Category: New York

Early 1960s Maple Syrup Industry Films – Paul Smith’s College Library

By Matthew M. Thomas

The archives of Paul Smith’s College has digitized and shared online a series of six films, originally shot in 16 mm color, that show various scenes of maple sugaring in the early 1960s.

When I contacted the archivists at Paul Smith’s to ask about the background on the films it was shared that very little was known. The films more or less appeared at the archives with no supporting information. It was not apparent who made the films, but in viewing, it was clear that the majority of the footage was made in New York state which suggested that possibly someone from the maple research program  at Cornell University, or possibly maple equipment manufacturer Bob Lamb out of Liverpool, NY had made the films.

Bob Lamb’s May 15, 1961 Notice to tubing vendors – Courtesy of University of Vermont Archives.

I strongly suspected the films were shot by Bob Lamb considering he never personally appeared in any of the footage and the heavy emphasis on documenting only Lamb’s Naturalflow tubing with no examples of the other competing tubing product at the time.

My suspicions were confirmed when after a little sleuthing and digging in my research files from the Fred Laing folders of the maple research archives at the University of Vermont Special Collection turned up a notice from May 15, 1961 that was sent by Bob Lamb to the vendors that were selling his Naturalflow plastic tubing.  In this notice Lamb writes:

A small group of us have been running 16 M.M. Colored movie cameras this spring over quite a wide spread area. We have tried to make the film a general “MAPLE FILM,” specializing in showing hundreds of miles of tubing and working right.

The film covers tubing, from taking tubing into the woods, tapping the trees, installing tubing, an (sic) disassembling, as well as washed and stored. The entire operation from start to finish. This portion is part of the Lloyd Sipple story. This part of the film is a wonderful way to show a prospect that has a great doubt as to what to do with tubing after he gets it. It will help others that want to improve their ways of using tubing.

None of the footage in the six films in the Paul Smith’s archives appears to be a single finished film that has been edited and prepared for distribution. Rather, it appears instead to be many minutes of raw footage, oftentimes showing the same general scene over and over. Also, as raw footage, some of the scenes appear to be underexposed and can be rather dark at times. it should also be pointed out that there is no audio with these digital films.

Announcement on page 11 of the November 1962 of the Maple Syrup Digest from Bob Lamb informing readers about the production and availability of a series of maple syrup films.

Subsequent research has located an advertisement placed by Bob Lamb in the November 1962 Maple Syrup Digest where he makes it known that he has filmed and prepared new films in 1962 in addition to his 1961 film and that these are available free, by request, for showing at maple meetings. He also notes the run time of the films, which are shorter than the Paul Smith’s footage, suggesting what he was offering were edited “finished” films and the Paul Smith’s films are the raw footage. Lamb also noted that none of these films had sound added at that time.

Based on the date and information in Lamb’s 1961 mailed out notice and 1962 Maple Syrup Digest ad, as well as the known date of the group photo at the Cooperstown meeting of the National Maple Syrup Council (1963), the footage in the films can be said to range from 1961-1963.   Other elements and details in the footage, such as the packaging featured at the Reynolds Sugar Bush sales room, are consistent with this date range.

The six films feature various scenes and locations, mostly in New York but also in Ohio and Wisconsin. The bulk of the footage was shot at the sugarbush and sugar house of Lloyd Sipple in Bainbridge, New York. As mentioned in the quote from Bob Lamb’s notice, the focus of the footage is presenting Lamb’s Natural Flow plastic tubing in use so there are many minutes devoted to tapping and installing the tubing, checking tubing lines, and demonstrating tubing removal, dismantling and cleaning.

Because this was in the era when tubing was still new and evolving technology, it was recommended at the time that tubing should not be left hanging in the sugarbush and instead should be removed and meticulously cleaned and stored at the end of the season before being reinstalled the following winter. Likewise, it was the belief and recommendation of Bob Lamb at the time that his tubing should be laid across the ground or surface of the snow and not strung taunt at waist or chest height.

A number of individuals notable in the history of the maple industry and maple research are recognizable in the footage. These include sugarmaker and editor of Maple Syrup Digest, Lloyd Sipple of Bainbridge, NY; Dr. C.O. Willits of the USDA Eastern Regional Research Laboratory in Philadelphia, PA; Dr. Fred Winch of Cornell University; and Dr. James Marvin of the University of Vermont. There are also specific recognizable sugarbushes that appear in the footage, some brief, and some for many minutes. These include the Sipple’s Pure Maple Products in Bainbridge, NY ;  Reynolds Sugar Bush in Aniwa, WI; Harold Tyler’s Maple Farm near Worchester, NY; Ray Norlin’s Central Evaporator Plant in Ogema, WI; Taylor Farm Sugar Camp in Stamford, NY; Keim’s Kamp Maple Products in West Salisbury, PA; and the Toque Rouge Sugar Camp in Quebec.

Below you will find links to the Paul Smith’s archive pages for all six of the films along with a few stills and comments noting some of scenes, people, locations, and highlights in each film. Click on the underlined title to be taken to the link to view each film.

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Title – Sipple Maple Production Cut 1 – Time: 20:27

Comments: Most of the film is repeated shots of a three person tapping crew installing Lamb tubing at Llyod Sipple’s sugarbush. Some scenes are at trees in the yard at his farm in front of the sugarhouse and others in the woods of the sugarbush.

The tapholes were being drilled using a King brand gasoline, backpack mounted power tapper followed by another man inserting an antimicrobial paraformaldehyde tablet into the tapholes before a third man inserted the plastic tap and attached tubing.   Additional shots of tagged tapholes from previous years showing the effects on tap hole closure from treatment with Chlorox bleach versus paraformaldehyde tablets.

Other scenes include end of season removal process for plastic tubing including washing in a metal tank and rinsing with a pressure hose.  Additional scenes are of gathering sap from roadside tanks by pumping into a tanker truck and a few shots of making maple candies in a candy kitchen.

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Title – Sipple Maple Production Cut 2 – Time: 49:29

Comments: Footage illustrating the process of installation of Lamb tubing in snow with the crew wearing snowshoes.  Long drop lines installed at the tap holes were connected to lateral lines laid on the surface of the snow. A few shots of flushing freshly drilled tapholes with bleach solution prior to inserting plastic tap.

Shots of tanker truck delivering a load of fresh sap to Lloyd Sipple’s sugarhouse. Shots inside Sipple sugarhouse with Lloyd running three evaporators simultaneously. Additional views of Sipple filling N.Y.S. (New York State) one gallon metal syrup cans.  There are short scenes of the Taylor Farm Sugar Camp in Stamford, New York, as well as a glimpse of the log cabin style sugarhouse in Burton, Ohio.

View of removal and cleaning of plastic tubing, followed by washing and coiling on reels for storage. On this removal day, Dr. C.O. Willits  is seen observing and checking condition of tubing.

A short bit of footage of George Keim’s sugarhouse in Pennsylvania followed by views of sap being delivered to a sugarhouse in the unique Pennsylvania “double barrel” wooden sap gathering tank. Views of the tank being pulled by a team of horses then by a tractor. Some footage of candy making and filling candy molds.

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Title – Sipple Maple Production Cut 3 – Time: 31:57

Comments: many of the same general scenes as appear in other films in this group such as tapping and installation of tubing, inspection, removal, washing and storage. Notable shots of using paraformaldehyde  pellet gun to insert pellet in taphole. Lloyd Sipple appears in footage working with installation crew.

Numerous views of the time consuming work of removal, washing, rinsing, and drying thousands of taps, drop lines, and fittings, and thousands of feet of  tubing. Lateral lines and main lines were all removed and cleaned by hand and with pressurized water.

Additional footage of draining and drying tubing by stretching over roof of farm buildings before coiling on special rigs and storing in large rolls. Also a few moments of shots of women making maple candy and Lloyd Sipple maple granulated sugar in pot before sifting and packing into small jars.

Some viewers may recognize the view of the tanker truck pumping out a roadside collection tank as the source image for the artwork on the USDA Maple Sirup Producers Manual in the 1960s and 1970s. The original scene as appears in the film is a reverse of the artwork on the cover of the old maple manual.

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Title – Sipple Maple Production Cut 4 – Time: 7:54

Comments: Dr. C.O. Willits appears to monitor steam heated finishing evaporator at Sipple’s sugarhouse with other visitors looking on.  Additional views of Lloyd Sipple standing alongside felt filters at the steam evaporators drawing off finished syrup.

Scenes of Dr. Fred Winch testing sugar levels in sap in the tank of a gathering truck using a hydrometers as well as an extended footage of Dr. Winch preparing sample dishes to measure bacterial growth in maple sap.

Short clip of attendees of 4th annual meeting of the National Maple Syrup Council assembled for group photograph in front of Fenimore Hall in Cooperstown, NY in 1963.

 

 

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Title – Maple Production Cut 1 – Time: 25:26

Comments: There are scenes of the inspection of Lamb Naturalflow plastic tubing, drop lines, lateral lines, and main lines running into sap collection tanks in the woods, including a short clip of Dr. James Marvin from the University of Vermont  There is short section of footage at Harold Tyler’s Maple Farm, a 7,000 operation near Worchester, New York. Other short footage includes the log sugar house in Burton, Ohio that is part of the Geauga County Maple Festival.

   The latter half of the film was shot at two sugarhouses in Wisconsin. There is about one minute of exterior and interior scenes show Ray Norlin’s brand new Central Evaporator Plant in Ogema, Wisconsin, which was built in 1962. Norlin’s was one of the first purpose built Central Evaporator Plants that made maple syrup almost exclusively from sap purchased from local sap gatherers rather than from sap gathered in a sugarbush owned or operated by the sugarmaker.

A substantial portion of this footage features the Reynolds Sugar Bush plant at Aniwa, Wisconsin during the boiling season.

There are scenes of sap being delivered and received by Juan Reynolds, both in large tanks drawn by a team of horses and in milk cans brought to the plant in the back seat of a car. Other scenes at the busy plant show an interior sales room with a enormous variety of syrup tins, bottles, as well as many shapes and designs of ceramic and plastic containers.

Other scenes show Adin Reynolds operating a syrup boiling tank as well as Lynn Reynolds describing one of the Reynolds’ large underground concrete syrup tanks located in their sugarbush.

 

 

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Title – Maple Production Cut 2  – Time: 32:43

Comments: Based on the style of architecture of the houses and cabins (notably flared eaves on the roof forms) the film was shot at a few sugarbushes and sugarhouses in Quebec including a visit to a sugarbush producing under the name of Toque Rouge (Red Cap) maple syrup.

Footage of Lamb tubing installations in Quebec at this time show it being widely adopted through the maple syrup world and Quebec sugarbushes were using the same layout and tubing design as in sugarbushes in the United States. One closeup of the text printed on the tubing reads Naturalflow – Montcalm, Quebec” showing the location where Lamb tubing for Quebec markets was being manufactured.

There are similar views of, installation, inspection of tubing lines that have already been hung and the trees tapped, as well as footage of breakdown and removal of the taps and plastic tubing using various designs for winding the tubing on reels or spools.  Two sugarhouses in the film show large oil fired evaporators, fairly sophisticated for the early 1960s.

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Special thanks to the folks at the Paul Smith’s College Joan Weill Adirondack Library Archives for taking the time and getting the funding necessary to convert these 16 mm films to digital format and make them available to the public to view on their library website.

Large Scale Maple Syrup Production with the Horse Shoe Forestry Company

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.

 

 

A Look at Early 19th Century Beginnings for Flat Pans and Sugarhouses

 

It is a common question in the history of the maple industry of when maple sugar makers began to replace kettles with flat pans and arches and began to build sugarhouses.  My latest maple history contribution to the March 2022 edition of the Maple Syrup Digest (Vol. 61, no. 1), attempts to address these questions in sharing a handful of well-dated and detailed written descriptions of flat pans and sugarhouses from the first half of the 19th century. In addition, one of the earliest examples of an illustration of a sugarhouse from 1847 is also presented.

You can read the article at this link or by clinking on the accompanying image.  The Maple Syrup Digest is the official publication of the North American Maple Syrup Council.

 

New Publication on the History of Plastic Tubing – From Pails to Pipelines

I am pleased to share a copy of From Pails to Pipelines: The Origins and Early Adoption of Plastic Tubing in the Maple Syrup Industry, an article I wrote that was published in the Winter/Spring 2021 issue (Vol. 89, No. 1) of the journal Vermont History.

Click on the image above to download a PDF copy of the article.

This article begins by tracing the experiments and technology that went into the development of various methods of pipelines and tubing systems for moving maple sap from trees to boiling areas in the sugarbush. The majority of the article focuses on the efforts of three men who were working simultaneously during the 1950s to make a plastic tubing system for sap gathering a reality. These men were George Breen of Jamaica, Vermont; Nelson Griggs of Montpelier, Vermont; and Robert Lamb of Liverpool, New York.

Because space for images and photographs in the published article was limited, I was only able to include a few photographs of Breen, Griggs, and Lamb. With this website, I am happy to share a few more images that accompany the article and better illustrate their efforts, experimental designs, and the resulting commercial products of these creative men.

George Breen

George Breen was a sugarmaker from Jamaica, Vermont who decided that there must be a better way to gather sap than laboriously hauling pails of sap through the snow. This led him in 1953 to begin to experiment with flexible plastic tubing to use gravity and the natural pressure in trees to move sap from the tree to a collection point. In time, Breen’s experiments caught the attention of the 3M Corporation and together they created, patented, and marketed  the Mapleflo sap gathering system. Here are a few photos of Breen at work in his sugarbush working with his early tubing design.

George Breen holding an example of his experimental spout and tubing in his Jamaica, VT sugarbush. Image Credit: University of Vermont Special Collections – Malvine Cole Papers.
George Breen installing spout and tubing in his Jamaica, VT sugarbush, circa 1956. Image Credit: University of Vermont Special Collections – Malvine Cole Papers.
George Breen inserting experimental tubing spout at taphole. Image Credit: University of Vermont Special Collections – Malvine Cole Papers.
Breen’s Jamaica, VT sugarhouse with tubing line running in from the sugarbush, circa 1956. Image Credit: University of Vermont Special Collections – Malvine Cole Papers.
Late 1950s Cover of 3M’s Mapleflo plastic tubing system, the patented commercial result of George Breen’s tubing experiments and invention. Image credit: collections of the author.
Late 1950s diagram and illustration of 3M’s Mapleflo plastic tubing system, the patented commercial tubing system based on the experiments of George Breen. Image credit: collections of the author.

 

Nelson Griggs

Nelson Griggs was an engineer with an interest in maple sugaring and an idea that plastic tubing might be a viable alternative and improved method of gathering maple sap in the sugarbush. In 1955, while working as a engineering consultant with the Bureau of Industrial Research at Norwich University, in Northfield, Vermont, Griggs partnered with the University of Vermont’s maple research team to put his flexible plastic tubing ideas to the test in the sugarbush of the Proctor Maple Research Farm. The following are some photos related to that research.

Nelson Griggs installing experimental plastic tubing at Proctor Maple Research Farm in 1955. Image credit: 1956 issue of Vermont Life magazine.
Nelson Griggs, center in striped sweater, with members of the Proctor Maple Research Farm research crew in the spring of 1955. Probable names of men in the photo include, University of Vermont (UVM) Professor, Dr. Fred Taylor on the far left, second from left UVM Extension Forester Ray Foulds, third from left UVM Professor, Dr. James Marvin. Image credit: UVM Special Collections – UVM Maple Research Collection.
Examples of recently discovered original Griggs spouts and and tubing assemblage used in 1955 experiments and preserved in the University of Vermont Special Collections. Photo by author.
Griggs experimental spout in use with plastic insert in taphole central metal connector, and flexible plastic tubing at other end. Image credit:  Marvin and Green February 1959 article in UVM Agriculture Experiment Station Bulletin 611.

 

Robert Lamb

Bob Lamb was in the chainsaw and boat motor sales and repair business in the Syracuse, New York region, mostly working with the logging and marine industry when in 1955 he was asked by a sales contact in forestry business if he could help come up with an idea for moving maple sap using tubing. Lamb put his creative mind to work and developed and marketed his Lamb Sap Gathering System, later named the Naturalflow Tubing System. The following are images related to the early years of Bob Lamb’s tubing design.

International Maple Museum Centre display of early experimental spouts, fittings, and tubing, designed and tested by Bob Lamb. Photo by author.
Bob Lamb demonstrating the use of a battery powered, backpack mounted drill. Image credit: 1963 Lamb Naturalflow Tubing System catalog, collections of author.
Sales brochure for Lamb Sap Gathering System from 1958, the first year Lamb tubing was commercially available. Collections of author.
Image of the Lamb Tubing System’s early installation method as a ground line with long drop lines. Image credit: 1963 Lamb Naturalflow Tubing System catalog, collections of author.
Display in the International Maple Museum Centre created by Mike Girard showing the spouts, fittings, and tubing components and arrangement of the early commercial version of Lamb’s Naturalflow Tubing System. Photo by author.

 

Plastic Tubing in the Maple Syrup Industry

The Vermont Historical Society’s journal Vermont History recently published an article I wrote on the origins of plastic tubing for making maple syrup. Specifically titled, “From Pails to Pipelines: The Origins and Early Adoption of Plastic Tubing in the Maple Syrup Industry,” the article examines the evolution of pipeline and tubing technology for gathering and moving maple sap with special attention to the relationship and interplay of the three men who carried plastic tubing from idea and experiment to commercial reality. The article appears in Volume 89, Number 1, Winter/Spring 2021 and is sent to all members of the Vermont Historical Society.

Unfortunately, since this is the current issue of the Vermont History and is hot off the presses, I am not permitted to share an electronic copy of the article for 6 months. But anyone can join the Vermont Historical Society and get the paper journal mailed to their door as well as online access to all their current and past journals (including this issue), all the while supporting the preservation and sharing of Vermont history.

This fall I will post a PDF copy of this article on this blog, so check back in September to get a copy.

 

 

Adirondack Maple Sugaring History Presentation

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.

We focused on this topic in particular to describe some of the research found in my new book A Sugarbush Like None Other: Adirondack Maple Syrup and the Horse Shoe Forestry Company and to share some of the great Horse Shoe Forestry Company maple sugaring items in the collections of the Adirondack Experience.

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.

A History of the Gooseneck: The Brower Sap Piping System and the Cary Maple Sugar Company

The text from the following article was originally published in October 2005 edition of the Maple Syrup Digest – Written by Matthew M. Thomas

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.

 

Sap Spout Company Histories: Willis Sap Spout

By Matthew M. Thomas

 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.

Upcoming Presentation: A Sugarbush Like None Other

On Wednesday, September 9th I will be making an online virtual presentation to discuss the research and story from my new book A Sugarbush Like None Other: Adirondack Maple Syrup and the Horse Shoe Forestry Company. The presentation will be hosted by the Goff-Nelson Memorial Library in Tupper Lake, New York.

Here is additional information on the event and how to attend:

Wednesday, September 9, 2020 at 7 PM – 8 PM EDT

Online Event Hosted by Goff-Nelson Memorial 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.

New Book – A Sugarbush Like None Other

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.