The unique story of the turn of the century maple syrup operation carried out by Abbot Augustus Low and his Horse Shoe Forestry Company in the forests of New York’s Adirondacks Mountains is near and dear to my heart and one I love to share. It also happens to be the focus of my latest contribution to the September 2022 edition of the Maple Syrup Digest(Vol. 61, no. 3). For those that may not be familiar with the Maple Syrup Digest, it is the official quarterly publication of the North American Maple Syrup Council. I even managed to snag the cover image of this issue of the Maple Syrup Digest, a first for me! You can read the article at this link or by clinking on the accompanying image.
Those of you looking for even more detail and dozens of maps and images related to the history of the Horse Shoe Forestry Company should check out my second book, A Sugarbush Like None Other: Adirondack Maple Syrup and the Horseshoe Forestry Company, available for purchase online at eBay.
I recently had the honor of doing a joint online presentation about Adirondack maple sugaring with Ivy Gocker, Library Director at the Adirondack Experience – The Museum on Blue Mountain Lake. Specifically, our presentation focused on the history of the maple sugaring operation of Abbot Augustus Low’s Horse Shoe Forestry Company in the Adirondacks 120 years ago.
If you missed it and would like to watch you the program, you are in luck. The Adirondack Museum recorded our ZOOM webinar and has graciously shared it on their website, which you can find at this link or by clicking on the image above. This program was made possible by a partnership between the Adirondack Experience and co-sponsored the Albany Public Library.
Email goffnelson@gmail.com to request the Zoom invite.
A sugarbush of 50,000 taps, a network of pipelines to carry sap from the woods to collection points, with sap boiled on colossal evaporators in a series of syrup plants sounds like a description of a modern industrial maple syrup operation. For Abbot Augustus Low’s Horse Shoe Forestry Company 120 years ago, it was a novel attempt at making maple syrup in the Adirondack wilderness on a scale never before experienced. From 1896 to 1908, A.A. Low and his army of workers carved an industrial landscape out of the forest around Horseshoe Lake, complete with railroads, electrification, mills, dams, a private camp, and the centerpiece maple syrup operation. In time the landscape of A.A. Low’s private estate changed hands and uses, but as told in Matthew Thomas’ new the book, A Sugarbush Like None Other, the remnants of the story of the Horse Shoe Forestry Company can still be found on the land.
Please join author Matthew Thomas on September 9th at 7 pm for a virtual presentation of his research and field investigations that went into documenting the history and remains of the Horse Shoe Forestry Company.
My new book on maple history has hit the streets, titled A Sugarbush Like None Other: Adirondack Maple Syrup and the Horse Shoe Forestry Company. This book is the culmination of a number of years of archival and field research into the story and historic remains of Abbot Augustus Low’s turn of the century industrial scale maple syrup operation deep in the woods of the Adirondack wilderness of New York state. The size and complexity of A.A. Low’s maple operation was like nothing ever seen, either before, or for a long time after. As described in the eBay listing for online orders:
A sugarbush of 50,000 taps, a network of pipelines to carry sap from the woods to collection points, with sap boiled on colossal evaporators in a series of syrup plants sounds like a description of a modern industrial maple syrup operation. For Abbot Augustus Low’s Horse Shoe Forestry Company 120 years ago, it was a novel attempt at making maple syrup in the Adirondack wilderness on a scale never before experienced. This is the interesting tale of how from 1896 to 1908 one man, A.A. Low and his army of workers, carved an industrial landscape out of the forest, complete with railroads, electrification, mills, dams, a private camp, and the centerpiece maple syrup operation.
The book is illustrated with dozens of photographs, historic and recent, as well as original maps, and extensive documentation and references. With a soft cover format, the story is told across the following eleven chapters spanning 202 pages.
1 Introduction
2 A.A. Low – The Man and His Family
3 The Industrial Landscape and Estate of A.A. Low
4 Maple Sugaring in the Late Nineteenth Century
5 Making Maple Syrup and Maple Sugar at Horseshoe
6 Grasse River Sugarbush
7 Wake Robin Sugarbush
8 Maple Valley Sugarbush
9 Syrup House and Sugarbush Operations
10 An End and New Beginnings
11 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
A Sugarbush Like None Other is available for immediate purchase through eBay at this link and will be on the shelf of bookstores and gifts shops in the northern New York and Adirondack region later this year. For additional information on the book visit www.sugarbushlikenoneother.com.
One of my ongoing research projects, and the subject of my next book, looks at the history of Abbot Augustus Low’s Horse Shoe Forestry Company maple sugaring operation in New York’s Adirondack wilderness. Low was a very wealthy New Yorker who at the end of the nineteenth century established an extensive maple operation and associated townsite, mills, dams, and private great camp, all connected by his own personal railroad in the wilderness of the Adirondacks.
Hand painted label for Horse Shoe Forestry Company’s maple sugar featuring the Maple Valley sugar house. From the collections of the Adirondack Experience.
As a part of this research I have been conducting extensive field investigations searching for and mapping the physical remains associated with Low’s maple operations. While there is much to tell, and will be told when my book is finished, here is a small taste of what has been found and how.
Many folks with an interest in Adirondack history and maple sugaring history are familiar with an album from 1901 of hand-colored, unlabeled, photographs taken by George Baldwin titled Adirondack Sugar Bushes – Horseshoe – St. Lawrence Co., N.Y. These photographs and album were commissioned by Low and the Horse Shoe Forestry Company. There is only one known version of this album which is kept in the collections of the Adirondack Experience, a museum dedicated to Adirondack history in Blue Mountain Lake, NY. What is not as well known, is that there is another set of the same images in non-colorized form that were submitted for copyright purposes and are now held in the Library of Congress (LOC) in Washington, D.C. As a part of the copyright process, the images were published in the 1901 Copyright Office of the Library of Congress – Catalogue of Titles Entries of Books and Other Items, each with corresponding numbers and titles. What is helpful is that the set of images that are now found in the LOC, which I examined in the fall of 2018, all have their original numbers printed on them so one can see what were the actual titles assigned to these images in 1901 by A. A. Low.
Through a variety of historical and archival references and reports, we know the Horse Shoe Forestry Company built three large buildings for processing maple sap, each containing five enormous Champion Evaporators made by the G.H. Grimm Company. While these were referred to as sugar houses, they were more like maple syrup factories or plants, operating on a scale not before seen in the maple industry. All three of the large plants are featured in images in the colorized album, but I will focus on one of these plants for this particular part of the Horse Shoe story.
Black and white image of “Maple Valley” sugar house taken by George Baldwin and submitted to Library of Congress as part of Horse Shoe Forestry Company copyright registration. From collections of Library of Congress.
This particular image, LOC copyright number 1690, was titled “Maple Valley Sugar House.” For those familiar with the various images and maple sugaring buildings that once stood at Horse Shoe, that title might cause some confusion. There is another, better-known, syrup plant, also called the Maple Valley Sugar House, show in the figure below. The LOC title for the better-known sugar house is also labeled “Maple Valley Sugar House,” and has been assigned LOC number 1689. For the sake of clarity, I will call these Maple Valley 1 (image 1689) and Maple Valley 2 (image 1690).
Colorized image of Horse Shoe Forestry Company’s Maple Valley 1 sugar house (LOC copyright image 1689) taken by George Baldwin. From the Collections of the Adirondack Experience.
Maple Valley 1 was the showcase sugar house in Low’s maple operation, and the archaeological remains of it are still fairly well preserved, if one knows where to look. Other researchers in the past, such as railroad historian Michael Kudish, have identified and published the location of Maple Valley 1. However, the true location of Maple Valley 2 has been unknown. One of the goals of my fieldwork in this Horse Shoe Forestry Company maple history project has been to identify all the locations of the buildings associated with the maple sugaring operation.
To that end, archival research in the collections at the Adirondack Experience (AE) led to the surprise discovery of another set of previously unknown images taken by photographer George Baldwin as a part of the same sugarbush series of the popular colorized album. These images, which had not been previously digitized and widely shared, brought to light a number of new and interesting details.
Black and white image showing Horse Shoe Forestry Company’s Maple Valley 2 sugar house in distance (AE image P015527) taken by George Baldwin. From the Collections of the Adirondack Experience.
In an attempt to shed light on the location of the Maple Valley 2 sugar house, the following image was especially important. In the image we see a boy tending to a sap collection pail on a hillside. But if one zooms in to what is in the background through the trees, we can clearly see the Maple Valley 2 Sugar House. Wowza! You can also see in the image the many elevated sap pipelines running through the trees downslope carrying sap from the sugarbush to the sugar house. These pipelines are very evident in the LOC image 1690. What is particularly notable in the full image of the boy on the hillside is the contour of the landscape in the immediate foreground as well as the land contours to the left of the image across the drainage and the flatter and much more open space surrounding the sugar house in the background.
Close up detail of AE image P015527 showing the Maple Valley 2 sugar house in the background through the trees. From the Collections of the Adirondack Experience.
Finding a place in the landscape that fit location was key to identifying where this image was taken and where the Maple Valley 2 sugar house once stood. In thinking this through and studying the landscape settings that had potential, an initial question was where exactly to start. Conventional wisdom has been that there were three branches to Low’s railroad each with their own names, Wake Robin Railroad, Maple Valley Railroad, and Grasse River Railroad, and we known there were three large sugar houses. Logic would have it that one branch of each railroad went to each of the large sugar houses. But was that true and what was the evidence to support or counter that notion? Well, the evidence from the LOC labels were that the three large sugar houses were named Wake Robin, Maple Valley 1, and Maple Valley 2. That would suggest that one of the large sugar houses was not associated with the Grasse River railroad branch. So, instead of looking in the vicinity of the Grasse River drainage, maybe one should start looking for a location for Maple Valley 2 in a place that was connected to the Maple Valley locale.
After studying topographic maps of the area, air photos from the 1940s to the present, and historic maps that show roads and railroad grades that connect to Maple Valley, I settled on a few possibilities and put them to the test. Could I find the spot where that photo was taken of the boy at the tree with the Maple Valley 2 plant in the background? After a bit of tromping up and down a few drainages, valleys, and hillsides, I think I found the spot!
Modern photo from May 2019 taken from same location as AE image P015527.
To the left is a modern view taken in early May 2019 that attempts to represent the same location and vantage point as Baldwin’s 1901 hillside photo (AE image P015527). As a stand-in for the boy in the original image is Adirondack trail expert and local history buff Bill Hill, who accompanied me in the field that day. If you are not familiar with Bill’s work you should check out his blog and new book Hiking the Trail to Yesterday for great information on enjoying historical places in the Adirondacks on foot or with paddle.
Side-by-side photographs comparing the 1901 image by Baldwin (AE image P015527) with recent photo taken from same location and vantage point.
And here is the original and the recent, image side-by-side in a repeat photography format. I like what I see, with the angle of the slope, the contours on the far side of the drainage, and the flat valley below, which is now much more grown up with mature spruce and maple.
If this gets us to the right location for the Maple Valley 2 sugar house, which I think it does, then we are left with the next question. What remains of the Maple Valley 2 sugar house, if any, are left on the flat ground in the valley below? And that part of the story I will leave to be told in the book.
The G.H. Grimm Company was one of the largest and most influential maple sugar evaporator companies of the late 19th and all of the 20th centuries. The company began with Gustav Henry Grimm who was born in Baden, Germany in 1850. He came to new world in 1864 with his parents, settling in Cleveland, Ohio. A few years later as a young man, around 1870 Grimm moved to Hudson, Ohio with his new wife. Grimm came from a family of tin workers, with the 1870 and 1880 census for the Cleveland area showing a number of other Grimms who immigrated from Germany to Ohio also listed as tin workers.
Image of Gustav Henry Grimm from 1987 Rutland Historical Society Quarterly article by Robert F. Moore.
The business of G.H. Grimm & Co. was established for manufacturing the Champion Evaporator in Hudson, Ohio in 1881 with the Champion marketed from the beginning as an evaporator for the making of maple sugar, sorghum, cider, and fruit jellies. In the first year the company produced less than a dozen evaporators. Gustav H. Grimm applied for his first patent in November of 1881 (US254476) for a raised flue evaporator with Horace M. Clark, with the patent formally registered in March of 1882.
Patent drawing from Grimm and Clark’s 1882 evaporator design (US254476).
Over the next few years Grimm continued to make design changes and improvements to his evaporator and as Grimm Company history tells it, the first “real Champion evaporator” was tested in 1883. As the company expanded, in 1883 G.H. Grimm took on W. C. Parsons of Akron, Ohio as a partner. Over the next few years Grimm continued to tweak his 1882 patent with patented (US296743) improvements to various features and accessories to the evaporator as well as a patent (US316893) for the process of folding the sheet metal to form the distinctive raised flues.
1885 Patent drawing from Grimm’s method of folding metal to form raised flues (US316893).
Through the 1880s the company continued to expand its sales and distribution reaching into New England, Pennsylvania, and New York. In October 1888 the company was formally incorporated in Ohio as the G. H. Grimm Manufacturing Co. with an authorized capital stock of $50,000. The first president was W.C. Parsons with G.H. Grimm listed as superintendent.
Advertisement from 1885 for the Champion Evaporator from G.H. Grimm and Co. out of Hudson, Ohio.
Interestingly, there was another, completely unrelated, Champion Evaporator Company that operated in Berkshire, Vermont and later Richford, Vermont about this same time in the 1880s. This company was relatively short lived with evaporators in production from 1882 to about 1887. The history of the Richford, Vermont Champion Evaporator Company will be covered in greater detail in a separate post in this series on evaporator company histories.
Recognizing the need to be more centrally located in the heart of the maple sugar producing territory, in June of 1890, G.H. Grimm secured a lease for land alongside the railroad in Rutland, Vermont and over that summer erected a 120 by 40-foot one-story building. Manufacturing of new evaporators began in the fall and by December 1890 advertising for the company prominently displayed their locations as Rutland, VT and Hudson, OH. By April 1891 the company reported that it had put out 500 evaporators in the state of Vermont.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from 1895 for Rutland, VT showing first location of G.H. Grimm building on northwest side of Pine Street.
With the construction of the Rutland factory, G.H Grimm also moved his family from Ohio to Vermont and built a large, elegant new house at 201 Grove Street in Rutland. This historic home is now listed on the Vermont State Register of Historic Places.
1891 advertisement for Grimm’s Champion Evaporator showing Rutland, VT and Hudson, OH as the locations of their plants.
In the fall of 1892 the Grimm Company further expanded into Canada. On October 28, 1892 Le Prix Courant, a business newspaper in Montreal, Quebec, under the heading of “new companies”, announced the arrival of the “G.H. Grimme Manufacturing Company (Limited)” incorporated under the laws of the state of Ohio with Gustave H. Grimm of Montreal as general manager. Gustave H. Grimm’s younger cousin John H. Grimm, relocated to Montreal from Rutland, Vermont to run the Quebec branch of the company.
1893 advertisement listing Hudson, OH and Montreal, Quebec with an excellent engraving of the Champion Evaporator.
With facilities in Hudson, Ohio; Rutland, Vermont; and Montreal, Quebec the company had solidified their presence in the heart of the maple syrup producing world. The company was producing over 1,000 evaporators a year. In a 1894 tariff inquiry report to congress under the category of metal manufacturing companies, Grimm reported that in 1893 they produced 900 evaporators in the United States and 200 in Canada with an average price for a unit being $100 to $125.
Grimm’s move to Rutland signified a shift in his company focus towards New England and away from Ohio. A few years later the G.H. Grimm Manufacturing Co. formally separated itself from its Hudson, Ohio facilities. In addition, advertisements and publications for G.H. Grimm Manufacturing Co. no longer list Hudson, Ohio as one of its locations after 1893.
1904 advert for the Champion Evaporator Company of Hudson, Ohio.
Charles Bouton purchased the Hudson portion of the company in 1895, after which the Ohio manufacturing company under his ownership was called the Champion Evaporator Company or sometimes the Champion Evaporator Works. Presumably the Hudson “Works” were manufacturing the Grimm-style Champion Evaporator under license or contract for the G.H. Grimm Co., although that is not exactly clear.
The new Champion Evaporator Company in Hudson took a little time to get on its feet when in late 1895 and again in spring 1896 there were reports of the factory in Hudson closing. In August of 1896 it was formally announced that the Champion Evaporator Works in Hudson had been purchased by Bouton & Son. Bouton (sometimes misspelled as Bonton) was a hotel and livery owner in Hudson and had earlier acquired financial interest in the G.H. Grimm Company in 1886. Prior to his ownership of the Hudson Works, Charles Bouton’s association with G.H. Grimm was more than investor. In early 1895 he invented and patented (US546648) a sap pail and cover with the patent assigned to the G.H. Grimm Co. As owner of the independent Champion Evaporator Company, in 1900 Bouton patented his own evaporator design (US647798) in partnership with Clayton S. Bediant.
Bouton continued operation of the Champion Evaporator Company in Hudson until his death in October 1910. It is presumed the company continued under the leadership of his son Clarence Bouton, until his death in 1920. Following a stint in the Navy, Albert H. Schow acquired the company in the early 1920s and managed it until it closed in the early 1940s. As late as 1941, Schow was advertising to hire metal workers for the Hudson evaporator works. In 1942, Schow and the company were listed for unpaid taxes and later accounts in Hudson, OH newspapers suggest the company was forced to close operations in 1943 when supplies of sheet metal became difficult to obtain due to the war effort. In 1979, the city of Hudson rehabilitated the old Champion Evaporator Company factory space and opened it as a series of retail and studio shops, appropriately named “The Evaporator Works.”
Sanborn Map from 1900 showing later location of G.H. Grimm building across Pine Street from the earlier building.
Back to the G.H. Grimm story – business continued to stream in for the company in Rutland and in the summer of 1898 they began construction on a new three-story, 50 by 150-foot building with a spacious basement on Pine Street. Machinery was moved from the old location in the fall and the company was ready for business at its new location by the start of 1899.
Early 1900s Illustration of G.H. Grimm factory on Pine Street. Notice the building dimensions of 50 x 150 included on the drawing.
In 1900, the Grimm Company went through another reorganization when the Grimm cousins decided to split the Rutland and Montreal branches of the company into two independent companies. The Rutland operation became known as G.H. Grimm Company, sometimes just G.H. Grimm, with the word “manufacturing” dropped from the name. While the Montreal firm under John H. Grimm became Grimm Manufacturing Co., LTD., dropping the initials G.H. at the beginning of its name.
Catalog cover for The Grimm Mfg. Co. LTD out of Montreal.
John H. Grimm and his brothers Charles E. Grimm, Henry E. Grimm, and Wendell Grimm formally incorporated in Quebec in 1910. John H. Grimm and Charles E. Grimm continued to run the Montreal company for the next three decades until their deaths with John in 1941 and Charles in 1943. After their deaths, Grimm Manufacturing Co. LTD of Montreal was sold to Sylvan LeBrun and his Dominion Evaporator Company in 1953 to become Dominion and Grimm. A part of the LeBrun story was covered in the earlier posted history of the Waterloo Evaporator history and a later post will cover the history of the Dominion Evaporator Company and Dominion and Grimm, Inc. in this series on evaporator company histories.
Advertisement flyer from around 1901 for the improved Grimm Spout and Cover.
Although the first two decades of the G.H. Grimm Company witnessed many changes in organization and location, by the beginning of the new century things were largely settled from the standpoint of facilities and infrastructure. Gustave H. Grimm had found a permanent home for his family and company in Rutland with the plant on Pine Street and had narrowed his focus to just managing and leading the G.H. Grimm Company in Rutland. While still selling maple sugaring evaporators and equipment designed and patented by G.H. Grimm, the Montreal Grimm’s and the Hudson Champion Evaporator Company were no longer under Gustave H. Grimm’s control or his responsibility.
Reverse side of advertisement flyer from around 1901 showing Grimm Spout No. 1 and the special production Horseshoe Cover, patented by Abbot Augustus Low (US668313).
As G.H. Grimm worked to grow the Rutland company he was fortunate to be chosen by Abbot Augustus Low to be the evaporator and equipment supplier for Low’s massive Horse Shoe Forestry Company maple sugaring operation in the Adirondacks of New York. Low purchased at least 19 large sized evaporators and taps and pails to gather sap from as many as 50,000 trees. Grimm took advantage of the notoriety of Low’s sugarbush as the largest in the world and emphasized in their advertising that Low was using Grimm sap spouts. As noted in an earlier blog post, Grimm and Low also partnered even more directly when the Grimm company put A.A. Low’s patent (US668313) design for a sap pail cover into production. The Horseshoe Cover as it was known, was primarily produced for use by Low in his Adirondacks sugarbush, but Grimm also advertised its availability for purchase by any interested customers.
Examples of Pure Vermont Maple Syrup packed by the G.H. Grimm Company out of Rutland, VT.
It should be noted that in addition to manufacturing and selling maple sugaring equipment, for a period of time in the 1890s and early 20th century, the Grimm company in Rutland also bought maple sugar and maple syrup from producers in New England and New York and packaged it under the Grimm label. For example, in 1898 the Grimm company reported that by June it had shipped 10 tons of maple sugar and 6000 gallons of syrup which was about one third of the volume they had moved at the same time the year before.
One of the sheets of the patent drawing from July 19, 1904 showing Grimm’s sap spout no. 1 and his design for a sap pail cover (US765478). December 1904 patent drawing for Grimm sap spout designs for spouts no. 2, 3, 4, and 5 and sap pail cover (US778031).
The early 1900s saw G.H. Grimm expand his portfolio of sugaring equipment designs and patents (US729330, US765478, US778031) with a series of sap pail covers and sap spouts that were assigned numbers 1 through 5. The company continued to make improvements on their evaporators as well with three additional patents awarded for improvements to designs for sap preheaters and sap regulators (US884272, US962830, US1159213), with the final patent being awarded in 1915, posthumously following Grimm’s death in 1914.
Gustav H. Grimm died in Rutland on December 24, 1914 at the age of 64 from general paralysis. For a number of years following the death of G.H. Grimm, the company operated under the name of the G.H. Grimm Estate with his daughter Nella Grimm taking over management of company at age 36. After Grimm’s death the company continued to provide evaporators and equipment to the maple industry although at times it was forced to protect their interests in G.H. Grimm’s patent designs that made the company’s products popular. For example, see the 1918 case challenging the use of Grimm designs by three former Grimm employees that left the company to form the Vermont Evaporator Company.
Grimm’s evaporator patent drawing from 1908 with updated features (US884272).
Nella Grimm married John Crary Fox in 1923 in New York City. At time of her marriage Nella was described as executive head of the company but was living in Philadelphia and New York. Following his marriage to Nella Grimm, John C. Fox joined her in managing the company until his unexpected death from a heart attack in 1932.
The next 20 years are largely unremarkable for the company as it continued to maintain its market share as one of the five main evaporator manufacturers in the US and Canada. In 1951 Nella Grimm Fox decided to retire from management of the company and sold G.H. Grimm to Robert F. Moore of Rutland and Louis Veale of Montpelier. A few years later, Veale became ill and died in 1958, leaving the company in the hands of Robert F. Moore and his family with each of Moore’s sons working for the company before following separate career paths outside of the company.
Drawing for Grimm’s 1910 patent for a sap preheater (US962830).
Many of the details of the story of the Grimm Company after the sale of the company in 1951 have been told in a nice article by Robert F. Moore that appeared in 1987 in the Rutland Historical Society Quarterly. Here are some highlights of the next 40 or so years.
In 1964 The G.H. Grimm Company buys the Lightning Evaporator Company. (See the history of the Lightning Company in another post in this series.) In 1984, the Moore family sells G.H. Grimm to a group of Rutland businessmen known as the Grimm group. In 1985 the Lamb Naturalflow maple sap tubing company out of St. Bernhards Bay, New York became a subsidiary partner of the G.H. Grimm Company. And finally, in 1989 the Leader Evaporator Company of St. Albans, Vermont, purchased the G.H. Grimm Company and Lamb Naturalflow to become the largest maple equipment company in the world. Leader continued to manufacture the Grimm evaporators for a number of years before new designs and changing technology and health and safety requirements related to the use of lead solder led to their discontinuation. Leader operated the G.H. Grimm plant in Rutland for another 15 years before deciding to moving the majority of their operations to St. Albans in 2005; however, they still use the Pine Street facility in Rutland for a portion of their manufacturing.
A somewhat unique partnership between two giants in the maple industry occurred at the turn of the last century when the G.H. Grimm Company produced a specially designed sap pail cover for the Horse Shoe Forestry Company. The Horse Shoe Forestry Company was a new endeavour of Brooklyn millionaire Abbot Augustus Low. Low had purchases tens of thousands of acres of forest around Horse Shoe Lake in the Adirondacks with the intent of developing a large-scale modern and efficient maple syrup operation. Low also happened to be an experienced inventor with dozens of patents to his name, who, when faced with a problem or an opportunity, tried to make an improvement or come up with an entirely new design. In the case of maple sugaring, the lowly sap pail cover did not escape Low’s attention.
Baldwin image of sap pails with both red and yellow covers in use. Photo courtesy of the Adirondack Experience.
As one of the leading equipment manufacturers of the time, G. H. Grimm was the company chosen by A.A. Low and the Horse Shoe Forestry Company for purchase of many new evaporators, sap pails, spouts, and sap storage tanks. Numerous newspaper accounts from the late 1890s and early 1900s describe with awe the sheer size of the equipment orders placed with G.H. Grimm by the Horse Shoe Forestry Company. By the height of their operations, the Horse Shoe Company had built three large sugarhouses, factories really, to enclose as many as 15 of the very largest evaporators the Grimm Company made at the time.
Excerpt from an undated G.H. Grimm & Co. pamphlet promoting the “Horseshoe Cover” alongside the Grimm Spout No. 1. Collections of author.
Low and the Horse Shoe Company were such good customers for G.H. Grimm, the Grimm Company used their name as a selling point in their advertising. Noting in a 1907 ad to sell their sap spouts, that the Horse Shoe Company, touted as the world’s largest sugar maker, had purchased 50,000 of the Grimm spouts. No other sugarbush was even close to that large in scale and that number of spout begs the question were there also that many Horse Shoe-Grimm sap pail covers in use at Horse Shoe as well?
Although produced primarily for the the Horse Shoe Company, the Horse Shoe-Grimm sap pail cover was not for the Horse Shoe Company’s exclusive use. Grimm made the cover available for anyone to purchase and use. An undated G.H. Grimm promotional pamphlet informs readers that for twenty-five cents they will send you a a sample of a hookless No. 1 Grimm sap spout and Horse Shoe sap pail cover.
Baldwin image highlighting red sap pail cover. Photo courtesy of the Adirondack Experience.
A series of photographs taken by George A. Baldwin for the Horse Shoe Forestry Company in 1900 or 1901 includes examples of Low’s Horse Shoe – Grimm sap pail cover in action. One particular set of these images was hand colorized by Baldwin and depicts both the red and yellow sap pail covers in use in the Horse Shoe sugarbush.
Image of A.A. Low’s 1901 patent design for the Horse Shoe Forestry Company – G.H. Grimm sap pail cover.
A.A. Low applied for a patent on his sap cover invention on June 6, 1900, before being awarded patent number 668,313 on February 19, 1901. The cover itself was made
from two sheets of metal molded such that they formed a raised shape surrounded by a flat rim. The core in the center of the two raised sides was supposed to serve as an insulating air-pocket to help keep sap in the pail cool. The raised center also served to position the cover in the pail with the wide rim extending over the sides of the pail to keep debris and moisture from entering. It was necessary to use a hookless spout like the Grimm Spout No. 1 that would fit into the hole on the collection pail.
Detail of the logo embossed into the metal of the cover with the upturned horseshoe for the Horse Shoe Forestry Company along with the name G.H. Grimm & Co., Rutland, VT.
As a strong self-promoter and regular use of advertising and trademarks, the Horse Shoe – Grimm cover did not escape the hand of A.A. Low. Every Horse Shoe cover was embossed on both sides with the Horse Shoe Forestry Company name and logo as well as the G.H. Grimm and Co. name and location of Rutland, VT. Interestingly, the embossing also notes patent applied for, suggesting that the Grimm Company began producing the covers sometime in the second half of the year 1900.
Side view of the two colors and profile shape of the Horse Shoe -Grimm sap pail cover. This particular example is in the collections of the Adirondack Experience.
Ever thinking of improving efficiency in his sugarbush, Low had his sap pail covers painted red on one side and yellow on the other. The idea was that on each sap gathering run, the covers would be turned over after the pail was emptied. The two colors allowed the men gathering sap to see from a distance which pails had been collected and which had not. The G.H. Grimm promotional pamphlet noted that each cover is painted on both sides to prevent rusting, although it does not note the two color scheme.
The photos on the left from the collections of the Adirondack Experience are examples of the bright red and yellow colors used on each side of the Horse Shoe – Grimm sap pail covers. Note the hanging hole near the rim. This was not originally part of the A.A. Low design and was likely added at a later date by another maple syrup maker.
For those interested in the history of A.A. Low’s Horse Shoe Forestry Company maple syrup operation, check back in for additional posts on other aspects of the story including new, never before seen site maps and photos from the field. Eventually this research will be compiled and shared in the publication of my second book. For the time being, I am deep in the throes of field and archival research documenting and detailing the exact locations of Low’s maple syrup operations at Horse Shoe and recounting the broader history of use and development of Low’s estate.
And should anyone know the whereabouts of one of these Grimm-Horse Shoe Forestry Company sap pail covers that might be for sale, I would very much like to hear from you!
The unique story of the turn of the century maple syrup operation carried out by Abbot Augustus Low and his Horse Shoe Forestry Company in the forests of New York’s Adirondacks Mountains is near and dear to my heart and one I love to share. It also happens to be the focus of my latest contribution to the September 2022 edition of the Maple Syrup Digest (Vol. 61, no. 3). For those that may not be familiar with the Maple Syrup Digest, it is the official quarterly publication of the North American Maple Syrup Council. I even managed to snag the cover image of this issue of the Maple Syrup Digest, a first for me! You can read the article at this link or by clinking on the accompanying image.
