By Matthew M. Thomas
In the years before plastic tubing was adopted for collecting and moving maple sap from the tree to the storage tank and the sugarhouse, maple producers had to travel from tree to tree on foot gathering sap from pails and later bags. That sap in turn was gathered and hauled through the sugarbush in a variety of tanks pulled on sleds, wheeled carts, wagons, trailers over the snow and mud. In later years truck flatbeds were employed to carry sap gathering tanks.
In the earlier years of sap gathering, in the 1700s and 1800s, maple producers gathered sap in large wooden barrels or drums, roughly 50 gallons in size, either set upright or on their side, secured atop sleds and stone boats, and pulled through the woods by horses, oxen, or even people power. Most historic images show one barrel in use at a time for gathering, but it was not uncommon for two or three barrels to be secured to one sled. While the volume of sap gathered to make maple syrup is always a staggering number in comparison to the volume of the product, in earlier days maple production was much smaller in scale than it is today, requiring a bit less carrying capacity.
In addition to the simple barrel gathering tanks, at some point in the latter half of the 1800s some producers began to construct larger specialized tapered wooden tanks made from vertical staves for gathering sap . These tanks used flat staves secured with metal hoops and were wider at the base, narrower at the top and had a large opening on the top to pour fresh sap. The volume of such tanks was often in 200-300 gallon range.
By the early 1880s specialized wooden gathering tanks based on a modified barrel design began to appear. Most notable is the patented designs of Henry Adams and Clinton C. Haynes out of Wilmington, Vermont. Adams and Haynes first developed and manufactured their tank in the 1870s with a patent (US229,576) awarded in 1880. Under the title of “liquid holder” it was an elongated round wooden tank for the storage of maple sap or water on the farm. Unlike typical barrels at the time made with inflexible wood or metals straps or hoops, the Adams and Haynes tank was bound with adjustable iron rods that could be tightened or loosened as the wood staves of the tank expanded or shrank with wetting and drying.
In 1884 Adams and Haynes patented a sap gathering tank, specifically designed to be pulled through the sugarbush for sap collection. Patented (US301,467) and advertised under the title of a “gathering tub,” this tank was sometimes referred to as a Tomahawk or Tommyhawk tank. This tank was based on a similar design as the storage tanks with the addition of a pair of openings on top equipped with wire mesh strainers and surrounded by a downwardly sloping square casing that facilitated the easy pouring of sap into the tank and minimized spillage. Instead of being completely circular in shape, the gathering tanks were somewhat flattened elliptical in cross section to provide more stability in hauling hundreds of gallons of sap. Sap was drained from a plug at the base of the tank. The large “liquid holder” storage tanks were made in sizes ranging from from 10 to 40 barrels in volume. The smaller gathering tub “Tomahawk” tanks were available in sizes that would hold from 3 to 7 barrels.
Although Haynes died in 1919 and Adams in 1927, the Adams and Haynes tanks company continued to manufacture their tanks on the Adams’ Wilmington area farm into the 1940s. In addition to wood tanks and sap pails the partnership also manufactured sap evaporators and other farm tools such as yokes for oxen and wheelbarrows.
Another unique horizontal elongated wooden gathering tank developed in the late 1800s came out of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Sometimes called a double barrel tank, this submarine shaped tank, tapered at both ends, was essentially a fully coopered elongated wooden barrel with metal hoops set on its side with the top portion of a coopered barrel fitted to the top to facilitate pouring and straining of sap. Seldom seen in use outside of Somerset County, these long tanks were set on sleds and suspended on wagons and wheeled carts using straps or chains.
These barrels featured special pouring funnels and openings to permit easy emptying of sap collecting pails and minimize the sloshing and spillage of sap in the tank as they moved over snow and rough terrain in the sugarbush trails and roads. Somerset County’s unique submarine shaped wooden tanks were coopered like an elongated barrel resting on its side with a specially fitted coopered half barrel on top for the pouring hole. They were emptied by pulling a plug near the base that permitted the contents to spill out onto a trough and into the sugarhouse storage tanks.
Sheet metal gathering tanks made their formal appearance in the early 1890s with the introduction of both galvanized iron and tin tanks by the G.H. Grimm Company. These tanks came in 3 or 4 barrel capacities and featured an inward sloping pouring cone and strainer as well as a exterior pouring arm connected by flexible hose at the base of the tank. Grimm also offered at this time, large rectangular open topped, galvanized iron, sap storage tanks up to 8 feet long 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep. With the arrival of Grimm’s metal tank, nearly all the major maple equipment manufacturers got on board with their own unique shapes and designs.
By the early 1900s the G.H. Grimm Company’s improved gathering tank had gone through a redesign with a domed cover with a smaller conical funnel at the center replacing the wider cone style. A central two part strainer and removable cover continued to sit at the center of the funnel. The sides of the tank now featured horizontal ribbing and the flexible pouring arm was enlarged in size.
Interestingly, with the 1900 split of the G.H. Grimm Company in Rutland, Vermont and its sister company Grimm Manufacturing Company in Montreal (later to become the Dominion & Grimm Company), the Montreal company initially stuck with the inward sloping, wide-mouthed conical draining design and continued to describe it as “Grimm’s Quick-Straining, Self-Emptying Gathering Tank”. Later in time, after joining with Dominion, the company offered a full range of tanks with a round tank, an oval tank, and in the early 1960s, a trapezoidal tank with a raised round pouring tube and an interior strainer and splash arrester.
The Leader Evaporator Company followed Grimm’s early lead with their own version of an of an oval shaped metal gathering tank using William Burt’s 1896 patent design (US559,358). Marketed as the Monitor Gathering Tank, this tank included a number of features that were improvements upon the initial Grimm cylindrical and wooden tanks, most notably an interior splash arrester. The design features introduced with Leader Evaporator Company’s Monitor Gathering Tank and the earlier Grimm tank, namely the inward sloping top panel to funnel sap downward, the interior splash arrester, and the flexible pouring arm, became standard design features on essentially all the metal gathering tanks that came after them.
Actual production versions of Leader’s Monitor Gathering Tank feature the pouring arm at one of the rounded ends of the tank rather than midway along the straight side of the tank as shown in the patent design.
The True & Blanchard Company out of Newport, Vermont developed a rectangular sap gathering tank called the Monarch Hauling Tank in the late 1890s or early 1900s. This tank featured a large rectangular opening that funneled down to a circular strainer and a flexible pouring arm at one end. When the True & Blanchard Company was sold to the Vermont Farm Machine Company in 1919, the Monarch Hauling Tank design and name was carried over unchanged.
Prior to acquiring the True & Blanchard Company and their Monarch tank, the Vermont Farm Machine Company offered an oval tank of their own with a square opening at the top with an interior round recessed strainer at the center. Like others of its time a flexible pouring arm was located at one end of the tank. It does not appear from the Vermont Farm Machine Company catalogs that the company continued to offer this design after the rectangular Monarch Tanks was brought into their equipment lineup.
Although the G.H. Grimm Company started with a round tank in the 1890s, later in the 20th century they also offered an oval tank, similar in outward design to the earlier Vermont Farm Machine Company tank. The Grimm tank differed in having heavy raised metal ridges flanking the central pouring hole.
In the late 19-teens or 1920 the Small Brothers Lightning Evaporator Company out of Richford, Vermont offered a rectangular tank with reinforced wood panels, a largely flat top, and the flexible pouring arm. In later years, the Lightning Evaporator Company changed to an oval shaped tank with a raised square pouring area.
G.H. Grimm acquired the Lightning Evaporator Company in 1964 after which time Grimm continued to offer the same oval design with the upward sloping pouring compartment. With the addition of the Lightning design oval tank, the Grimm Company appears to have discontinued its production of the earlier oval tank with parallel ridges flanking the pouring opening.
The Vermont Evaporator Company came out with a round tank based on a design remarkably similar to G.H. Grimm’s round tank. That the Vermont Evaporator Company may have copied a Grimm design was not entirely surprising considering the history of their founders as former Grimm employees that were known to have copied Grimm designs in the past.
Another notable round tank was manufactured by the Sproul Hardware and Manufacturing Company out of Delevan, New York in the early 1900s. The Sproul hauling tank design was similar in appearance to the early version of the Grimm round tank with a wide inwardly sloping top panel and smooth galvanized iron sides and a narrowing diameter pouring arm.
Lastly, one of the last of the companies to get on board with a gathering tank was the G.H. Soule Company out of St. Albans, Vermont who offered their popular King brand rectangular tanks in sizes ranging from 4 to 7 barrels. All the King tanks featured a reinforced wood base and a top panel that sloped upwardly to a central square opening and interior recessed pouring hole and strainer.
As this summary shows, following the replacement of wood gathering tanks maple equipment companies introduced many different round, oval, and rectangular metal sap gathering tanks, all with similar, but subtly different designs and features.