This article describes the designs, technology, and patents of the first evaporators for making maple syrup and maple sugar in the late 1850s and early 1860s and the men that were responsible for their introduction. Evaporators provided an advanced, faster, and more efficient way of reducing maple sap to syrup and sugar than the flat pans they replaced and were one of the most important technological advancements in the history of the maple syrup industry.
The Keene, New Hampshire online newspaper the Sentinel Source recently featured a great little history of Perley E. Fox and the Granite State Evaporator Company. Written by Alan F. Rumrill, the Executive Director of the Historical Society of Cheshire County, the article traces the path of Perley Fox from his birth in Marlow, New Hampshire to the midwest, and back to Marlow where he settled and entered the tinworks business and developed his own design of maple syrup evaporators. Working under the company name of Granite State Evaporator Company, Fox sold a full range of maple sugaring supplies and evaporators. You can read Mr. Rumrill’s article at this link.
This post continues the story of the fictitious John Shelby, the Maple Sugar Man of Barre, Vermont. Part One of the story, focusing in the events surrounding the origins of the name and the company can be found here.
Preston C. Cummings as he appeared in an advertisement promoting his candidacy for Barre Alderman in 1951. Barre Daily Times, March 3, 1951.
In 1945, five years after becoming an owner of the mail order maple products business with his purchase of the Black Sign Maple Syrup Company and the John Shelby label, Preston C. Cummings and Black Sign purchased the Vermont Maple Products Company. Buying out the South Royalton from Amos and Wendell Eaton, Cummings acquired the company name, their direct order mailing list, packaging equipment and supplies and their maple syrup inventory. The following year Black Sign changes its name to the Vermont Maple Products Company.
The company added Alfred W. Lane to its leadership in March 1947 ahead of plans for expanding the scale and sales of their operation. The following month the Cummings, Lane and R. Barton Sargent incorporated the Green Mountain Syrup Company occupying the same space as the Vermont Maple Products Company on Ayers Street in Barre. A year later, in February 1948, the Green Mountain Syrup Company formally changed its name to John Shelby, Inc. with Preston C. Cummings as president.
The trademarked name and imaginary signature of John Shelby as it appeared on the company packaging, promotional brochures, and maple museum.
At some point in the late 1940s or around 1950 the Vermont Maple Products Company added exhibits to their plant, started offering tours, and began calling it the John Shelby Maple Museum. The name of John Shelby, The Maple Sugar Man was formally trademarked by the Vermont Maple Products Company in 1951.
The eight mural paintings created in 1951 by Chelsea, Vermont artist Paul V. Winters for the John Shelby Maple Museum. The paintings depicted the evolution and history of maple sugaring. Image taken from a John Shelby Maple Museum brochure ca. 1963.
Cummings further expanded the museum in the spring of 1952 with the addition of eight of painted murals created by Chelsea, Vermont artist Paul V. Winters. The murals depicted the evolution of the maple syrup industry from Native American sugaring to the colonial period and onto modern sugaring methods and equipment. The museum was popular and well promoted and was relatively unique at a time when few collections of maple sugaring antiques were on display elsewhere in Vermont.
Cover of a John Shelby Maple Museum promotional brochure. ca. 1963.
Although the museum was a popular attraction it would appear that not everyone was pleased with how Mr. Cummings ran his business. In December of 1956 charges were filed in federal court against the Vermont Maple Products Company and Preston C. Cumming for violating the fair labor standards act. Specifically, Cummings was accused of paying employees under the then $1.00 legal minimum wage.
Image of Hal C. Miller, Jr. from news article in the Bennington Banner, April 14, 1964.
A few months later in March 1957 Cummings sold the Vermont Maple Products Company mail order operations, including the John Shelby name and museum, to Ezra R. Armstrong and Hal C. Miller, Jr. , both from Barre. Miller was an owner of the local Coca-Cola bottling company.
However, in selling the company, Cummings was not free of his legal troubles. It turns out that Cummings was also under investigation for tax fraud covering the years 1954, 1955 and 1956. Cummings was accused of filing false personal income tax returns and falsifying the taxable wages to employees he reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Cummings pled guilty in June 1960 on 16 counts and was sentenced to one year and a day in federal prison. Later the following year, Cummings appeared in a newspaper advertisement as the manager of the Barre branch of the Eastern Investment Corporation.
Full color promotional postcard illustrating a color lithographed syrup can from John Shelby, The Maple Sugar Man.
At some point around 1960 it appears that Miller and Armstrong sold the Vermont Maple Products Company and John Shelby Museum to Louis Hall, an associate of Miller with the Coca-Cola bottling company of Barre. As owner and full-time manager of the maple museum, Hall was engaged in the day-to-day operation of the mail order business and the tourist attraction, even serving as the president of the Vermont Attraction Association for a few years. In 1966 Hall sold the John Shelby Maple Museum to Rudolph “Shorty” Danforth and Clifford Eaton. A year later the museum building was purchased and razed to accommodate the expansion of what was then the neighboring Carle and Seaver tire shop.
Ad for the House of Maple in Royalton, Vermont. Note the statement “New Home of the John Shelby Maple Museum.” This ad appeared in the Bennington Banner, June 28, 1968.
In 1966 Danforth and Eaton expanded their existing sugarhouse on State Route 14 in south Royalton to become a roadside maple themed restaurant called the House o’ Maple Vermont Sugar House. The artifacts and memorabilia from the purchase of the Shelby Maple Museum became a center piece and important attraction at the restaurant, bringing an end to the life of the fictitious John Shelby.
Color postcard of Danforth and Eaton’s House of Maple Vermont Sugar House, c. late 1960s to early 1970s.
In 1975 Clifford Eaton bought out his partner Shorty Danforth’s portion of the restaurant business and in turn Danforth purchased Eaton’s share of the maple museum collection. Not long after, Shorty Danforth (who was a large man) sold the maple museum collection to Tom Olson of Rutland. Olson gave the collection a new home as the centerpiece of the New England Maple Museum which he built and opened in 1977 in Pittsford, Vermont. The museum is still open to this day preserving and sharing the collections, painted murals, and legacy of the mysterious Maple Sugar Man, John Shelby.
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.
Max Schwarzschild. Burlington Free Press, February 13, 1940.
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.
Advertisement for Black Sign Maple Syrup Co. on Prospect Street in Barre. Note the absence of name John Shelby in the ad. From 1937 Barre Directory.
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.
Early image of the building that housed the Black Sign Maple Syrup Company and later the John Shelby Maple Museum. Real Photo Post Card.
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.
Former location of Black Sign Maple Syrup Company and the John Shelby Museum at the corner of Ayers and Patterson Streets in Barre, Vermont. See building in lower left in black and white photo from 1964 and the empty lot today in the color photo on the right.
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.
Cover of a promotional recipe booklet from the Black Sign Maple Syrup Company “Gathered by John Shelby.”
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.
Eastman Johnson painting showing men pulling sap gathering barrel set on its side on a sled in sugarbush, ca. 1860-1870.
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.
Image of a well-preserved example of a simple wood barrel used with top pouring funnel set on sled for sap gathering.
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.
Late 19th century postcard image of a large tapered wooden sap gathering tank pulled by oxen on a sled.
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.
Library of Congress image
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.
1884 Patent design from Adams and C.C. Haynes wood slat sap gathering tank (US201467).
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.
Advertisement for Adams & Haynes Improved Gathering Tub from 1884 Wilmington, Vermont directory.
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.
Image of a well preserved Adams and Haynes wooden Tomahawk Tank.Pouring sap into half barrel opening on Somerset County submarine shaped “double barrel” sap gathering tank on wheeled suspension wagon. Courtesy of Mare Ware and the Historical and Genealogical Society of Somerset County .
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.
Example of elongated coopered wooden barrel tank with suspended on a wheeled frame. This submarine shaped was unique to Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Courtesy of Mare Ware and the Historical and Genealogical Society of Somerset County .
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.
Image of Grimm’s cylindrical iron and tin metal gathering tank from a G.H. Grimm Manufacturing Company catalog dating to approximately 1894.
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.
G.H. Grimm improved round sap gathering tank from early 1900s with side ribbing, domed top, and smaller conical opening.
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.
Dominion and Grimm “nouveau reservoir a ramasser”, a new style sap gathering tank as appeared in their 1961 catalog.
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.
Drawing from William Burt’s 1896 patent for a all metal sap gathering tank with pouring arm on the side. This was the precursor to the Leader Evaporator Company’s Monitor Gathering Tank.
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.
Leader Evaporator Company’s oval shaped Monitor Gathering Tank with pour arm on one end of the tank.
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.
Vermont Farm Machine Company’s rectangular Monarch Hauling Tank, a design and name started by True and Blanchard who were later sold the Vermont Farm Machine Company.
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.
Image of oval gathering tank from 1918 Vermont Farm Machine Company catalog.
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.
GH Grimm oval galvanized metal sap gathering tank with two parallel raised ridges framing the pouring hole.
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.
Rectangular gathering tank offered by Small Brothers Lightning Evaporator Company of Richford, Vermont in the 19-teens and 1920s.
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.
Lightning Evaporator Company oval tank on the left with raised square opening and G.H. Grimm tank on right. Both images from respective company product catalogs.
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.
Vermont Evaporator Company round sap gathering tank with side ribbing, a domed top, and wide mouth opening for pouring sap.
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.
Sproul round sap gathering tank with recessed central pouring area.
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.
G.H. Soul’s King rectangular shaped sap gathering tank with sloping top panels and a square opening for pouring.
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.
The initial application of plastic tubing for gathering maple sap in the 1950s was indisputably one of the most significant technological developments of the maple industry in the twentieth century. However, the first viable tubing system was introduced over forty years earlier as a gravity drawn system made completely of metal. Invented in the shadows of the Adirondack Mountains near Mayfield, New York, by William C. Brower, Jr., the system carried sap directly from the tree to the sugarhouse through an interconnected series of specialized taps, tubes and connectors. Formally known as the Brower Sap Piping System, the pipeline was popularly referred to as the Gooseneck system because one of the key segments of the pipeline resembled the curved neck of a goose.
Brower Sap Piping System installed in an early 20th century sugarbush.
Born in Mayfield, New York in 1874, Brower was the consummate Yankee tinkerer and inventor. As a machinist, mechanic, and jack of all trades, his education did not come from the classroom, but rather, from trying to solve and improve on the problems and dilemmas he and his neighbors faced every day. Brower was also a sugarmaker, making him well aware of the difficulties of tapping and gathering sap with buckets and teams of horses or oxen in deep snow on and on steep slopes.
Drawing of components from William J. Brower’s 1916 Sap Piping System patent (US1,186,471).
After coming up with the idea of using the natural gravity of the mountains to eliminate the laborious task of hand gathering sap, it took Brower nearly three years of trial and error to perfect the system. The initial patent application occurred in December 1914. A year and a half later in June 1916, the United States Patent Office awarded Brower patent number 1,186,741 for his “Sap-Collecting System”. Likewise, an identical application by Brower was awarded a Canadian patent in August of 1917.
Drawing of layout from William J. Brower’s 1916 Sap Piping System patent (US1,186,471).
In order to support the weight of the folded sheet metal tubing and the sap flowing through it, the Gooseneck pipeline was suspended by small hooks on a network of wires strung through the sugarbush supported by posts and trees. The wire used was usually a heavy gauge fence wire or reused telegraph wire. The labor required for set up at the beginning of the season was greater than that of traditional gathering systems using metal spouts, pails and covers; but this cost was easily made up with a reduction in labor for gathering as well as the elimination of sap lost by overflowing buckets that were difficult to tend to in deep snow and on steep slopes.
The pipeline quickly caught the attention of many sugarmaker’s in the region; however Brower continued to manufacture the tubing and spiles out of his small workshop, limiting his ability to mass produce the system. According to his grandson, Brower was a man more interested and skilled in working with his hands than in promoting and selling his invention.
Following completion of the pipeline design in 1914, Brower traveled from his Mayfield home to St. Johnsbury, Vermont to try and interest George C. Cary of the Cary Maple Sugar Company in using the pipeline in the large sugarbush on Cary’s 4,000 acre farm. Initially, Cary was not interested, but Brower persisted, finally convincing Cary to try the system on 1500 trees during the 1915 maple season. As president of what was then, the world’s largest maple sugar business, and as owner of one of Vermont’s largest sugarbushes, Cary had the wealth, liberty, and interest in experimenting with more efficient and cost effective methods and equipment. After only one season of use, Cary was sold, placing an order for enough tubing to connect 9000 more trees. Ultimately Cary would have 15,000 trees on the pipeline at his North Danville sugarbush.
Image of the cover of sales booklet for Brower’s Sap Piping System offer by the Cary Maple Sugar Company out of St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
Continued satisfaction with the system led the Cary Maple Sugar Company to form a partnership with Brower in 1918, with the company providing the facilities and financing to expand production and sale of the pipeline. Although his family stayed in New York, Brower temporarily relocated to St. Johnsbury to direct production in this new venture.
According to a promotional brochure, during the first year of production in St. Johnsbury, sales more than doubled and orders were coming in faster than they were able to manufacture the pipeline. The brochure goes on to say that many producers tried a small amount of the tubing at first but were so satisfied that they followed-up with much larger orders. Owners of larger sugarbushes were especially interested in the system. In one instance an estimated 30,000 feet of pipeline was used in one 1,700 tap sugarbush. With mass production in full swing, the 1920 prices for the system ranged from thirty-five to forty-two dollars for one thousand feet of half inch to one inch diameter pipeline, and seven dollars per one hundred for both spouts and Goosenecks. The half inch and one inch diameter pipeline sections came in three foot lengths with a manufacturer’ estimated costs of sixty to seventy cents per tree.
1921 Vermont newspaper advertisement for Brower Sap Piping manufactured out of St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
An impressive endorsement of the quality of maple sugar one could make using the pipeline came from M.J. Corliss, the Secretary and Treasurer of the Vermont Sugarmaker’s Association. At the annual meeting of the Association in 1926, Corliss noted that he had “been taking careful note and for the last two or three years it is a fact that the men who have carried off most of the blue ribbons or first prizes are the men who have used the piping system”. One of the greatest strengths of the pipeline was the elimination of debris and the near immediate delivery of clean, fresh sap, which was especially important in the 1920s and 1930s when and our understanding of bacterial growth in sap and the tap holes was in its infancy and sap gathering was traditionally done with out the aid of engines and machines.
With the Cary Company’s assistance and wide reaching influence, the pipeline began to make a dent in the equipment market. While, the pipeline system never became as popular as tubing has today, it was added to the sap gathering process in a number of maple operations. A 1925 study of 457 maple producing farms in Vermont found that 18, or roughly four percent, were using the pipeline on some of their trees. In those 18 sugarbushes, an average of 28 percent of the trees were tapped with the pipeline, ranging from as few as 8 percent to as many as 75 percent of the trees. In that same year, pipeline users averaged 400 taps on tubing and had been gathering sap with the system for an average of 4 years. This study also found the average estimated value of the pipeline to be $268 or 67 cents per tap, which was consistent with the price estimate promoted by the Cary Company.
It is not clear when the Cary Maple Sugar Company discontinued its production of the pipeline; however, it may have been as early as the mid-1920. By the late 1930s, it appears that the Gooseneck system had fallen out of favor and was no longer used by many maple producers. George Cary himself went bankrupt and died in 1931, leading to the reorganization of the company and the sale of his farm and sugarbush. With the end of production of the pipeline in St. Johnsbury, William Brower returned to his family in New York, where he lived until his death in 1940.
The pipeline was used primarily in the northeastern states of Vermont, New York, and New Hampshire; however, the system also made it as far west as Wisconsin. Evidence of its use was recently found in the northern part of the state on the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Archaeologists discovered spiles, Gooseneck connectors, rolls of wire, and thousands of sections of pipe from the Brower system at the former location of a late 1920s to early 1930s sugarhouse.
Like plastic tubing, it was important to not have any sag in the system where sap could collect in low spots and get sour. Some pipeline users reported that freezing was sometimes a problem, but that the metal warmed easily when the sun came out, quickly thawing the frozen sap in the pipeline. It was sometimes noted that at the end of the season sap gathered with the system was slightly sour and often had to be thrown away. Fallen limbs, ice, and deer occasionally disconnected sections of the pipeline, and the contraction of the metal in very cold conditions could result in the separation of the inserted pipe ends. Some maple producers stopped using the system because it was made from a kind of sheet metal known as Tern Plate, which was a combination of tin and lead. As one maple bulletin described it in 1949, “the use of such metal was strongly discouraged by State and Federal authorities for the processing of any food”. In spite of these drawbacks, the benefits at the time were clear. For sugarmakers with large, steep, and hard to get to sugarbushes who kept their equipment clean and processed their sap quickly, the Gooseneck system was an excellent innovation. While the system added more work at the beginning and end of the maple season with longer set up times and additional cleaning, it eliminated the laborious task of gathering sap once or twice a day.
Improvements in sap gathering methods have long since replaced the Gooseneck system, but the pipeline has not completely faded into memory. On the Lent family farm near Mayfield, New York, the pipeline continues to be used on a few hundred taps to gather and transport sap from their mountainside sugarbush. It is no coincidence that the family still uses the system or that their sugarbush is near Mayfield, the community where Brower first invented the pipeline. In fact, the Lent family has used the pipeline for over 80 years with their farm and sugarbush located next door to Brower’s former property. Many years after his death, the Lent family purchased William Brower’s former home and the workshop where the pipeline was invented. Today, a New York State historic marker points out the location of the workshop alongside Mountain Road (Highway 123) northeast of Mayfield.
The Gooseneck metal sap pipeline in use during the 2005 sugaring season in the Lent Family sugarbush, Mayfield, New York. Photo by Matthew M. Thomas
According to Lent family history, their ancestor, Edward L. Lent, worked with his neighbor Brower in the early 1900s to develop and improve the pipeline system, using the Lent sugarbush as a test site. Over the years the Lent family tried other methods of sap collection like metal pails, plastic bags, and plastic tubing, but has always kept a portion of their sugarbush on the Gooseneck system. At their peak in the 1980s, the Lent’s gathered sap with the pipeline from approximately 2500 taps. More recently, they have discontinued commercial production and scaled back their operation to a few hundred taps. The spring of 2004 was one of the first years that they did not tap, out of respect for the terminal illness and recent passing of the family patriarch, Edward W. Lent, grandson of Edward L. Lent. The 2005 season saw a return to the Lent family installation of the Gooseneck system.
As the preferred method of sap gathering in the modern sugarbush, plastic tubing has become commonplace over the last forty years. However, the basic idea, structure, and terminology of a sap gathering pipeline were established with the Gooseneck pipeline, setting the stage for the experiments with plastic tubing pipelines in the mid-1950s. In fact, one could argue that Brower would have probably chosen plastic rather than English Tin had flexible plastic PVC tubing been invented and available in the early 20th Century. In a flexible form, PVC tubing wasn’t available for non-military use until after World War II. It wasn’t until it became commercially available in the 1950s when pioneers like Nelson Griggs, George Breen, and Bob Lamb began to explore its application for gathering maple sap.
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.
Image of a young George D. Jarvis.
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.
Examples of bottles of Dr. Geo. D. Jarvis’s patent medicines. Photos of bottles Courtesy of Jerry Russin, Jr. and the Vermont Bottle Man Duane E. Chase of Jeffersonville, VT.Drawing from C.F. Warner’s 1893 sap spout patent (US509,980).
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.
Drawing from C.F. Warner’s 1899 sap spout design patent (USD31,860).
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.
Drawing of C.F. Warner’s 1904 sap spout patent (US76,324).
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.
Drawing from C.F. Warner and G.D. Jarvis’ 1905 sap spout patent (US801,755).
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.
February 1903 advertisement for the Warner Sap Spout based on Warner and jarvis’ 1905 patent. Note the patent applied for and manufactured by of Geo. D. Jarvis & Co.1908 advertisement for Geo. D. Jarvis & Son piano sales in Burlington, Vermont.
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.
1924 advertisement for the Leader Evaporator Company sales of the Warner Sap Spouts.
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.
Image of Eben Willis’ 1877 patent design for maple sap spout that was never manufactured.
The history of the Willis Sap Spout is a curious story of business partners, misleading patent claims, and changing manufacturers. The Willis Sap Spout began with Eben Willis obtaining a patent in April 1877 (US189,330) for a rather curious sap spout design. Willis was a farmer and sugarmaker from Colton, New York who designed an odd-stubby-shaped cast iron spout with a sharp sloping channel at the front, a pin to suspend a bucket from its handle and a lower hook to suspend a bucket as an alternative hanging method. It has been long suspected by expert sap spout collectors that this 1877 patent design by Willis was never put into production, and according to testimony by Willis in a later court case it is true that no spouts under the April 1877 patent design were ever produced.
Image of Willis’ 1891 sap spout patent design, sold with patent dates of both 1877 and 1891 embossed on the side. This is the first Willis Sap Spout.
The first Willis Sap Spout actually produced looks nothing like the true 1877 patent design and was curiously embossed with a “PAT’D” on one side and “1877” on the other side and featured a square apex (point inserted into tap hole) and both an open and closed top channel for sap. Contrary to the claimed patent date, this Willis spout was designed and first manufactured beginning sometime after 1877; however, it wasn’t actually patented until 1891 (US455,784). In addition to the incorrect 1877 patent date, many of this version of the Willis Spout were embossed with the correct patent date of 1891 as well.
Advertisement flyer for Willis & Spear sale of the Willis Sap Spout, showing an open channel variation on the 1891 patent design.
Willis entered into a 50-50 partnership in 1879 with local Canton mill owner and banker James Spear for patent ownership and the production and sale of the Willis Spout. In these early years Willis & Spear handled the sale and distribution of the spout themselves and listed their business location as Troy, New York, although both men were longtime Canton residents. The Willis Spout was clearly being produced and sold in sufficient quantities by 1880 to have gotten the attention of C.C. Post, the manufacturer of the Eureka Sap Spout. C.C. Post claimed that Willis and his spout manufacturer, Floyd Chamberlin & Company, had infringed on his patent claims with their design.
Article that appeared in the Burlington Free Press in February 1880 describing a patent infringement meeting between C.C. Post and the manufacturers of the Willis Sap Spout.
According to Post, upon examination by “two chosen patent law experts”, Floyd, Chamberlin & Company agreed that it was an infringement and ceased production immediately. While it may be true that the manufacturing company may have elected to cease production, Eben Willis himself took a much different view and declared in his local newspaper that he would not be intimidated by C.C. Post. This seems to be the case and in 1887 Eben Willis, operating as Willis and Spear, contracted with Charles Millar and Sons out of Utica, New York for the exclusive sale of the Willis Sap Spout in the United States, with plans to produce at least 100,000 spouts a year. The sap spouts were actually manufactured at a foundry in Connecticut who shipped the spouts to Millar and Sons. Around this time, Willis also contracted with the James Smart Manufacturing Company, LTD in Brockville, Ontario for the sale of the spout in Canada.
1889 advertisement for Charles Millar & Sons sale of the Willis Sap Spout.
In 1886 it was announced that Eben Willis had designed and would soon be manufacturing an arch to support sap pans, although further information on the success or design of this arch has not yet been found. Similarly, in 1891 Willis claimed in the local paper to have designed and patented his own evaporator and would soon begin production; however, no evidence of an evaporator design attributed to Willis, let alone a patent, has been found.
1901 advertisement for the Hunting-Weekes Company sale of the Willis Sap Spout showing both open and closed channel variations on the 1898 skeleton apex design.
After Spear unsuccessfully requested that they dissolve their partnership, with Willis “buying out” Spear, James Spear sued Willis in 1890 to recover the value and profits from his half of ownership of the patent, manufacturing and sale of the Willis Sap Spout. Willis attempted to claim that their partnership was based on the April 1877 patent (US189330) which was a design that in fact was never used to produce the Willis spout. Instead, Willis claimed that Spear had no claim to the actual Willis Sap Spout that was produced and sold. Unfortunately, for Willis, he lost the case against him as well as two appeals and in the end the partnership was fully dissolved, and Willis was forced to compensate Spear for $5000.
Image of Willis’ 1898 patent design featuring the skeleton style apex on the portion of the spout that rest in the sap hole and permits sap to enter the spout channel.
In 1898 Willis was awarded another design patent (US606613) for a spout similar to the 1891 design with the key difference being the square apex being replaced with a cross-shaped apex sometimes called a skeleton apex. Interestingly, Willis repeated his earlier fudging of patent dates when he falsely stamped an earlier patent date of 1891 on the 1898 patent design. The Willis Sap Spout made on the skeleton apex design that was awarded a patent in 1898 were sometimes embossed with “PAT’D” and “1891”, as well as the more accurate “1898” and even “1899”. Testimony from the partnership and patent ownership court case between Spear and Willis noted that “from time to time different alterations and improvements have been made to the spout” further explaining the many subtle variations now found to vex the antique sap spout collectors. See Hale Mattoon’s book Maple Spouts Taps & Tools for illustrations of all the variations of the Willis Sap Spout.
Following the end of the contract with Millar and Sons, around 1900 Willis contracted with the Hunting-Weekes Company of Watertown, New York to be the exclusive sale representatives of the Willis Sap Spouts. Eben Willis died at age 83 on July 31, 1906 in Canton, New York, bringing production and sale of the Willis Sap Spout to an end.
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.
C.C. Post tin shop in old brick general store on Main Street in Hinesburgh, Vermont.
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.
1857 Map of Hinesburgh, Vermont showing location of C.C. Post tin shop.Advertisement from 1863 for the sale of Cook’s Sugar Evaporator with C.C. Post of Hinesburgh as the sales agent.
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.
Image from C.C. Post’s first sap spout design patent awarded in 1868 (US84032).
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.
Advertisement for C.C. Post’s Eureka Sap Spout from 1869 with his location listed as Waterbury, Vermont as he transitioned his operations from Hinesburgh 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.
Aerial shot of C.C. Post house at 83 North Union Street in Burlington, Vermont.
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.
Portrait drawing of C.C. Post.
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.”
Image from one of C.C. Post’s later sap spout design patents awarded in 1871 (US117326).
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.
Advertisement for C.C. Posts Eureka Sap Spouts No. 1 and No.2. Notice the claim of over 11 million spouts sold.
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.
Image of evaporator patent from J.F. Ferguson and C.C. Post awarded in 1884 (US308407).
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.
1894 advertisement for Chas. C. Stelle’s sales of Eureka Sap Spouts with a Brooklyn business address.
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.
I am happy to share on this website a digital version of the late Lynn H. Reynolds’ book Reynolds, Maple and History: Fit for Kings. This colossal book shares the story of many generations of Reynolds family maple syrup making within the broader context of the history of maple industry in North America. Especially interesting in the book are the first hand memories and experiences of members of the Reynolds family from Wisconsin who were engaged at all levels and components of the maple industry for much of the 20th century. In particular, Adin Reynolds and his two sons Lynn and Juan Reynolds saw it all, from making a lot of maple syrup (they were the largest operation in the world for many years in the 1960s and 1970s), equipment sales, buying and selling syrup, to organizational leadership at the state, national, and international levels.
Originally published in 1998 with a limited number of copies printed, the book quickly sold out and went out of print. Having been asked on numerous occasions by folks interested in maple history where they might get a copy I decided to contact the Reynolds family and thankfully they were kind enough to grant me permission to create a PDF copy of the book and make it available to people for free on this website.
The book covers 578 pages, so be advised, the digital file is fairly large at 115 mb. In addition, I created an index for the maple syrup history topics covered in the book and have included it at the end of the PDF version. You can down load the book HERE or by clicking on the image of the book above.
