There are many well known names in the early 20th century history of maple syrup, most often heading manufacturing and packing companies emblazoned with their names such as George C. Cary, George H. Soule, G. H. Grimm, Leader, and True and Blanchard to name a few. A less well-known, but influential man with a long history in the industry, was John D. Rickaby.
Rickaby spent 46 years, most of his whole adult life, working with maple syrup as a buyer, packer, plant manager, and company owner in Vermont and Massachusetts. Having worked with some of the largest maple syrup packing firms in the country, Rickaby became well-known throughout the maple industry as an experienced and knowledgeable businessman. So much so, that by the end of his career, the Burlington Free Press referred to him in 1946 as the Dean of the Vermont maple syrup and maple sugar industry.
Born in 1873 in Lyster, Quebec , Rickaby’s family emigrated to St. Johnsbury, Vermont in 1877. Growing up in St. Johnsbury, Caledonia County was home to Rickaby and throughout his career, he was drawn back to the area. Rickaby began his long career as a businessman at a young age when he went to work helping his father with insurance and real estate sales as a teenager. At age 16, Rickaby lost a leg in a sailing accident and left high school after his second year, possibly in connection to the leg injury. Not surprisingly, this injury kept Rickaby out of World War I. At some point as a young man, Rickaby learned how to take notes in shorthand and became a skilled stenographer. He even offered classes as a private shorthand instructor.
In the late 1890s and very early 1900s, Rickaby travelled back and forth between St. Johnsbury; Hartford, Connecticut; and Chelsea, Massachusetts working with a variety of different insurance companies. It was in 1902 that his connection to the maple industry began when he settled into a position as stenographer and bookkeeper to George C. Cary in St. Johnsbury. The Cary Company was quickly growing in size and importance as a buyer and packer of maple sugar and maple syrup. In 1904, the Cary Company formally incorporated to become the George C. Cary Maple Sugar Company with John Rickaby listed as clerk. From the very early years of the Cary Company incorporation, Rickaby was a minor stockholder, later becoming a member of the board of directors and eventually elected company vice-president in 1909.
Rickaby was a close confidant of George Cary and while working as the company bookkeeper also served as the real estate broker for many of Cary’s purchases and sales of farms and maple woods in the North Danville area. Rickaby and his wife even stayed on Cary’s Lookout Farm (which Rickaby helped Cary purchase) a few miles from St. Johnsbury one summer before buying two acres of the farm from Cary and building his own summer cottage.
Rickaby’s eight years with the Cary Company paid off, when in 1910 he was selected to be the manager of a new bottling and packing plant to be opened by Towle’s Maple Products Company in St. Johnsbury. The Towle’s Company out of St. Paul, Minnesota was the manufacturer of Log Cabin Syrup, one of the largest buyers and bottlers of pure and blended maple syrup in the world. Leading the expansion and entry of the midwestern company into Vermont and the heart of the maple syrup producing world was a significant recognition of Rickaby’s connections to the Vermont industry and his business acumen.
The arrival of Towle’s Maple Products Company in St. Johnsbury was facilitated by the Cary Company selling their plant on Bay Street and moving to a new location in the old St. Johnsbury Grocery building a block away. When operated by the Cary Company, the primary focus of operations was to receive mostly maple sugar and some maple syrup and reconstitute it into large blocks of maple sugar for sale and shipment to tobacco companies for curing and flavoring tobacco. As a blending and bottling facility for Log Cabin syrups, a few improvements were needed. Under Rickaby’s direction, Towle’s quickly upgraded the facilities, adding steam jacketed kettles, storage tanks, and many feet of piping for filling bottles and the signature log cabin shaped metal cans.
In spite of the apparent success of the St. Johnsbury operations, following the death of company founder, Patrick J.Towle in 1912, the new leadership of the Towle’s company announced in December 1914 they had decided to close the St. Johnsbury plant the following year. Recognizing he was soon to be out of work, Rickaby purchased a share of the New England Maple Syrup Company and took on a new role as the company’s plant manager in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The New England Maple Syrup Company was described by one newspaper in 1915 as the largest maple syrup concern in the country. It was certainly one of the biggest, selling blended and pure maple syrup under the labels of Uncle John’s Cane and Maple Syrup, Golden Tree Syrup, Rock Maple 100% Vermont Maple Sap Syrup, and Gold Leaf Brand Maple Flavored Corn Syrup. The company also sold individually wrapped maple candies called maple kisses.
Under Rickaby’s leadership, the New England Maple Syrup Company grew, spreading the Uncle John’s label and their syrups all across the United States. However, as befalls many blended syrups, the implication from their packaging and advertising that their products were all pure maple syrup occasionally caught up with them and they were found guilty of adulteration or false labeling on a number of occasions.
Processing and blending sugar and maple syrup on a large scale meant the company usually purchased its ingredients in very large quantities. However, in 1921 this strategy cost them when the price of granulated cane sugar dropped enormously and the New England Maple Syrup Company found themselves sitting on many tons of sugar they already paid for. In the end the price drop was more than they could absorb and the company was forced into bankruptcy by its creditors.
Following bankruptcy proceedings, an auction of their equipment and facilities, and a reorganization, John Rickaby and C.M. Tice purchased the company as the sole owners, relocating to nearby Chelsea, Massachusetts. Rickaby left the reformed company not long after and in 1923 went to work for the Washburn- Crosby Milling Company of Minneapolis as a superintendent for the construction of a cereal production plant in Chicago. Rickaby stayed with Washburn-Crosby a few more years working out of Hartford, Connecticut.
In 1929 George C. Cary persuaded Rickaby to return to St. Johnsbury and the maple business when the Cary Company purchased Maple Grove Candies. Rickaby was selected as the initial Maple Grove Candies company treasurer and manager and oversaw the construction of a new two-story brick building for Maple Grove Candies located in front of the large Cary Company plant on Portland Street in St. Johnsbury.
With the completion of the new Maple Grove Candies building, Rickaby opted to take on his own maple syrup venture and, in partnership with W.W. Parsons and his brother-in-law Arthur R. Menut, formed Vermont Maple Orchards, Inc. to manufacture and sell a blended maple and cane syrup. Initially located in a former maple syrup processing building in Essex Junction, Vermont, in the summer of 1930 the company moved to the former Vermont Milk Chocolate Company building on Park Street in Burlington in 1932. Although he was no longer employed by the Cary Company, Rickaby was still a stockholder for the Cary Company and retained a strong tie to the Cary family. In fact, following the bankruptcy and death of George Cary in 1931, John Rickaby asked George’s son, Clinton Cary, then vice-president of the Cary Company to come and work with him in his new company in Essex Junction. Clinton Cary took him up on that offer and worked for Rickaby for a few years before returning to the Cary Company in St. Johnsbury.
Rickaby stayed at the helm of the Vermont Maple Orchards, Inc. as president-treasurer until 1941 when he sold his interests due to deteriorating health. He then returned to St. Johnsbury and started a new maple sugar candy company called “Maple Bush” which was in operation for three years before Rickaby took a position in St. Albans with the George H. Soule Company’s Fairfield Farms Maple Company. The following year Fairfield Farms shut down its candy making operation and Rickaby returned to St. Johnsbury at which time he retired from active work with the maple syrup industry.
It is perhaps fitting that Rickaby was a product of St. Johnsbury, since it was the Maple Capital of the World at that time. It was common to see men like Rickaby, who had close associations with the Cary Company and Cary family, carry their knowledge and connections beyond the walls of the Cary Company, influencing the maple industry in the years to come.
Following five years of battling Parkinson’s disease, Rickaby died in St. Johnsbury in 1951 at the age of 78. John Rickaby and his wife Charlotte J. Menut Rickaby had no children.