By Matthew M. Thomas
The Warner Sap Spout has it beginnings with James F. Warner, but its full story comes to life with the inclusion of his later partner, George D. Jarvis. Warner was born in Vermont in 1837. In the 1860 census he was a farm laborer in Jericho and by the 1870s and early 1880s, was a farmer and civil war veteran from Essex, VT. By the mid-1800s and 1890s Warner was working as an architect and builder in Essex with an additional business cleaning, repairing, and tuning pianos and organs.
George De Alton Jarvis first appears in Burlington around 1882 managing a Singer sewing machine store. By 1890 Jarvis was working as a piano and organ salesman for G.H. and C.F. Hudson in Burlington, Vermont. He later went on to work for McKannon Bros. & Co. selling pianos before buying out McKannon Brothers and opening his own Geo. D. Jarvis & Son in Burlington in 1905.
However, Jarvis also had a side hustle as a peddler of patent medicines. Working under the trade name of Dr. Geo. D. Jarvis, for which there is no evidence of his ever earning a Doctorate in Medicine or any other field. Jarvis traveled around New England selling his Burlington Brand Extract of Lemon and Jarvis’ Blood Renovator. He was also part of the Burlington Extract Company who produced and sold Jarvis’ Cough Balsam. The Burlington Extract Company was initially incorporated in 1903 and reincorporated in 1905, this time with Jarvis as a shareholder.
James F. Warner obtained his first patent design for a one-piece cast iron sap spout in 1893 with another patent for an improved design obtained in 1899. Exactly when in the 1890s and from where Warner began to manufacture and sell his patents is not entirely clear, presumably out of Essex. There are many examples of variations on the Warner Sap Spout that display elements that progress between the 1893 and the 1904 designs. Although Warner obtained his first patent in 1893 it appears that he used this design only generally in the initial production of his spouts. As discussed in detail in Hale Mattoon’s Maple Spouts Spiles Taps & Tools, over the 1890s and early 1900s Warner continued to make slight modifications to his designs never really adhering to the specifics of the patent image from any given year. One particular variation of the Warner spout was referred to as the “Jim Sap Spout” and in 1898 it was reported in various newspapers that James Warner of Essex had received an order from Canada for 20,000 “Jim” Spouts.
Presumably it was the piano and organ business that brought Warner and Jarvis to know each other. In 1902 these men began working together on sap spout designs with Warner assigning his 1904 patent design to George D. Jarvis. In June 1902 Warner applied for a patent and the following year in April 1903 both men jointly applied for a new patent on a spout design with slight modifications to Warner’s design from a year earlier, notably the inclusion of the hook, an eyelet in the top tab for securing a pail cover.
So sure were they of their plans, a few months before they had submitted their shared patent design in April 1903, they had begun advertising and promoting their new patent pending spout under the company name of Geo. D. Jarvis & Co. Notable in the patent images and description are that the 1904 spout could be made with or without a hook as part of the single cast piece. However, according to maple spout expert Hale Mattoon, sap collectors have yet to find an example of the 1904 spout with the hanging hook.
The 1904 and 1905 designs of the Warner sap spout was immediately successful, catching the attention of maple equipment king G. H. Grimm who in January of 1904 challenged George D. Jarvis to a $100 wager to see which spout, the Grimm spout or the Warner spout, would draw the most sap from the same tree in a given amount of time. It is unclear if the challenge was accepted and if the two spouts ever faced off in this head to head competition.
Curiously, one never reads about James Warner’s role in the company after 1903 and it was never clear what were the terms of their partnership. As an experienced salesman, Jarvis was well aware of the value of trusted and recognizable brand names and as part of the Geo. D. Jarvis & Co business selling maple sugaring equipment, he offered other items under the Warner brand name, including sap pails and sap pail covers.
In 1905 George D. Jarvis was operating two enterprises with similar names, one for Jarvis & Company for sugar making supplies and one with his oldest son De Forest Clinton Jarvis as Jarvis & Son for piano and organ sales, with both businesses listed at 45 Church Street. The piano sales business continued until 1915. Around 1910 Jarvis further expanded his Burlington businesses to open the Jarvis Palace Garage with his son De Alton Matthew Jarvis on South Winooski Avenue for automobile parts and repair.
James F. Warner died of heart disease in 1907 in Essex, Vermont at the age 69. In the late 19-teens, Jarvis began to close up and sell his interest in his various business ventures. Around 1920 George D. Jarvis sold the patent rights to the Warner sap spout to the Leader Evaporator Company who continued to manufacture the Warner Sap Spout for many more decades. In 1921 Jarvis retired to Orange City, Florida where he remained until his death from cancer in 1927. George Jarvis’ son De Forest C. Jarvis went on to become a well-known medical doctor in Barre and in 1958 was the author of the best-selling book Folk Medicine: A Vermont Doctor’s Guide to Good Health which sat on the New York Times best seller list for two years and sold over a million copies.