Charles Covil Post, better known as C.C. Post, was the inventor and maker of one of the first and most widely used, mass produced metal maple sap spouts. Born on January 18, 1831 in Hinesburgh, Vermont, Post was the son of A.H. Post, an industrious builder, farmer and cheese maker.
As a young single man C.C. Post worked as a farmer, but soon after his marriage in 1851 Post shifted to the metal work business, opening C.C. Post’s stove and tinware shop in Hinesburgh near the corner of Main Street and Mechanicsville Road. At the time, Post occupied the former Hinesburgh general store, a brick building built in 1820 at the center of town.
C.C. Post’s entry in the maple sugar equipment business came in late 1862 or early 1863 when he secured the rights to manufacture and sell the Cook’s Sugar Evaporator. Introduced in 1859 by Daniel McFarland Cook out of Mansfield, Ohio, the new Cook’s evaporator introduced a maze-like network of baffles that facilitated the continuous flow of sap into syrup, notably more advanced and efficient than the commonly used flat pans and kettles of the time. As a result the Cook’s evaporator saw immediate popularity; however, no one was manufacturing the units locally. With the first Cook’s evaporators manufactured in Ohio and shipped to Vermont, becoming the exclusive agent for sale in Vermont quickly spread the name C.C. Post among maple sugar makers.
Although there is no indication C.C. Post was ever a sugarmaker, he know the business and basics of its operation and began to develop his own ideas on sap spout designs and in November 1868 was awarded a patent for his first sap spout design (US84032). Having his own sap spout to sell along with the popular Cook’s evaporator, in 1869 C.C. Post focused his metal manufacturing efforts from general tin and stove works to just making sap spouts and selling maple sugaring equipment. With this focus on maple equipment making he briefly moved his operation from Hinesburgh to Waterbury for the year 1869 then in 1870 moved his business and home to Burlington.
Post later sold his tin works building in Hinesburgh in 1881 to John S. Patrick who started the Reed and Patrick tin works. While in Burlington, Post initially resided on Colchester Street before later buying a lot at 83 North Union Street and building a home there in 1877. It is unclear where exactly C.C. Post carried out the foundry work of pouring the hundreds of thousands of cast iron metal taps he made. There was once a large barn that was possibly workshop or warehouse on the property behind the house on North Union Street. The house was listed in Burlington directories as both his residential and the official business address for his maple hardware business. Current owners of the house informed me that the barn was in poor condition and torn down. A block of eight condos were more recently built on the site of the former barn.
From the get-go C.C. Post called his spout the Eureka and as arguably the first widely available cast iron spout was very popular and used extensively across the maple industry. While more expensive than the commonly used tubular wood spouts, cast iron spouts were durable, nested snugly in the taphole, were less prone to getting sour during the season, and were easily washable for years of continued use.
The Eureka sap spout was probably the most popular and best-selling sap spout in the 1870s and 1880s and Post didn’t hesitate to defend his spout designs against possible patent infringement. In 1879 C.C. Post declared, contrary to the claims by F.E. Lord that the Boss Sap Spout did not infringe on the patent for the Eureka Sap Spout, the Boss design infringed on a design owned by Post that was originally patented to James B. Sargent in 1868 (US76530), later owned and re-issued by Post in 1878 (USRE8495). A history of the Boss sap spout will be covered in a later post. In another case with the makers of the Willis Sap Spout dating to 1880, patent law experts were consulted and as reported in the Burlington Free Press that “the Willis sap spout and bucket hanger was decided to be so clearly an infringement that the manufacturers decided to at once discontinue its manufacture and sale.”
Post continued to tweak his sap spout design and was awarded at least two more patents for new sap spout designs (US117326 and US117457) on July 25, 1871. He also developed a unique metal sap pail in 1870 that featured an indented or curved face at the point of the hanging hole to more tightly fit against the curve of the tree (US107407). It is interesting to study and compare the designs in Post’s patents and the images of spouts that appear in his advertisements, since the drawings are sometimes very different.
Even more interesting is to look at the actual preserved examples of C.C. Post’s spouts in various antique maple spout collections. To learn more about these spout variations I highly recommend consulting Hale Mattoon’s comprehensive book Maple Spouts Spiles & Taps and Tools. Mattoon has done an incredible job of analyzing and describing these many subtle differences and changes that occurred with Post’s new patent designs and production changes.
In 1884, in conjunction with Burlington-based dairy equipment manufacturer and tin worker James F. Ferguson, C.C. Post was awarded a patent for a maple sap evaporator (US308407); however, despite both men being experienced with making and selling metal tools and equipment to the maple industry, there is no indication that this evaporator design was ever put into production.
Following the marriage of his daughter Lora L. Post to Charles C. Stelle of Brooklyn, New York in 1892, C.C. Post sold his sap spout and maple equipment business to his new son-in-law Stelle and retired from business. With the sale to Stelle, the business address for the manufacturing of Eureka spouts moved from 83 North Union Street in Burlington to 81 Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.
C.C. Post died in October 1899 in Burlington, Vermont at age 68, either from the complications of a spinal injury from a bicycle accident, as reported in his obituary, or from the effects of a stroke as reported on his death record. With his death, the value of C.C. Post’s property and estate totaled $167,000 which was divided evenly among his five surviving daughters.
Although not a lot is known about Charles C. Stelle, who was better known in Brooklyn as a real estate agent, he carried on the production, sales and promotion of the Eureka sap spout into the early 1900s. In 1912 Stelle came up with his own modification to Post’s Eureka spout and obtained a patent on his design modification (US104834). Advertisements for the sale the Stelle-Eureka sap spout continued to appear through 1916, after which it appears that sales and production by Stelle ceased. Charles C. Stelle passed away at age 61 in his Huntington, New York home in 1924.