Preserving and telling the maple history story as complete and accurately as possible relies on a wide range of sources of information, artifacts, and contributors. Sugarmakers have always had a strong affinity for collecting and preserving the material objects and antiques that help tell the history of maple syrup and sugar. There are a number of great museums specifically dedicated to housing and presenting myriad tools, devices, and equipment, as well as honoring those that have made significant contributions to the industry. What we have seen less of is the sharing and organized preservation of the documentary history; the photos, written and paper records, and past publications. I would argue there is a growing need for greater consideration and attention to creating, maintaining, and contributing to an archive or archives focused on the maple syrup industry.
It is easy to say or think that one’s old records or files or photos or even objects are not really important or of no interest to anyone in the near or distant future. But you’d be surprised what folks miss after its gone. Such items, be they from a small mulitple-generation maple producer or a large corporate packer or equipment manufacturer, become the bedrock of the industry’s history. While it may seem like people understand and know their history and someone will always remember the past, memories fade and change, and people come and go, figuratively and literally. You can’t and don’t necessarily want to preserve everything, the challenge of course is knowing and deciding what is valuable and might be worth preserving.
Archival materials related to maple history most certainly do exist and can be found in varying amounts in the archives of most state historical society libraries in the maple producing regions. Although I am less familiar with the archives in adjacent Canadian provinces, having never heard of an archive dedicated to the maple industry, I assume that the situation is somewhat similar to in the U.S. In some cases local county or community historical societies have provided space and resources for the storage and access to maple related archives and select collections. As an example, the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium and later the St. Johnsbury History and Heritage Center have provided preservation services and access to the George C. Cary Papers in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, keeping this important collection in the same town where George C. Cary’s maple sugaring empire flourished.
In the mid 1980s, the Vermont Maple Industry Council worked with a collection of people mostly affiliated with maple research at the University of Vermont (UVM) to form a Maple History Committee and tasked them with compiling “historical information on the folklore, production methods, and economics of the Vermont maple industry and make it available . . . for use in teaching children and others”. A great deal of material was collected and put on file in the Special Collections and Archives at the UVM Bailey/Howe library with a particular focus on the research contributions of individuals associated with the University of Vermont. This committee was a great idea and a great start but it was too short lived. Unfortunately, the individuals that formed the backbone of the committee at UVM moved on to retirement and in many cases passed away and in time the committee was no longer active.
More recently, the University of Vermont libraries Center for Digital Initiatives in conjunction with the UVM Proctor Maple Research Center has taken a more modern approach to preserving a part of their history and some of the materials of the Maple History Committee by scanning and putting online a Maple Research Collections. This includes digital copies of the many articles, reports, and photographs that stemmed from the years of research at the Proctor field station as well as digital copies of maple related reports that appeared in early editions of the University of Vermont Agricultural Extension Bulletins. This is a great example of using digital means to preserve and share a portion of the archives from UVM’s important maple research legacy.
I recently had the pleasure of meeting with folks at the Leader Evaporator Company in Swanton to discuss maple history and learned of their own long term project to review their many historic business records, catalogs and reports and document their corporate history. It was fantastic to see that they were tackling such an important project since the Leader Company’s history is in many ways an overview of the history of maple equipment manufacturing and dealers in the United States. In discussing their work, I asked what they thought they might do with all the historic, largely paper material they had assembled about the company, to which they said, “that’s a good question and we haven’t really thought about that yet”. This really hit home that not only is there a need to provide resources and space for the safe and organized preservation and study of the documentary record of the maple industry, there is also a need to recognize its equal value and importance alongside the preservation of the maple industry’s historic places, artifacts and objects, and stories.
Museums dedicated to maple history do a relatively good job preserving, displaying, and interpreting the material remains and objects of sugaring. For the most part their focus has not been in the area of preserving the paper, photos, and other ephemera found in most archives. Preserving such materials takes the right kind of space, as well as financial resources and human resources, not to mention a way of making these materials available to researchers and interested people. After all, that is the point, preserve these materials so we can study and know and tell the maple history story. However, maintaining an archives may not fit within the means or the varied missions of these museums.
Is this a call for a dedicated maple history archives? Not necessarily, although the idea has merit. Perhaps there is simply a need to improve the understanding and integration and access to what already exists in established archives and to push for more concerted effort to curate, preserve, and share those records that remain and continue to be discovered out there amongts the maple syrup community. This is the history and legacy of individuals, families, companies, institutions, and an entire industry. As with a lot of things, one has to ask oneself what is it worth to preserve the history of an industry and who should be the ones doing it?
