Evaporators Archives - Maple Syrup History

Bringing New Life to An Old Boiling Arch: Adding Flat Pan Boiling to Maple History at Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum

By Matthew M. Thomas

I was excited to recently learn of a great project to excavate, reconstruct, and reuse an open-air stone and earth boiling arch for supporting a flat pan for boiling maple sap.

Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum. Phot courtesy of Janet Woods.

With the help of the Boy Scouts from Erie County’s General McLane School District Troop 176 and Legacy Troop 73, Boy Scout J.C. Williams completed this project as part of his Eagle Badge at the sugarbush of the Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum near Edinboro, Pennsylvania.

Cover of Virginia Sorensen’s Newberry Medal winning book, Miracles on Maple Hill.

Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum is home to a great family-friendly maple museum that showcases the history of maple syrup but also tells the tale of the back story of Virginia Sorensen’s 1957 Newberry Award winning children’s book, Miracles on Maple Hill. In writing the book, Virginia Sorensen drew from her experiences living in northwest Pennsylvania. A significant portion of the story of Miracles on Maple Hill centers on activities in a rural sugarhouse and sugarbush as a family struggles to work together to overcome and deal with the father’s trauma of returning to home life after World War Two.

The sugar house at Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum. Photo by author.

But Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum is much more than a museum, which is open all year round. Hurry Hill also has a working sugarbush and outdoor maple history interpretive walking trail that are open for visitors during the sugaring season. The methods and appearance of the syrup making in the sugarhouse are fairly rustic and consistent with what one would see in much of the 20^th century. In fact, construction of two sugarhouses on the farm date to 1930. Also on display are a series of large iron kettles suspended over an open fire to show how maple sugaring was done in the colonial era.

Demonstration of boiling sap in kettles at Hurry Hill Maple Farm. Photo courtesy of Eric Marendt.

On the annual Northwest Pennsylvania Maple Association Taste & Tour weekend, Scouts from the above-mentioned troops are busy demonstrating boiling sap in the iron kettles, explaining the history and process to interested visitors. It is common at demonstration sites teaching about the history of maple syrup to show the colonial era method of boiling in kettles. Luckily for the Scouts, who otherwise spend the weekend standing around in the cold and wind, they have protection from the elements in the form of an Adirondack shelter that was built at the site in 2013 as part of another Scout’s Eagle Badge project.

Historic image from 1927 of open air boiling on a flat pan and stone arch. Photo from Wisconsin Historical Society collections.

What was is usually missing from the presentation of the evolution of sap boiling technology is the use of a flat pan on a rudimentary platform and firebox, a boiling method that replaced the less efficient kettles but preceded the shift to formal commercial evaporators and the construction of sugar houses.

Historic image of use of a flat pans balanced on a stone and earth arch. Photo from Wisconsin Historical Society collections.

Thankfully, Hurry Hill Maple Farm’s owner Janet Woods, whose family has been working this sugarbush since 1939, realized that there was the long-forgotten remains of an old stone and earth arch perfectly situated in the sugarbush along the interpretive walking trail between the sugarhouse, the kettles and Adirondack shelter. From his previous years of telling about the kettle boiling process at the Taste & Tour weekend, senior scout J.C. Williams had an understanding of the role of the arch and flat pan in the evolution of boiling technology. Through conversations with Janet Woods, J.C. Williams was also aware of the presence of the remains of the old stone and earth arch and proposed that as his Eagle Badge project, the Scout Troop would dig it up and rebuild it in the fall and in the following spring use it to boil sap with a flat pan.

Eagle Scout J.C. Williams taking measurements of abandoned stone and earth arch before beginning excavation in October 2022. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.

Plans were put into motion and the excavation and reconstruction work was caried out over the course of a weekend in October 2022, under the direction of J. C. Williams and with the assistance of a few of his fellow scouts, their fathers, and the troop leader Eric Marendt. Initially, measurements and notes were made of the size, shape and appearance to be able to rebuild the arch as close to those specifications as possible. After that, vegetation was cleared and the soil was removed from around the rocks and in the central firebox area.

Excavations in progress of stone arch by scouts and parents from Troops 73 and 176. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.

Having visited Hurry Hill Maple Farm and Museum the previous summer, Janet Woods was aware of my interest in all things maple history but she also knew that I was an archaeologist who actually had first-hand experience with researching and documenting stone and earth boiling arches. Janet contacted me to tell me about their progress and ask for any advice or details of what to look for and expect. I spoke briefly with the scouts on the day of the excavation to give them an idea of what their digging might find. I also sent them a handful of historic photos of similar arches in use as well as some images from archaeological investigations of arches.

Close up photo of reused scrap metal that was recovered from the excavations of the stone and earth arch. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.

I also shared that from my research experience and from my knowledge of other excavations of similar arches, it was very common to find miscellaneous pieces of old heavy metal that were used as makeshift fire grates, supports and leveling pieces for the flat pan, and as walls to the interior fire ox and arch door. True to form, the scout’s excavation work uncovered an assortment of metal from old car parts, metal bar, and an old cross-cut saw blade.

Reconstructed stone and earth boiling arch with metal support beams and interior grate, ready for the sap to flow the flowing spring. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.

After dismantling the arch, the scouts rebuilt it with an eye to making it a strong, functional and level support for a heavy metal flat pan that would be filled with maple sap for boiling the following spring. Repurposed old pieces of metal pipe and a grate were added for the fire box and as supports to slide the 3 1/2 foot by 4 /1/2 foot flat pan on and off the fire.

As an archaeologist I have had the priveledge of finding and recording dozens of similar stone arches and have read reports of similar investigations of abandoned arches, some bult for small 2 x 3 flat pans and other built for pans possibly as large as 5 x 12 feet.

Two photos of the reconstructed arch and flat pan in operation. Note the Adirondack shelter built by the scout troop in 2013 in the back of the photo on the right. Photos courtesy of Eric Marendt.

View of the reconstructed arch in use with flat pan evaporating sap at Hurry Hill Maple Farm. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.

In the case of this project, it was especially enjoyable for me to see that not only were these scouts able to learn something about arch technology and use from its excavation, but in the spirit of experimental archaeology, that they were going to learn even more by taking it to the next two steps of rebuilding and reusing the arch. It is true that there are still many backyard sugarmakers that use a small flat pan like was used here, but most folks build cinderblock arches or use some other modern materials.

Eagle Scout J.C. Williams on left, with fellow scout and parents at work reconstructing the stone and earth arch in October 2022. Note the size of the stones that were used and reset in the arch. Photo courtesy of Jante Woods.

It is exceedingly rare today to find anyone still building a stone and earth arch. With the help of a knowledgeable volunteer at Hurry Hill Maple Farm, the scouts had a bonus of a geology lesson, when Kirk Johnson, himself an Eagle Scout 55 years ago, explained the glacial significance and thermal properties of the large glacial erratic granite boulders that had been selected and used in the original build of the arch.

Historic image from 1957 of sap boiling n a flat pan on stone arch. Photo from Wisconsin Historical Society collections.

Like the many hundreds and thousands of families that constructed arches their sugarbushes from the stones and left over metal at their disposal, these scouts had the real experience of learning how to best, level the pan and boil in a stone arch, not to mention how to get the best fire and airflow. If one thing is true, scouts love a reason to play with fire and you can bet that by the end of the weekend, these scouts had a pretty strong boil going from the 50 gallons they collected from pails on nearby trees.

With the arrival of the 2023 maple season and the annual Taste & Tour weekend at Hurry Hill Maple Farm, the scouts were able to put their work to the test and add the reconstructed stone arch and flat pan to the maple history tour and educational program. In mid-March, six scouts camped out in the snow along side the Adirondack shelter, kettles, and flat pan with additional scouts from the troop joining during the day to help with the tour, keeping the fires burning and the steam rising.

Groups shot of the flat pan and arch in use with scouts and parents from Troops 73 and 176 with Janet Woods on far right. Photo courtesy of Janet Woods.

Many maple education programs suffer from an over-emphasis on romanticized presentations of the early history of maple syrup and sugar making technology, such as showing the use of kettles but leaving out flat pans. In fact, one could argue that the use of flat pans and stone arches like the one rebuilt at Hurry Hill Maple Farm was even more extensive in numbers and spread and had a much greater economic importance than the era and use of iron kettles. As a promoter and sometimes critic of the telling of maple history, what made me happy with this story, besides simply seeing a younger generation show interest in maple syrup history, was that Hurry Hill Maple Farm was now able to tell and show visitors a more complete history of the changes and improvements to maple syrup technology. What was a great maple history museum and very good maple education program is only that much better.

Special thanks to Janet Woods, Eric Marendt, and the scouts from Troops 73 and 176 for sharing their story and photos of this project and letting us all enjoy this experience.

Evaporator Company Histories: The Eureka Evaporator and the I.X.L. Evaporator

By Matthew M. Thomas

The neighboring towns of Hubbard and Warren in Ohio were home to two related evaporator companies in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, Henry Hescock’s Eureka Evaporator and Milton Mathews’ I.X.L. Evaporator.

Eureka Evaporator

The Eureka Evaporator, the earlier of the two, was invented and manufactured by Henry W. Hescock, out of Hubbard, Ohio. Following service in the Civil War at the age of sixteen, Hescock entered the dry goods business with his father-in-law, Edward Moore, in Hubbard, Ohio from 1866 to the late 1870s. Following the dry goods business, he started an evaporator manufacturing business, although it is not clear exactly when Hescock began to design and manufacture evaporators. One source says he opened his evaporator shop “shortly after the war” and another mentions upon his death in 1896 that he had been making evaporators for over twenty years. The earliest reference to him patenting one of his evaporator designs dates to 1877.

Example of a recovered Eureka Evaporator cast iron arch front (Photo courtesy of Jerry Russin, Jr.).

References describing the actual use of this evaporator as well as advertisements for the sale of the Eureka Evaporator appear as early as 1883. It is important to note that the Hescock Evaporator should not be confused with an entirely different fruit evaporator, also called the Eureka, that was manufactured in the late 1870s and early 1880s by Mr. D.R. Byrum and the Grand Isle Evaporator Company, out of Grand Isle, Vermont.

Drawing from Hescock’s 1877 evaporator patent design.

The first Hescock evaporator patent from 1877 (patent no. US195366) featured a series of individual flat pans joined by connecting siphons. Hescock’s second patented design, awarded in 1886 (patent no. US335583), featured the same siphons with the addition of corrugations to the bottom of the pans to increase the surface area exposed to the heat of the firebox. In 1893 he patented a third evaporator design (patent no. US50233) which featured a unique set of horizontal tubular flues through which the hot gases would flow as they exited the fire box and out through the stack or chimney. Hescock obtained this patent in 1893 but there is no indication that he put this design into production.

Image from Hescock’s 1893 evaporator patent design.

In addition to manufacturing evaporators, Hescock sold sheet metal sap pails, a barrel style sap tank, and a sap level regulator. Besides manufacturing maple sugaring equipment, Hescock co-owned the Loveless & Hescock foundry with his brother-in-law Warren Loveless. Hescock and his wife also owned numerous parcels of land in Hubbard with Hescock listed as the builder for at least fourteen houses in the town of Hubbard.

Based on a number of advertisements, envelopes and letterhead, and other references from that era, the Eureka Evaporator was actually fabricated at Milton Mathews’ Warren Evaporator Works in nearby Warren, Ohio as early as 1884.

Letterhead from 1884 showing Warren Evaporator Company as the Manufacturer of Hescock’s Eureka Evaporator (Image from Trumbull County Historical Society website).

It is possible that the Warren Evaporator Works simply had a license to manufacture and sell the Eureka Evaporator alongside their I.X.L. Evaporator and Hescock himself was simultaneously engaged in fabricating his Eureka Evaporator in Hubbard. However, because Hubbard, Ohio and Warren, Ohio are only fifteen miles apart, it seems unlikely that both Hescock and Mathews were both building the Eureka Evaporator and more probably that Hescock was simply handling sales and marketing of his invention.

Seemingly at the height of his company, Hescock died November 10, 1896, at the age of 52.

I.X.L. Evaporator

Milton Mathews was the owner and operator of the Warren Evaporator Works, Warren Ohio, which, as noted above, was in operation as early 1884 where it was manufacturing the Eureka Evaporator. It is notable that letterhead from that time only includes text for “Warren Evaporator Works, Manufacturers of Hescock’s Eureka Evaporator and Sugar Camp Fixtures” and does not mention the I.X.L. Evaporator.

In December 1887 Milton Mathews, along with Henry Hill of Chester Crossroads, Ohio (later from Chardon, Ohio) applied for a patent for their design of an evaporator with a unique hinge or pivot along one side of the boiling pans. The patent was awarded in 1888 (patent no US382314) and was marketed as the I.X.L. Evaporator. It featured flat pans that hinged on a piece of pipe or tubing that served as an external connector between each pair of pans, like the u-shaped siphons used to connect other evaporator designs. The hinge was built on either the left or the right side of the pans and appeared like a bulge to the wall of the pans. Each pan also featured a drain hole on the high side that was plugged with a metal stopper with a long metal handle.

Drawing from Mathews and Hill’s 1888 evaporator patent design.

Milton Mathews was born in 1842 in Trumbull Co. Ohio and like Hescock, served in the Civil War in Ohio’s 19^th Infantry from September 1861 to October 1862, before being discharged with a disability. Mathews’ partner on the patent, Henry Ezra Hill, is someone we know much less about. Born in 1849 in Geauga County, Ohio, Hill was said to have invented an evaporator in the Chardon area in the mid-1880s, but it is unclear if this was with Mathews or independently. Census data tells us Hill was a merchant and salesman in the 1890s and early 1900s, but it is not clear who he worked for or with, perhaps the Warren Evaporator Works. Hill appears to have retired by 1919 before passing away in Warren, Ohio in 1925.

Image of the early version of the I.X.L. Evaporator with a flat back pan and no preheater.

I.X.L. was a fairly common product name at the time, sort of like Acme and was not a specific acronym for anything. Rather it was a play on the words “I Excel” proclaiming the high quality and performance capabilities of the product. Early drawings and advertisements emphasized the ease with which the pans could be raised on their hinged connections and that it did not require an engineer to operate.

Image of the later I.X.L. Evaporator (1897 and later) featuring the preheater back pan with vertical tubular flues.

Interestingly, before 1897 the advertising images of the evaporators show a flat bottom to the back pan. Images after that date all show the vertical tubular flues on the raised back pan. I.X.L. Evaporator sales literature gave buyers a choice between a flat back pan or their unique “preheater” which featured an array of round tubular flues on the back pan that extended vertically into the arch.

Man standing alongside a left-sided I.X.L. Evaporator. Note the flared side to the pans and the pipelike hinge. (Photo from the collections of the Geauga County Historical Society).

Considering Hescock died in 1896 and it was at about that time that the I.X.L. Evaporator began to be made with the tubular vertical flues, it is very possible that Milton Mathews’ idea for the vertical tubular flues was sparked by seeing the horizontal tubular flues on the 1893 Hescock patent, a design of which he was most certainly aware.

Demonstrating the ease of use and lifting the hinged pans of an I.X.L. Evaporator. Note the circular vents on the doors on the front of the arch (source unknown).

Although it never appeared in the images of the I.X.L. advertisements and sales brochures, all the known examples and photographs of I.X.L. Evaporators show a round, sunburst pattern vent on each of the cast iron doors. I.X.L. Evaporators are also notable for the one-piece casting of the iron door frames on their arch front and their very squared, vertical wall design on their arches.

A series of images of a recently salvaged and soon to be restored I.X.L. Evaporator from Pennsylvania (Images courtesy of Laurence Frazier).

Mathews’ Warren Evaporator Works was located on the east side of Warren, Ohio on Woodland Avenue between a branch of the Mahoning River and the Ashtabula, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh Railroad. The Warren Evaporator Works continued to manufacture and sell I.X.L. Evaporators into the 19-teens. Around 1918 it appears that the plant was closed, and Milton Mathews retired from evaporator fabrication. Mathews died in Trumbull County a few years later in 1925.

1889 Sanborn Fire Insurance map for Warren, Ohio showing location of Warren Evaporator Works at the corner of Woodland Avenue and Railroad Street.

Video About The History of The Dominion & Grimm Company

As part of the Dominion & Grimm maple syrup equipment manufacturing company’s Virtual Spring Event, they have put together and shared a great video tracing their origins and history. You can see the video in English at the Youtube link below. There is also a French version available at this link.

You can also read more about the history of Dominion & Grimm at post I researched and wrote for this website, in addition to a post about viewing examples of old Dominion & Grimm catalogs shared on their website.

Early History and Origins of the Maple Syrup Evaporator

You can read a copy of my latest maple history contribution to the March 2021 edition of the Maple Syrup Digest (Vol. 60, no. 1), the official publication of the North American Maple Syrup Council , at this link or by clinking on the image below.

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.

New Online History: Perley E. Fox and the Granite State Evaporator Company

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.

For another telling of the Granite State Evaporator Company story, see my February 2019 post on the company here on this website, www.maplesyruphistory.com.

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