By Matthew M. Thomas
There is an interesting and sometimes complex and convoluted history of a group of maple syrup packing companies in Vermont in the first part of the twentieth century. At that time in the history of the maple industry, many producers sold the bulk of their maple syrup and maple sugar to packing companies that handled the shipping, marketing and repackaging of the maple products into smaller containers for retail sales to consumers. A large part of the packing industry was also engaged in blending maple syrup with cane or corn syrup to create less expensive maple flavored table syrups like the well known Log Cabin syrup and Vermont Maid syrup.
This tangled story starts in 1890 when brothers Llewellyn Welch and Charles Welch along with Harry Miller started the Welch Brothers Maple Company in South Burlington, Vermont. The three met in St. Joseph, Missouri when the two Ohio born brothers were in the general syrup and preserves business. In 1890, all three men came to Burlington, Vermont to specifically start a maple products company. The first plant that they built was on Battery and Cherry Street in Burlington where they made bottled maple syrup, but also made maple sugar candies, maple creams, maple cough drops, and other confections like chocolate bon-bons and caramels. The company was formally incorporated in 1891 with C.B. Welch as president and L.W. Welch as secretary. By the time of the meeting of the 1895 board of directors, C.B. Welch was no longer an officer or member of the board and L.W. Welch had moved into the position of president. The following year, The C.B. Welch Maple Co. was in court against Welch Brothers Maple Co. Under Llewelyn Welch’s leadership, the Welch Brothers Maple Company continued successfully doing business in Burlington. In 1917 Welch Brothers contracted to build a new three-story brick, fireproof plant at the corner of Pine and Marble Streets in Burlington.
You can read an interesting architectural history of the Welch Brothers Maple Company Pine Street location as a part of Karyn Norwood’s 2014 online publication From Cereal to Can Openers: Historic Industries Along Pine Street.
C.B. Welch made his way from Burlington to St. Johnsbury and in 1904 incorporated a new maple company to purchase, blend, can and bottle maple syrup. However, it appears that this company never got off the ground and a few years later C.B. Welch turns up in Rutland, Vermont trying to interest the town leaders in supporting the establishment of a maple products canning and bottling facility. C.B. Welch was successful in his pitch and in 1908 efforts began to raise capital for the Maple Tree Sugar Company with C.B. Welch as manager and secretary. Formal articles of incorporation were filed in September of 1908 and in 1909 the company occupied a space at the corner of Edson and Willow Streets in Rutland.
The Maple Tree Sugar Company in Rutland got off the ground, but C.B. Welch did not stick around for long and possibly left under difficult terms, as suggested by his again being in court in Rutland in 1911 against Maple Tree Sugar Company. In 1910 C.B. Welch appeared in the communities of Canton, Gouvenuer, and Lowville in northern New York drumming up support for a new corporation and plant for canning and bottling maple syrup. C.B. Welch’s efforts met with success and in the fall of 1910 the Adirondacks Maple Syrup Company was incorporated with $50,000 of capital stock and plans were put into place for construction of a two-story, 40 by 100 foot factory near the railroad in Lowville, NY. As was typical of his pattern of work, C.B. Welch appears to have moved on from the Adirondack Maple Syrup Company the following year.
Another chapter in the story features Fletcher N. Johnson, who got his start as a grocery wholesaler in Bellefontaine, Ohio in 1900, incorporating in 1901 as the F.N. Johnson Company. He expanded that business to become a major maple sugar and syrup wholesale dealer, selling syrup under the Sugar Bird brand as early as 1913. In late 1916 he formed a new company as the F.N. Johnson Maple Syrup Company in Bellefontaine. In the intervening years, he tried his hand at politics unsuccessfully running for Congress in Ohio in 1910. As a maple wholesaler, F.N. Johnson often travelled to Vermont to purchase large amounts of syrup and some sugar. Having a familiarity with Vermont, in late September 1916 F.N. Johnson formed a new venture called the Vermont Maple Syrup Company in Essex Junction. F. N. Johnson was joined by his brother in law, Laurrell M. DeVore of Bellefontaine, Ohio, along with Adelbert B. Beeman of Fairfax, and Arthur A. Beeman of Essex Junction, and A.B. Rugg of Essex Junction.
The Vermont Maple Syrup Company built a new two-story wood building in Essex Junction and began operations in 1917, buying bulk maple syrup for blending and bottling with most of their sales occurring in the western United States.
At some point in the later 19-teens, the maple sugar magnate, George C. Cary, became a minor stockholder in the Vermont Maple Syrup Company. In 1919 F.N. Johnson sold his 50% controlling share of the Vermont Maple Syrup Company to George Cary, then the very next day, sued his former company for trademark infringement over the use of the “Sugar Bird” brand, something Johnson had brought with him from his Ohio-based F.N. Johnson Company, and had been using for its blended syrup since at least 1913. Cary was caught off guard and assumed that he was free to continue to use the un-trademarked brand name just as the Vermont Maple Syrup Company had in the past. It would appear that Johnson had anticipated the potential for the suit and he and his lawyers were ready with their response the very next day.
Despite the legal issues with the Sugar Bird brand, under Cary’s new ownership the Essex Junction plant was expanded with a new addition on the back of the building to house a new larger boiler. Also, in 1919, F.N. Johnson and L.M. DeVore set up a new F.N. Johnson Maple Company in Burlington for bottling maple syrup, leasing the old Welch Brothers plant on Battery and Cherry Streets.
In 1921, the court ruled in Johnson’s favor on his trademark lawsuit. Following that label fiasco, in 1922 George Cary, along with his son Clinton Cary, and Cary Maple Sugar Company employees and personal friends Earl Franklin and Gertrude Franklin along with Harry Wilson of Boston, reorganized the Vermont Maple Syrup Company as a new corporate enterprise and in 1923 left Essex Junction, moving the re-organized company to Cary’s plant in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. That same year the Vermont Maple Products Co-operative Exchange began to lease the now vacated Vermont Maple Syrup Company building in Essex Junction.
In January 1925, F.N. Johnson came back around in the picture when he purchased a controlling interest in the stock of the Adirondack Maple Syrup Company in Lowville, New York. Johnson then combined his still operating F.N. Johnson Maple Company in Ohio with the Adirondack Maple Syrup Company under a new corporation called the American Maple Corporation. In 1927, the American Maple Corporation is formally incorporated in Burlington, Vermont under the leadership of F.N. Johnson. Interestingly, Harry Miller, who was working for Welch Brothers Maple Company would later managed Penick & Ford’s Vermont Maid plant, was also on the new board of directors of the American Maple Corporation. The Adirondack Maple Company corporate name was formally dissolved in 1927 and in 1929 the maple processing machinery in the Lowville plant was sold to the Cary Company in St. Johnsbury.
The Vermont Maple Syrup Company under the ownership of Cary and company trademarked the Vermont Maid name in 1919 and began selling blended syrup under the popular Vermont Maid brand name around 1920 or 1921 and it was in 1922, that the famous Vermont Maid logo featuring the portrait of a young women with pigtails and a bonnet, began to be used in advertisements and on labels. Interestingly, Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup Company also sold a Vermont Maid brand pure maple sap syrup during their short period of production out of St. Johnsbury from 1910 to 1915, but there is not indication of a direct connection between the two labels, other than George Cary would have been well aware of the idea and availability of the brand name by by 1920.
Between 1925 and 1926, a series of transactions and corporate shuffling occurred between St. Johnsbury and Burlington. First, F.N. Johnson charters the American Maple Corporation, first in Ohio in 1925 and then in 1926 in Vermont. In doing so, he merged the F.N. Johnson Maple Syrup Company with the Adirondack Maple Company, both of which he had controlling interests.
In July 1926, Llewellyn Welch sold the Welch Brothers Maple Products Company to the newly forming American Maple Company. With this sale, Llewellyn Welch retired from nearly forty years in the maple business. As noted earlier, Charles Welch left the Welch Brothers company some years earlier and would pass away in New York City in 1928. Llewelyn Welch himself died in 1935. Harry Miller stayed on with the new owners, the American maple Corporation (later Vermont Maple Syrup Company), as manager and on through the next owner, Penick & Ford. Miller would go on to have a 60-year long career in the Vermont maple industry, retiring in 1950 as the Vermont Division manager for Penick & Ford.
Then, in early November 1926, the newly formed American Maple Corporation of Burlington merged with George C. Cary ‘s Vermont Maple Syrup Company of St. Johnsbury. In January 1927, the new board of American Maple Corporation met, with F.N. Johnson voted president. Interestingly, there was no mention of George Cary or his usual collaborators on the new board, suggesting American Maple Corporation purchased, rather than merged with, the Vermont Maple Syrup Company. In February, the American Maple Corporation changes its name to the Vermont Maple Syrup Company, and by midway through 1927 begins listing its place of business as Burlington.
In October 1928 in a cash transaction, the Vermont Maple Syrup Company sold their Burlington operation to Penick & Ford, a Louisiana Company that at the time were the largest packers of corn and cane syrups and molasses in the United States. This sale included the former Welch Brothers building on Pine and Marble in Burlington, and all associated brands and labels, including Vermont Maid.
Following this sale, there is no indication that F.N. Johnson had any further involvement with Penick & Ford or the maple products industry in Vermont. F.N. Johnson’s grocery business in Bellefontaine, Ohio was still in operation and he returned to Ohio to direct that until his death in 1945. Incidentally, F.N. Johnson’s daughter in law, Helen Clark Johnson, unexpectedly passed away in Burlington in March of 1928. Her husband Russell Morton Johnson was the manager of the F.N. Johnson Maple Syrup Company, which leads one to wonder if this loss in anyway affected the decision to sell his maple company and leave Vermont.
In 1965, Penick & Ford and the Vermont Maid brand was sold to R. J. Reynolds, and despite operating under a new parent company, little changed in the Burlington plant. However, in 1975, R.J. Reynolds closed the Vermont Maid Syrup bottling plant on Pine Street and Marble Avenue in Burlington. Consolidating of a number of their brands and products, the Vermont Maid were moved operations to New Brunswick, New Jersey. Subsequently, in 1985, R.J. Reynolds acquired the Nabisco brand and formed RJNabisco as a single company. Later on, in 1997, Nabisco sold the Vermont Maid brand to B & G Foods, owner of Maple Grove Farms of Vermont and other syrup brands like Spring Tree Maple Syrup and Cary’s Maple Syrup.
Originally published May 5, 2019 – Revised February 7, 2020