for Old Colony Maple Syrup next to February 28, 1935 – Windsor Start advertisement.
Québec Maple Products, LTD. soon after was offering Old Colony maple syrup to Canadian customers in 16- and 32-ounce circular glass jars and one gallon size tall round cans. The earliest of Québec Maple Products’ Old Colony labels were based on Canadian Maple Products’ earlier Old Colony Syrup design, with the yellow background, red text, and red maple leaves.
1950s era one gallon can with a winter sugaring scene for Old Colony Maple Syrup from Québec Maple Products, LTD.
In 1935, Québec Maple Products, LTD. began its own expansion and formed a subsidiary firm in St. Albans, Vermont called American Maple Products Corporation. With this expansion, Frank Jenne moved from the Lennoxville plant to St. Albans to be the Vice President and general manager of US operations. With the expansion across the border, it was easier for Québec Maple Products, through American Maple Products, to access American markets and introduced the Old Colony brand to a new group of American customers.
Two 1950s examples of early label designs for Old Colony Maple Syrup from American Maple Products Corporation.
American Maple Products Corporation moved from St. Albans, to Newport, Vermont in 1940. Two years later in 1942, Jenne and Boright bought out one another’s interests in Québec Maple Products, LTD., and American Maple Products Corporation. Boright took sole ownership of Québec business and Jenne took over American Maple Products with both continuing to use the Old Colony brand with their separate companies.
American Maple Products Corporation’s Old Colony Maple Syrup label from the 1960s.
Under Jenne’s ownership and later that of his son-in-law Sherb Doubleday, American Maple Products Corporation expanded the company’s variety of maple products and introduced its own designs for its Old Colony labels and containers. Over the next 50 years American Maple Products redesigned its Old Colony label at least four times.
Two versions of American Maple Products Corporation’s Old Colony Maple Syrup labels from the 1970s and 1980s.
American Maple Products Corporation continued to sell syrup under the Old Colony brand into at least the 1980s. American Maple Products Corporation closed its doors in 1994 when Roger Ames, the son-in-law of Sherb Doubleday and owner of the company, was accused and pled guilty to selling syrup labeled as pure maple syrup when it had been adulterated with beet sugar syrup.
Example of advertisement and bottle design for Quebec Maple Products’ Old Tyme Syrup from October 30, 1958 – Windsor Star.
Boright continued as owner of Quebec Maple Products until 1958 when he sold his company to the Canada Starch Company, LTD., and its best Foods Canada Division, with Old Colony and Old Tyme syrups continuing as the company brands. Best Foods was sold to Unilevel Company in 2000 and Unilevel sold the Old Colony and Old Tyme brands to ACH Foods in 2002. Old Colony Syrup continued to be available in Canadian markets until at least 2004 and their blended Old Tyme Pancake Syrup until around 2015.
Enjoy the rare opportunity to have an expert historian personally transport and guide you through a unique chapter in the history of Vermont and the Northeast Kingdom and learn about the people and places responsible for St. Johnsbury, Vermont being named the Maple Center of the World.
The tour will be led by maple industry historian and author Dr. Matthew Thomas, the leading expert on the history of the Cary Maple Sugar and Maple Grove companies.
Travelling by bus, participants will enjoy a narrated tour that will visit over a dozen locations in and around St. Johnsbury that are important in the history of the Cary and Maple Grove Companies. As a special souvenir, participants will receive a one-of-a-kind companion guide authored by Dr. Thomas, that features historic images and information on the sites visited on the tour.
This tour is offered as special event during the Kingdom Maple Festival in downtown St. Johnsbury.
Details: Advanced registration is required. Limited to the first 50 registrations! Please note that your registration is not complete until you checkout and pay the Tour fee. Thank you!
Cost: $75.00
Date: Saturday, April 20, 2024
Time: 1:00 – 4:00 pm
Location: Starting and Ending at the St. Johnsbury Depot
Download this flyer to share information about this event.
You can read my latest maple history contribution to the Minnesota Maple Syrup Producers’ Association December 2023 newsletter at this link or by clicking on the image below.
This article looks at the history of Bucket Brand Syrup and the Pioneer Maple Products Company in St. Paul, Minnesota. It is not widely known that following the sale the Log Cabin Syrup Company to General Foods in 1927, the Towle family embarked on a second chapter in the blended syrup industry as the Pioneer Maple Products Company.
I recently took a research trip to Québec and while on that trip was pleased to discover a new maple history book published earlier this year by author Maxime Caouette. Written entirely in French, the book is titled, Histoire Acéricole: Anecdotes, Procédés techniques, Chalumeaux, which roughly translates in English to Maple Sugaring History: Anecdotes – Technology – Spouts. However, for those looking for an easy to read, yet comprehensive look at the highlights of maple sugaring history in Québec, I recommend getting a copy of this book and using the power of Google Translate or some other translation app to assist you in reading this book.
Overall, this is a book that recounts the general history of the maple syrup industry and the evolution of the process of making maple syrup. Since Maxime is a Québecois author, the book rightly focuses on what he knows best and what is closest to him, maple sugaring in Québec. It also highlights areas of maple history that are of special interest to Maxime, like vintage syrup cans and maple spout technology. The book also presents some of Maxime’s more personal connections to maple sugaring with anecdotes and stories shared with Maxime by his grandfather. Since discovering this book, I reached out to Maxime, who is bilingual and equally comfortable with French and English, and I have enjoyed a wide variety of conversations on maple history where we have each shared research and learned from one another.
Author Maxime Caouette.
As his photo shows, Maxime Caouette is a young man, but his age belies his knowledge and passion for maple history which has been passed down in his family. He may be young, but he has done his homework, and moreover continues to explore and expand the breadth of his knowledge of maple history. On his father’s side he is a fifth-generation maple syrup maker and was raised in Lévis, Québec. He has completed advanced studies in agriculture and is currently employed with a maple equipment manufacturing company. While always interested in maple history and hearing stories from his grandfather, his focus and research efforts increased while undertaking his agricultural studies, leading to a desire to assemble what he had gathered and learned in this book.
Example of the fine illustrations in Histoire Acéricole.
At 183 pages, this softcover book is not massive in its presentation, but in my opinion it is the single most current and up to date volume that covers the breadth of maple history, both in the early years, but more importantly the last century. What I like about Maxime’s book is that it is easy to read and well organized, and is nicely illustrated with both color and black and white images. Moreover, it covers the highlights of what I consider to be some of the most important themes, events and developments in the 20th century maple industry in Canada and the United States.
I especially like this book because in telling the story of maple sugaring in Québec, it covers the topics that interest me most. It struck me that this is the sort of book I might write and contains the sort of information that I might include. Perhaps my fondness for the book stems from the fact that in researching and writing the book, Maxime regularly consulted many of the posts and historical research shared on this website. What’s not to love about that!
The book features abundant color photographs and a clear, well-organized layout.
Like all good overviews of maple history, Maxime covers the topic of the origins of maple sugaring and the role of Indigenous peoples in bringing maple sugaring to the world. But more importantly, the book is about all aspects of the maple industry, past and present, including explaining how maple syrup is made today. Maxime does a great job of breaking the process down into its many steps and then focusing on each step to talk about the evolution of the tools and technology that were used. Although the primary focus is on the history of maple sugaring, Maxime’s volume does what most books focused on the history of maple sugaring technology do not do, and that is he combines the past processes with a clear presentation and explanation of the modern methods and technology.
The book includes a presentation of the evolution of the maple sap tap from its wood to its various metal shapes and designs, on to today’s plastic spouts. Maxime shares a detailed listing and evolution of plastic spouts for use with plastic tubing, something not found in other books dedicated to the history of early metal and wood spouts.
Pages from the section on the evolution and variety of the more modern spouts specifically designed for use with plastic tubing.
Maxime also includes a glossary of maple sugaring terms (in French), an inventory of the major maple equipment manufacturing companies (Canadian and US), and presents a timeline of events important in maple history, which as one would expect, is uniquely Québec-centric and notably different that the timelines that are commonly shared in the United States. Besides being a great educational tool, this is a wonderful reminder of the biases in the histories told in each of our countries and the need to work hard to ignore and remove the border as a barrier to studying and learning about North America’s entire history of maple sugaring.
As was stated at the beginning of this post, this book is entirely written in French, but I would not let that be a deterrent to the interested reader. Pull out your mobile phone and open the camera function in the Google Translate App and use that tool to translate the French to English. Sure, it can be cumbersome, but it is worth the effort in my opinion.
Image of the home page of the Histoire Acéricole website.
In addition to his book, Maxime has created an interesting website to both promote the book but also to share additional photos and information about such topics as vintage Québec syrup cans and a collection of historic advertisements for maple syrup equipment companies.
The book was published by Lac Plume D’Oie Edition, a small Québec based vanity press, but all orders for copies at this time are made through the author. The book can be purchased by contacting Maxime Caouette in Québec through the contact form on his website: www.histoireacericole.wixsite.com/website. The book is listed for CAD$30.00 and payment for shipment to addresses in the United States will be at the expense of the purchaser.
For Vermonters, the quickest way to start a fight or elicit an opinion is to declare where one can get the best maple creemee in the State. But what exactly is a creemee and from where does the name originate? In the past, some journalists and interested commentators have weighed in with their opinions, but few seem to have actually researched the question and looked at what the historical record might offer. So, with that in mind, I dug a little deeper and this is what I found.
The author enjoying a maple creemee on the porch of Bragg Farm and Sugarhouse in East Montpelier, Vermont.
Although many readers of this website are familiar with the creemee, it is important to first clarify and describe what exactly a creemee is and is not. A creemee is a kind of soft-serve ice milk (even though it is called ice cream) made from a liquid milk-based mix that includes sweeteners, flavorings, stabilizers, and emulsifiers and can be found in a variety of flavors. The mix goes into a specially designed machine that turns and chills the mix, adding air and forming small ice crystals, giving soft serve its smooth and creamy texture that is firm but not as hard as traditional ice cream with its larger ice crystals. Soft-serve machines are then able to dispense the ice-milk into a dish or cone in on-demand single servings.
In some cases, the flavoring is added by the manufacturers of the purchased mix, Un other cases, the flavoring is added by the machine on an individual basis as it is drawn from the machine’s freezing and turning drum before dispensing. What makes creemees, and any soft-serve ice-milk, different from traditional hard or hand-dipped ice cream is that creemees have a lower milk-fat content, have substantially more air by volume, and usually does not contain egg, unless it is frozen custard. Creemees are usually 5-8% milk fat, whereas ice cream is at least 10% and usually closer to 20% milk fat.
Having established what a creemee is (soft-served ice-milk), the real questions of interest here are where does the name creemee come from, and what are the origins of the maple flavored creemee that is so unique to Vermont? The spelling of the name itself is somewhat of a mixed bag. While the most common spelling is creemee with two Es and no hyphen, over the years the name has been spelled a variety of ways, ranging from creamie to creamee to cree-mee. As far the “correct” spelling goes, it seems that as long as it sounds the same, you can spell it any number of ways. For example, the Rutland County Maple Producers used three different spellings in the early years of selling their creemees at the Vermont State Fair.
It has sometimes been written in Vermont that the creemee name is unique to Vermont and that it is unclear where the creemee name originated. Some have offered a more romantic suggestion that the source for creemee came from neighboring French-speaking Quebec where the words for ice cream are crème glacée, from which a shortened contraction could get you cree-mee or creemee. However, a little historical research points us to a far less romantic origin to the name creemee. Additionally, it turns out that creemee soft serve ice cream was hardly unique to Vermont and that the creemee name has been around in Vermont and many other places in the United States for over 70 years.
Let’s start with the beginnings of soft serve. Looking at the history of soft-serve ice milk machines, we see that they were first invented in the late 1930s. By the early 1940s, there were a handful of soft-serve stores in the mid-west states. Following the end of World War II, soft-serve stands begin to appear in much greater numbers, usually as small, seasonal walk-up stands.
Interestingly, until the late 1940s, some states and local communities had regulations prohibiting the sale of soft-serve ice milk in individual servings. Some ice cream manufacturers were concerned that lower priced ice milk, with its lower milk-fat content was falsely being sold as ice cream, which by law had to have at least 10% milkfat. To protect their interests, across the country in places like Minnesota, Alabama, Hawaii and Florida, the ice cream lobby promoted rules that required all ice milk to be sold only in clearly labeled packages declaring the contents to be ice milk. Whether it was intentional is not clear, but such packaging and labeling rules had the results of preventing the sale of ice milk in individual cones or bowls to customers. A growing interest in the popular soft-serve stands, fueled by technological improvements in soft-serve machines encouraged business interests to push for changes in the ice- milk regulations and change the rules that previously only allowed ice-cream (based on milk-fat levels) to be sold in individual servings.
Ad for Cree-Mee store in Vergennes, Vermont, from the Enterprise and Vermonter, June 28, 1951, page 5.
As a result, a soft-serve explosion began around 1950 and continued for the next couple of years, when a handful of entrepreneurial businessmen promoted the opening of franchised soft-serve stands under names like Dari-Freeze, Tastee Freez, Dairy Queen, and most notably, Cree-Mee. In 1947 there were a few hundred soft serve stands around the country, but by 1955 there were estimated to be over 10,000 stands in operation. The Freez-King Company, also known as the Harlee Manufacturing Company, out of Chicago, Illinois promoted the Cree-Mee name as one of its soft-serve stand brand names. President and owner of the Freez-King Company, Leo Maranz stated that he opened his first franchise in March 1951 and by the end of 1955 he himself would have 1425 stands, including several Cree-Mee stands in Vermont.
The first Vermont stands with Cree-Mee in their name opened in June and August of 1951 in Vergennes as the Cree-Mee Custard Store, in Manchester as Bischoff’s Cree-Mee Stand, and Cree-Mee of Burlington.
Advertisement for Bischoff’s Cree-Mee Stand that appeared in the Rutland Daily Herald, June 14, 1952, page 11.
By 1952 there was also the Cree-Mee Park-Side Drive In north of Brattleboro, Lovella’s Cree-Mee on the Barre-Montpelier Rd., and perhaps a few others.
1952 ad for Lovella’s Cree-Mee stand in Barre, Vermont from the Barre Daily Times, June 3, page 7.
Through the rest of 1950s a few more Cree-Mee franchises opened in Vermont and, like the brand names of Kleenex for facial tissues or Band-Aid for adhesive bandages, Creem-Mee brand soft-serve was common and ubiquitous enough to take on the role as the universal term for soft-serve ice-milk in Vermont. As much as Vermonters love to think of the creemee as their own home-grown invention, the truth is far less romantic.
Advertisement for the Cree-Mee Park-Side Drive in Brattleboro, Vermont that appeared in the June 12, 1952 Brattleboro Reformer, page 5.
The creemee had its start elsewhere in the United States and has been a frozen desert staple in Vermont for over 70 years. Things get a little more interesting when looking at the origins of the maple flavored creemee, which is a flavor that is truly unique to Vermont. Initially, the flavors offered for creemees in the 1950s and 1960s were limited to vanilla and chocolate. Sometimes pineapple was on the menu as well as a weekly special flavor. However, there is no indication that maple was ever offered as a creemee flavor in Vermont (or anywhere else) until the 1980s.
Image of Carl Johnson and Jack Bittner’s Cree-Mee stand in Brattleboro. These Cree-Mee stands from the Harlee Manufacturing Company were of a unform design and may even have been prefabricated. Brattleboro Reformer, June 6, 1952, page 5.
The maple creemee was introduced by the Rutland County Maple Producers (RCMP) at their stand at the Vermont State Fair in Rutland in 1981. The first place I found mention of this detail was in a September 5, 2007, letter to the editor of the Rutland Daily Herald written by Pam Green, a Rutland County maple producer and member of the International Maple Hall of Fame. Wanting to know more, I contacted Pam Green and asked where she learned of the date and details of this event and if she could tell me more. Pam graciously shared that she learned of the RCMP origins of the maple creemee from the late Wilson “Bill” Clark, long-time Rutland County maple producer, past president of the Vermont Maple Sugarmakers Association and collector of Vermont maple heritage. Bill Clark told Pam Green of how, in 1981, C. Blake Roy, a recently retired maple marketing specialist for the Vermont Department of Agriculture, suggested the RCMP sell a maple flavored creemee at the Vermont State Fair. Taking Blake’s brainchild to the next step, Clark and RCMP president, Truman Young, brought the idea along with a few gallons of B Grade maple syrup to Tom Seward at Seward’s Dairy in Rutland, Vermont.
Examples of three spellings of “creemee” by the Rutland County Maple Producers, 1992, 1994, and 1999.
My next step was to try to get first-hand information that took me as close to the participants and events as I could. Unfortunately, C. Roy Blake had passed away in 1986 and Bill Clark died in 2021. Thankfully I was able to get in touch with Tom Seward, who confirmed the story shared by Pam Green and added important details. Tom told me that at that time, the RCMP had their own creemee machine at their Vermont State Fair stand and Seward’s had been providing the RCMP with the mix for making their vanilla creemees which were served with syrup poured on top.
According to Tom, the RCMP contacted Seward’s Dairy with the maple flavored creemee idea in 1980 or 1981. At the time, the Dairy was making their own vanilla and chocolate flavored creemee mixes for sale to creemee vendors in two and a half gallon bags. To make the maple flavored mix they used the recipe for the 5% fat content vanilla and replaced the liquid sugar in the recipe with maple syrup.
Image of the old Rutland County Maple Producers maple products stand at the Vermont State Fair where they sold many maple creemees over the years.
Tom went on to tell me, it was a special product made in small batches, 300 gallons at a time put up into 600 one half gallon containers. The Dairy mixed in the syrup at the end of the mixing process when it was all in the pasteurization vat. It was heated to 165F for 30 minutes then cooled in a tank and packaged into paper containers or bags.It was pasteurized and had a 21-day shelf life, long enough to last for the duration of the fair. For the RCMP’s maple flavored mix, it was requested that they put the mix into ½ gallon paper containers rather than the normal 2.5 gallon creemee mix bags. The paper containers were easier to handle by volunteers at the RCMP stand than the heavier and saggy 2.5 gallon bags.
The RCMP’s maple creemee was an instant hit, and by the second year they were being asked to make a second batch, since the first was selling out. At the end of the Vermont Fair, if there was still some mix left over, The RCMP took what little they had, froze it, and brought it to the Eastern States Expo to sell maple creemees. As a result, the specially made maple flavored mix was always used up and none went to waste. Seward’s made this maple mix only for the RCMP, continuing until around 1988.
In the end, the history of the Vermont maple creemee is perhaps not as romantic as one might expect. The creemee has been around for over 70 years in Vermont and the rest of the United States and thanks to some creative minds in the Rutland County Maple Producers, the maple creemee has been a delight since 1981.
Dr. Susan Deborah Wade – Courtesy Susan Deborah Wade.
Dr. Susan Deborah Wade is a historian who recently completed a doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee titled, “Ojibwe Women and Maple Sugar Production in Anishinaabewakiing and the Red River Region, 1670-1873”. Maple Syrup History website creator Matthew Thomas (MT) had the recent pleasure of conducting the following email interview with Dr. Wade (SDW) to learn more about her interesting and important work and share it with interested readers.
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MT: Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and share your research with the readers of my website. It is always a pleasure to discover new and interesting scholarship on topics related to maple history. With my own background in ethnohistory and Indigenous studies, I am especially excited to read and share your work with the maple history community. Can you give us a quick summary of what your dissertation is about and what you have learned?
SDW: My dissertation focuses on Indigenous women and an important food product – maple sugar. This foodstuff was used as medicine, food, trade good, and as a gift. The setting for this work is Anishinaabewakiing, a large region that is eventually divided by an international border by the British and Americans in 1783 (editor’s note: the Red River region encompasses portions of today’s Manitoba, Ontario, North Dakota, and Minnesota). Fur trade companies and settlers on both sides of this border used maple sugar as a provision for workers, and as a sweetener in place of hard to get and expensive cane sugar. Maple sugar was traded by Indigenous women for trade goods and in turn collected and auctioned by fur trade companies to increase their profits. As settlers moved into the Great Lakes region, land use changed. For example, treaties reduced the amount of land the Anishinaabeg had to continue producing maple sugar and lumber companies clear cut forests.
Map showing territory of Anishinaabe peoples in United States and Canada. Source – https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/anishinaabe#
MT: The title of your doctoral dissertation contains many interesting clues to what one can expect to encounter in its reading. Can you tell us more about the choices and importance of the different components in the title of your dissertation? Such as your reason for choosing these particular start and end dates, why the Red River region, or the meaning of the word Anishinaabewakiing?
Map showing range of acer negundo, aka Manitoba Maple or Boxelder. Note overlap of range of acer negundo with earlier map of Anishinaabe territory. Their intersection is an area of focus in Dr. Wade’s research. Source – http://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=3
SDW: I expanded on my master’s thesis which focused on maple sugar production by Indigenous women set in what is now Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan. In my dissertation I wanted to expand the time frame and region but also more important to write about an Indigenous perspective, and the land the Anishinaabeg inhabit. The Anishinaabeg are the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi. Part of learning about an Anishinaabeg perspective is both learning and using Anishinaabemowin (Anishinaabe language). I set the narrative in Anishinaabewakiing and discuss northern and southern Anishinaabewakiing when the international border is drawn on the map in 1783. The Ojibwe migrate west into the Red River region in the mid 18th century and tapped Manitoba Maple.
MT: In 2011 you completed a master’s thesis in history at UW Milwaukee focusing on a similar topic of Indigenous Women and Maple Sugaring the Upper Midwest, albeit covering a slightly smaller time span of 1760 to 1848 and a different geographic space of the Upper Midwest. How did you get interested in this topic and how did your master’s thesis research set the stage for your doctoral research?
SDW: When I began thinking about getting a master’s degree it was to become a better researcher in my job as an historic cook and collections manager at living history sites where I worked. I grew up in Canada and had a passion for fur trade history and maple syrup. The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee had a course on food history and a fur trade scholar, Dr. Cary Miller in the History Department. I began working with Dr. Miller on fur trade history and Great Lakes Indigenous history. In one of the courses, I read Susan Sleeper-Smith’s Indian Women and French Men. There was a tantalizing reference to maple sugar being shipped east to Detroit. I wanted to know more about who produced it, who collected it and where else it was shipped. Eventually, with the help of Dr. Miller I shaped a master’s thesis that was narrow enough in scope for a master’s theses but with the ability to expand in depth and breadth to a dissertation.
MT: Where would you place your research and interests as far as established schools of research? Do you see your work as ethnohistory, Indigenous studies, gender studies, food history, cultural geography, or a less structured but more inclusive interdisciplinary studies?
SDW: I see it as an interdisciplinary study that includes food history, Indigenous studies, traditional archival analysis, and analysis of language.
MT: Maple sugar in its various roles as a food item, an exchange good, or as a tool of economic power is central to your research. How has your research help us understand the historic role and place of Indigenous peoples in the development and evolution of the modern maple industry?
SDW: Indigenous women in the sugar maple growing region were instrumental in introducing maple sugar to colonists. Maple sugar was also modified in its appearance by Indigenous women to satisfy the need by upper class settlers for white sugar – white cane sugar was an indicator of wealth. Hand in hand with trade was the introduction of alterative equipment like copper kettles for producing maple products, and further changes to production. Great Lakes fur trade companies exported maple sugar east and, in some cases, Indigenous women’s maple sugar made it to Britain’s shores.
MT: Has developing a deeper understanding of the cultural and economic importance of maple products sparked interest in looking at questions of maple use in other historic contexts?
SDW: It has sparked an interest in the use of other maple products such as vinegar. It has also sparked an interest in the use of the sap of other trees in the Great Lakes region such as birch and the sap of trees on other continents.
MT: Your research topic geographically covers portions of what are today the United States and Canada, and likely your source materials were found in both countries, not to mention probably being written in English and French. What kinds of historical source material were you able to examine for your research and were there challenges to working with source material from two separate countries and languages?
SDW: I did not deal with too many French sources. The companies I concentrated on were British, Scottish, or American run companies. The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) was run out of London, England. I went to the HBC archives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Example of archival materials used in Dr. Wade’s research. Source – Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Archives of Manitoba, Journal of Occurrences at Henly District 1819/20, B.117/a/4.
That is a wonderful archive and the Hudson’s Bay Company has detailed documentation of its posts. The management in London expected daily accounts of what was happening at the posts as well as detailed records of trade. The North West Company (NWC) was formed by small fur trade companies owned by Scottish merchants living in Montreal. Although they kept the French-Canadian voyageurs on their payroll the men who ran the posts were English speaking. The HBC eventually took over the NWC in 1821 and the men who ran the posts did not keep as detailed records as the HBC. The American Fur Company (AFC), established in 1808 in New York, had ties with some of the merchants in Montreal, but after the War of 1812 had virtual monopoly in the southern Anishinaabewakiing region. For the AFC I primarily used “Grace Lee Nute’s “Calendar of the American Fur Company Papers.” Some records for a small Montreal company, the XY company, that eventually joined with the NWC can be found in the Collections of the Wisconsin State Historical Society.
MT: Your study covers a time span of over two hundred years, during which a lot of things may have changed within the Fur Trade and Indigenous communities. What changes did you find over this span related to the manufacture, trade, or sale of maple sugar?
SDW: There were changes in all these areas. Changes in production happened as Indigenous people encountered European trade goods. The equipment changed as trade items were introduced and adapted and adopted by Indigenous groups for use. There were also changes to both the appearance and amount of sugar produced. Upper class white settlers and upper-class Hudson’s Bay company officers wanted maple sugar to look like white cane sugar and Indigenous women shifted the way they processed and purified some of the sugar for this market. In the spring of 1836, the man who oversaw a Hudson’s Bay Company post in the Lake Superior region sent two men to sugar camps to secure or “reserve the right” to trade for that year’s supply. The HBC did not want to miss out on this valuable commodity by having the rival AFC trade for it first.
MT: Your scholarly interests are not purely in the realm of ethnohistory, gender and Indigenous studies. You recently were part of a team that translated the classic French children’s book, “The Little Prince” into Anishinaabemowin, the Indigenous language of the Anishinaabe or Ojibwe peoples. How did you get involved in this project and how has working with Anishinaabemowin influenced your historical research?
SDW: My thesis advisor and advisor at the beginning of my dissertation, Cary Miller, stressed the importance of learning Anishinaabemowin in order to understand an Ojibwe worldview and to make connections with community members. I was taught the language by Margaret Noodin. I also worked with Dr Noodin on a grant, Ganawendamaw. As part of this grant, I helped with curriculum development for Anishinaabemowin class. One book used by teachers of many different languages is Le Petit Prince, it is translated in to so many languages. She was interested in completing a translation for use by teachers and families interested in learning Anishinaabemowin. I worked with her, Michael Zimmerman, and Angela Mesic to translate the text. It was during Covid lock down and was a wonderful experience to work with these scholars and create a text that could be used to teach and continue to revitalize the Anishinaabe language.
MT: The reservation era, a period immediately following the period of your study, saw great changes and upheaval for Indigenous communities. It would please me greatly to learn that you have plans for carrying this research further to look at the reservation era when forced relocation to reservations limited the seasonal mobility to places like sugaring camps, fur trade economies were replaced by cash-based settler economies, and substantial changes in gendered divisions of labor?
SDW: My master’s thesis did not go into this topic, but my dissertation does discuss the effects of settler colonialism on the Ojibwe and maple sugar production. One of the chapters talks about the ways Great Lakes and Red River nations keep a hold of their culture through treaty negotiations. In the nineteenth century in the United States, Ojibwe ogimaag (leaders) negotiated for the rights to gather resources on ceded land also known as usufructuary rights in the United States. In the case of Ojibwe in Canada, the ogimaag negotiated with the Canadian government in what is called the Numbered Treaties. In these regions the First Nations, including Ojibwe, did not cede land but instead negotiated for sharing the land and working with Euro-Canadians in taking care of natural resources. This, however, was not the intention of the Canadian government or her representatives whose aim was a surrender of lands. In the case of maple sugar, it was not just resources that were taken away, but also women-centered places where political activities, ceremonies, and teaching took place. It was a loss of women’s roles in their environment.
By the late nineteenth century, cane and beet sugar became the dominant form of table and cooking sugar. Maple sugar production waned but maple syrup gained in popularity, as you explain in your dissertation “Where the Forest Meets the Farm.” In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in matters of maple syrup manufacturing it was not just the decimation of maple groves and appropriation of land but the attack on gendered food procurement. The Allotment Act (1887) promoted the life of the yeoman farmer whereby a man worked his farmland. Reservation land was divided into single farms given to men of households or single men. Although Indigenous women continued to harvest wild rice, collect berries and other resources, and manufacture maple sugar. It was not until after the Great Depression in the 1930s, that Indigenous men began to take on the production of maple sugar and syrup. Today Anishinaabeg maple production is more multi-gendered.
MT: You defended your dissertation in 2021. What is next? Do you plan to publish the doctoral study as a book length monograph, or will you be focusing on publishing the results in the form of a peer-reviewed article?
SDW: I have been working on a manuscript that combines my master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation. It has been a challenge learning to rewrite a dissertation into a book. I hope to send it to a publisher by the end of this summer. I am also working with a fellow scholar to create an exhibit on maple trees and the maple sugar bush.
You can read and download a copy of Dr. Wade’s doctoral dissertation at THIS LINK.
April 20, 2024 – St. Johnsbury, Vermont
