By Matthew M. Thomas
Barre, Vermont was at one time home to the John Shelby Maple Museum and pure Vermont maple syrup packed by John Shelby, the Maple Sugar Man. Over time the artifacts in the John Shelby Maple Museum traded hands and later became the core of what is today the New England Maple Museum. But who was this John Shelby and where did he come from? As it turns out, there never was a John Shelby. Like some famous foods, it was a made-up trade name of the Black Sign Maple Syrup Company. But that’s not where the story gets interesting. Let me start from the beginning.
The Black Sign Maple Syrup Company was a maple syrup packing and maple candy company started around 1935 in Barre, Vermont by Max Schwarzschild. Max was an industrious man who emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1908. After working in sales and the imported food business in New York City and Chicago, he served in the United States Army during World War I. Later while in the Army’s Quartermaster Corps, he discovered Vermont when sent to the Green Mountain state to assist the Civilian Conservation Corps. After discharging from the Army, he moved to Barre, where he started a mail order maple syrup and candy company called Black Sign with the name a translation of his own German name, with schwarz meaning black and schild meaning sign or shield.
Not long after starting his new company, Schwarzschild married a widow named Ethel Sheplee Sartelle and began using the name John Shelby to sell his maple products. It is not known exactly when or how Max Schwarzschild came up with the name of John Shelby. The earliest dated reference I could find of Schwarzschild using the name John Shelby was 1940. Perhaps he was self-conscious of his German heritage in the period between the wars and wanted a more Yankee sounding name on his label. For example, one 1940 newspaper article about Schwarzschild noted that his wife was “a member of the Shelby family of Barre who can trace their lineage back to Ethan Allen.” We know that she wasn’t a Shelby and examination of the city directories for Barre in the first half of the 20th century show no families with the name Shelby. It is hard to ignore the similarities between his wife Ethel’s maiden name of Sheplee and the name Shelby.
The Black Sign Company began operations on Prospect Street in Barre, but in 1938 built a new house for the business in Barre at the end of Ayers Street near the corner with West Patterson Street. The new Black Sign plant was equipped with modern equipment for the handling and bottling of maple syrup and manufacture of maple candy. After five years, successful advertising and attractive packaging helped the Black Sign company grow to 12 employees preparing and packing maple products to send to mail order customers around the country and around the world.
However, in late June of 1940, it began to appear that there was another side to the story of Black Sign’s success when it was reported that Max Schwarzschild had been missing from work and home for a couple of weeks. Inquiries into his disappearance and possible whereabouts uncovered that earlier in the month he had secured a loan for $11,000 from a local Barre bank using 140 barrels of maple syrup he had in storage as collateral. Investigations of his business discovered that the barrels did not in fact contain maple syrup as expected but instead had been filled with water. Upon that realization, a warrant was put out for Schwarzschild’s arrest. By then he had been tracked to Chicago where local authorities detained him. Washington County Sheriff Henry Lawson then flew from Vermont to Chicago to return Schwarzschild to Vermont to face charges of grand larceny as well as additional charges for writing a worthless check for over $4000 to the Lamoille County Savings Bank. With Schwarzschild’s arrest and inability to meet bail, a Federal Judge put the Black Sign Maple Syrup Company into receivership and appointed Arthur Simpson, Director of the State’s Old Age Assistance Department and a stockholder and chairman of the board of directors of the Cary Maple Sugar Company, to manage the company during Schwarzschild’s incarceration and trial.
Further investigations revealed that Schwarzschild had previously arranged for the delivery of the barrels to St. Johnsbury where the syrup they contained was sold to the Cary Maple Sugar Company. Schwarzschild then had an equal number of barrels filled with water in the Barre warehouse. Unfortunately for him the bank had recorded the serial numbers on the original syrup barrels at the time of making the loan and the numbers on the water filled barrels did not match what was in the bank’s records.
While Schwarzschild sat in jail during the summer of 1940, further investigations revealed the extent of his unpaid business transactions and working on credit with liabilities totaling $80,000, including debts to the Cary Maple Sugar Company amounting to $40,000. Despite company assets adding up to $103,000 a United States District Court judge declared Max Schwarzschild and the Black Sign Maple Syrup Company to be involuntarily bankrupt. Arthur Simpson was then chosen as the Trustee to manage the bankruptcy of the company. In late October of 1940, a few days before Schwarzschild went on trial, the Black Sign Company was sold by Simpson to the People’s National Bank who in turn promptly sold the company to Preston C. Cummings of Burlington and Norbert C. Goettler of Montpelier. Cummings and Goettler quickly took possession of the plant and continued operations under the existing names of Black Sign Maple Syrup Company and the John Shelby brand. The following January Preston C. Cummings, his wife Nina B. Cummings, and new business partner Willis B. Venable of Barre formally filed articles of incorporation for the Black Sign Maple Products Company with $10,000 worth of stock.
Schwarzschild was found guilty and sentenced to two to four years in state prison at Windsor, Vermont. He served about one year of the sentence before being released but never returned to the business of selling maple products.
With that the first half of the Black Sign and John Shelby story come to a close….but wait, there’s more to be told in part two of this saga.