There is a short lived, but lively history of two evaporator companies from northern Franklin County, in Vermont. For about ten years in the 1800s, the makers of the Climax Evaporator out of Berkshire Center and the Champion Evaporator of West Berkshire waged a hard-fought battle for the hearts and customers of the area.
The Climax Evaporator was the invention of George Cutter of nearby Sutton, Quebec, who patented his unique design in Canada on June 10, 1881 and in the United States in August 1881 following a May 31, 1881 application filing. The Climax evaporator featured series of horizontal tubes instead of drop or raised flues to increase surface area of sap exposed to heat in the back or sap pan.
Cutter sold his Climax Evaporator on the Quebec side of the border through his own sales business of Cutter & Co. Across the border on the Vermont side, Homer S. Clark, out of the town of Berkshire or Berkshire Center obtained a sole proprietor for U.S. sales of Cutter’s Climax beginning in 1881. By December 1881, H.S. Clark had reported that he had sold 40 evaporators in Franklin and Lamoille Counties.
The West Berkshire Champion Evaporator was invented by Philo S. Ewins just a few miles down the road from the home of Clark’s Climax Evaporator. Not to be confused with the G.H. Grimm Company’s Champion Evaporator, Ewins’ evaporator was patented in the U.S. and Canada in 1882 and featured a tubular flue design similar in appearance to the Climax Evaporator, which led to a fair amount of friendly and not so friendly competition between the two neighboring companies.
Getting his invention and manufacturing off the ground, P.S. Ewins partnered with local tin worker M.B. Marsh in 1882 to manufacture the Champion evaporator. Marsh had begun running a tin works in West Berkshire since 1878, but left the partnership to move to Massachusetts in 1883. In January 1885, Ewins relocated his Champion manufacturing shop from West Berkshire to the nearby town of Richford and brought Mr. Harlow C. Ayer on board to assist with evaporator sales.
In the following months strong words and criticism were shared in the local newspaper, the Richmond Journal and Gazette, between people connected to the two companies and a back and forth battle raged for the better part of a year. Criticism largely centered on claims and accusations of poor-quality workmanship, bad business practices, and inferior performance of each of the competitors.
Following the spirited back and forth, tit for tat and he said she said, spat in the newspaper that played out from January into late March of 1885, Ewins laid down $500 for a head-to-head challenge of his Champion Evaporator against Clark’s Climax Evaporator in a performance test to see which evaporator could make more syrup in 12 hours under identical conditions. Clark responded with a lesser wager that the editors of the paper made clear was not equal and insufficient to match the challenge. To further complicate matters, in April in 1885 Ewins filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Clark and the Climax evaporator. Such a challenge is itself interesting since the Climax Evaporator was patented over 6 months prior to the Champion design. However, it seems to have had the effect of taking the stuffing out of Clark in their back and forth argument.
In spite of the substantial amount of ink that was spent in trading insults in print, it is unclear if the proposed competition was ever carried out or, if so, what was the outcome. Similarly, the results of the patent infringement lawsuit are not known. Following the introduction of the lawsuit and the possibly failed head-to-head challenge, we see no more mention of Clark or the Climax Sap Evaporator in the Richford newspaper. We do know not that not long after, Clark and his wife moved from Berkshire to Somerville, Massachusetts. On the Canadian side of the border, the Climax Evaporator continued to be manufactured and sold by Cutter & Co. out of Sutton, Quebec as late as 1891 and possibly longer. George Cutter the inventor of the Climax Evaporator passed away in Sutton in 1932 at age 78.
By March 1886, the Champion Evaporator Company had started to manufacture another evaporator line called the Defiance Evaporator which featured the more popular drop flue design. The arrival on the scene and the growing success of G.H. Grimm’s Champion evaporator, out of Ohio at that time, may have prompted Ewins to abandon the use of the name Champion in his evaporator, not to mention the realities of the superior design in Grimm’s raised flue evaporator over the tubular design.
The last advertisement we see selling the Champion and Defiance Evaporators by The Champion Evaporator Company of Richmond, Vermont is in 1887 although the name of Champion Evaporator Company continued to be used into 1888 in selling stoves, ranges, and farm equipment. In early 1888 L.D. Rowley, a local businessman who owned a horse and livery operation joined H.C. Ayer in running the Champion Evaporator Company. The Champion Evaporator Company continued to advertise as a farm implement dealer into 1888, but despite their name, was no longer listing evaporators among the tools and equipment they were offering. By the 1890s H.C. Ayer and L.D. Rowley had started a beeswax oil company, and later Rowley was running a hotel in Richford, and Ayer was selling coal.