Enjoy the rare opportunity to have an expert historian personally transport and guide you through a unique chapter in the history of Vermont and the Northeast Kingdom and learn about the people and places responsible for St. Johnsbury, Vermont being named the Maple Center of the World.
The tour will be led by maple industry historian and author Dr. Matthew Thomas, the leading expert on the history of the Cary Maple Sugar and Maple Grove companies.
Travelling by bus, participants will enjoy a narrated tour that will visit over a dozen locations in and around St. Johnsbury that are important in the history of the Cary and Maple Grove Companies. As a special souvenir, participants will receive a one-of-a-kind companion guide authored by Dr. Thomas, that features historic images and information on the sites visited on the tour.
This tour is offered as special event during the Kingdom Maple Festival in downtown St. Johnsbury.
Details: Advanced registration is required. Limited to the first 50 registrations! Please note that your registration is not complete until you checkout and pay the Tour fee. Thank you!
Cost: $75.00
Date: Saturday, April 20, 2024
Time: 1:00 – 4:00 pm
Location: Starting and Ending at the St. Johnsbury Depot
Download this flyer to share information about this event.
A Short Lived Glass Jar but Uniquely Popular Among Bottle Collectors in the Modern Era
Matthew M. Thomas
Example of Towle’s St. Johnsbury jar with intact Log Cabin Syrup paper label. From the collection of Scott Benjamine.
Among Ball jar collectors, the Towle’s St. Johnsbury Sure Seal jars are a widely sought-after series. These round jars and glass lids with a snap-down, Lightning style wire closure were manufactured in a unique 22-ounce size in the Ball Sure Seal shape exclusively for the Towle Maple Products Company and were not available or sold to the home canner. Often referred to in the Ball jar collector community as packer jars, product jars, or customer jars, these jars were originally filled with various brands of the Towle Company’s blended syrups for retail sale in shops and grocery stores, most notably the signature brand of Log Cabin Syrup.
Example of Towle’s St. Johnsbury jar with intact Great Mountain Brand Syrup paper label. From the collection of John Patterson.
There are at least nine variations of the jars that can be divided into groups based on glass color, closure style, and embossing text. For example, most of the jars are Ball Blue in color and show the tell-tale circular scar from being made on the Owens automatic bottle making machine.
There is also a version that is clear in color, in the same dimensions and 22-ounce volume, but has the basal markings of having been manufactured on the Ball Bingham automatic bottle making machine. Other important distinguishing features are variations in the presence and absence and specific wording of the text embossed on the body of the jars.
Front and back faces of clear glass version of Towle’s St. Johnsbury jar with Lightning style beaded neck closure (RB 320-9).Example of Towle’s St. Johnsbury jar with intact Crown or Canada Brand Syrup paper label. From the collection of Linda White.
Although the jars found in most collections today do not have paper labels, originally all the Towle’s St. Johnsbury jars had paper labels on their front face, either the well-known Log Cabin Syrup brand label or one of a few other brands used by the Towle Company. Towle’s St. Johnsbury jars with intact paper labels from known collections include Log Cabin Syrup, Great Mountain Brand Syrup, and the Crown of Canada Brand Syrup. The Towle’s St. Johnsbury jars can be tightly dated to between the middle of 1910 and the end of 1914, based on the known dates of operation of the Towle Company plant in St. Johnsbury, Vermont which is discussed below.
Example of the Ball and SURE SEAL embossed text on back face of the Towle’s St. Johnsbury Ball jars.
All the jars in the Ball Blue glass color variation feature the Ball name embossed on the back face in script with un underline, a looping double LL, a dropped “a” which are known to date between 1910 and 1923 on Ball made jars. This detail corresponds to the historical record that the Towle Company operated in St. Johnsbury from 1910 to 1914. Under the scripted “Ball” name in capitalized sans serif typeface are the words “SURE SEAL.”
Image of the cover of Red Book No. 12, the definitive collector’s guide for Ball jars.
The Towle’s St. Johnsbury jar is so notable and popular among Ball jar collectors that it has been recognized and described in Red Book 12: The Collectors Guide to Old Fruit Jars. The most recent edition of the Red Book, published in 2018, lists nine variations of this jar (RB 320-4 through RB 320-12). I have created a table based on the Red Book variations to assist in differentiating and recognizing the sometimes subtle differences in these variations.
Table illustrating details and features of the nine variations of Towle Maple Products St. Johnsbury jars based on Red Book No. 12.
Company History
The Towle Maple Products Company got its beginning in 1888 in St. Paul, Minnesota as Towle & McCormick’s, selling Log Cabin Syrup in a rectangular metal can. After a year in operation, McCormick left the company and Patrick J. Towle became the sole owner.
In the company’s early years, it packed its Log Cabin brand blended maple and cane sugar syrup in tall rectangular cans as well as in quart and pint sized wide-bodied and narrow-necked bottles, all originally exhibiting paper labels. In 1897 the company introduced its signature cabin shaped metal can, designed by Log Cabin Syrup salesman, James W. Fuller (US design patent 26,936).
Towle Maple Products Company plant in St. Paul, Minnesota that suffered a devastating fire in 1909. Photo from the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society.
By the turn of the century, the Log Cabin Syrup brand had become the most popular and best-selling blended table syrup in the country. However, being at the top of the industry did not protect it from the risk or disaster of fire, sadly a common occurrence in large factories at the time. On December 15th, 1909, the three-story brick factory of the Towle Maple Products Company, located on the west side flats of St. Paul, Minnesota suffered a devastating fire. Built in 1901 and opened in 1902, this plant was the Towle Company’s only location for the blending, bottling, and canning of syrups. Although the company quickly went to work to repair the damaged building, they were left in a difficult position and needed to find a way to continue their production and distribution.
Circa 1910, hand colored postcard of businesses in the Bay Street area of St. Johnsbury, Vermont with close-up of Towle’s building (former Cary Company) painted “Towle Maple Products Co.” on front and “Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup” on side.
To their great fortune, in March of 1910, George C. Cary, one of their colleagues and a sometimes syrup supplier, offered to sell to P.J. Towle the Cary Maple Sugar Company processing plant on Bay Street in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Cary was in the midst of expanding and reorganizing his growing maple sugar processing empire and this sale allowed him to get rid of an aging facility and provide capital to help further his company’s growth.
The Towle Company took advantage of this significant interruption in production and sales to makes changes in their product labeling and marketing. It was during this period of rebuilding and reorganization that the St. Johnsbury Ball jar was born and put into use. The location was a boon for the Towle Company in locating their bottling activities closer to the source of the maple syrup they were purchasing for their blends. In addition, being in New England added greater creditability to their syrups by allowing them to legitimately include the state of Vermont on their labels and advertisements.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from 1912 showing the Towle Maple Products Company location on Bay Street in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
Fulling embedding themselves in St. Johnsbury, in April 1910 the Towle Company filed papers of incorporation in the State of Vermont and got to work remodeling the former Cary building situated adjacent to the shared tracks of the Boston & Maine Railroad and the St. Johnsbury & Lake Champlain Railroad. Inside this wooden barn-like building, giant steam-heated copper kettles of 150- and 250-gallon capacity were used to boil and blend maple syrup and cane sugar before being filtered and stored in 550-gallon tanks for packaging in glass and metal.
The Towle Company was able to rebuild and reopen their damaged St. Paul plant later in 1910, permitting the company to bottle syrup in both Minnesota and Vermont. Advertisements from this era list San Francisco as a third location for the company, but the west coast branch was only a warehouse and distribution site with no actual syrup manufacturing or bottling activity taking place.
During their operations in St. Johnsbury, in September 1912 the Towle Company suffered the unexpected death of company founder and family patriarch P.J. Towle. Since the company was privately owned and managed by P.J. Towle, his sons, and son-in-law; presidency of the company then shifted to his oldest son, William J. Towle.
Image of the Pillsbury-Baldwin Building in St. Johnsbury, Vermont which was occupied by the Towle Maple Products Company from 1913 to 1914.
With production running from seven in the morning to midnight, six days a week, the Towle Company rapidly outgrew the Bay Street plant in St. Johnsbury, and in March 1913 moved a half mile to the south into a much newer two-story fire-proof plant built of concrete block. Erected two years before, this plant was vacated by the failed Pillsbury-Baldwin bathroom fixture company. The Towle company continued operations in the former Pillsbury-Baldwin plant for another year and a half before announcing their decision to end operations in St. Johnsbury on December 31, 1914 and move all production activities back to St. Paul. After years of abandonment and neglect, the Pillsbury-Baldwin building formerly occupied by the Towle Company was demolished by the city of St. Johnsbury in September 2019. Likewise, Towle’s first St. Johnsbury location, former Cary Company plant on Bay Street was demolished in 1927 to make room for expansion by the neighboring Ide’s grist mill and grain elevator.
Example of a Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup advertisement noting St. Johnsbury along with St. Paul, and San Francisco as the location of refineries and offices of the Towle Maple Products Company. Saturday Evening Post, October 15, 1910.
With the closing of the St. Johnsbury plant, the Towle Company was forced to reword their labels and advertising and only list their St. Paul, Minnesota plant. It was at this time that the company also decided to discontinue bottling syrup in glass. From 1915 to 1931, Log Cabin Syrup was exclusively packaged in metal cabin shaped tins of pint, quart, or half gallon in size. In the 1910-1914 time period that the Ball jars were made and in use, Towle Company continued to package syrup in metal cabin-shaped tins as well as in eight-sided narrow neck bottles, and round narrow neck bottles, some with screw on caps and others with crown seal caps. Surprisingly, in my years of researching the history and packaging of the Towle Company, I have yet to find a newspaper or magazine advertisement mentioning or illustrating the sale of Towle brand syrups in a Ball Sure Seal jar.
Jar Details and Features
Looking closer at the details of these jars, we see that they were made with one of two different Lightning style closures. They exhibit either a Lightning style closure with lugs, sometimes called experimental dimples or bosses, and a heavy wire lever bail that inserted into the round glass dimples or bosses on the neck (RB 32-5, 320-7, 320-8, 320-9, 320-10, 320-11). The other Lightning style closure has a beaded neck seal with a thinner twisted wire used to anchor the heavy wire bail below the encircling glass bead or ridge (RB 320-4, 320-6, 320-12).
The two styles of Lightning closures found on Towle’s St. Johnsbury Ball jars. On the left, the beaded neck version with the heavy wire bail anchored by a thinner wire below an encircling glass ridge. On the right, the heavy wire bail anchored in circular glass bosses or dimples.Example of jar with back face embossed text of PACKED IN and BY THE TOWLE and front face text of ST JOHNSBURY VT and MAPLE PRODUCTS CO.
The embossed text on the upper face of the jars is most recognizable to today’s collectors, since the original paper labels are almost always absent (RB 320-5, 320-6, 320-9, 320-10). There are two variations in the embossed text on the upper body of the jar faces. It is worth noting that this variation in the order and placement of embossed text on the upper face is not recognized in the Red Book at this time. In variation A, the upper line of text on the back side reads, “PACKED IN” and bottom line of text, “BY THE TOWLE” (above Ball SURE SEAL). The upper line of text on the front side of this variation reads, “ST JOHNSBURY VT” and the bottom line of text, “MAPLE PRODUCTS CO.” The side with the Ball SURE SEAL text is called the back here because the opposite side without the Ball text is where the paper label originally would have been pasted.
Example of jar with back face embossed text of PACKED IN and ST JOHNSBURY VT and front face text of BY THE TOWLE and MAPLE PRODUCTS CO.
In variation B, the upper line of text on the back side reads, “PACKED IN” and lower line of text, “ST JOHNSBURY VT” (above Ball SURE SEAL). The upper line of text on the front side reads, “BY THE TOWLE” and the lower line of text, “MAPLE PRODUCTS CO”. There is also a rare mistake jar variation (RB 320-10) where the letter “S” was left out of the word Johnsbury, instead written as JOHNBURY.
Example of variation with blank upper portion of the front and back faces with the complete Ball name and dimple style closure attachment (RB 320-7 or 320-11).
There are also variations with no embossed text on the upper face where a blank slug plate was used in manufacturing the jars (RB 320-4, 320-7, 320-8, 320-11, 320-12). Although such jars lack embossed text to associate them with the Towle Company and St. Johnsbury, we know from the paper label example for Great Mountain Brand Syrup that such jars with the blank upper face were in fact used by the Towle Maple Products Company. It is doubtful that any other company was given an opportunity to use these unique 22-ounce Sure Seal Ball jars, even those lacking embossed text referring to Towle or St. Johnsbury. Certainly, no examples of such use of this jar by any company other than Towle Maple Products have been found.
All the blue glass versions of these jars contain the words “Ball” and “SURE SEAL” in two lines embossed on the lower portion of one face.
Example where the top of the LL on Ball has been cut off by the blank slug plate (RB 320-8 and 320-12).
This version of the Ball logo is in script form with an underscore and no loop connecting the last “L” of “Ball” with the underscore. In some cases, the top portion of the “LL” in the word “Ball” has been cut off in the manufacturing process (RB 320-8, 320-12). The single clear version of these jars is completely lacking in any of the “Ball” or “SURE SEAL” brand embossing (RB 320-9)
Image of the patent date embossed on the base of the Towle’s St. Johnsbury jars.
About half of the varieties (320-4, 320-5, 320-6, 320-7, 320-8) of these jars are embossed on base with the text “Pat’d July 14, 1908” which refers to the U.S. patent number 893,008, awarded to Anthony F. McDonnell for the glass cap combined with a Lightning style wire closure design. All these Towle’s St. Johnsbury jars are 7.25 inches tall, not including the lid and have a diameter at the base of 3.25 inches.
Side-by-side comparison of true or correct Towle’s St. Johnsbury jar glass lid on left and similar, but incorrect Ball jar Lightning glass lid on right.
Also unique to these jars is a very specific, and hard to find glass lid. According to experts in the Ball jar collecting community, the “correct” glass lid for these jars is in the same Ball Blue color as the jar but unlike other similarly shaped and sized lids, the proper lid has a shallower depression in the center and a less steep central ramp.
Profile drawing illustrating the differences in form and depth of trough in correct (on left) and incorrect Ball Lightning lid (on right).
The correct lid also never has any embossed text showing a patent date, which is sometimes present on the similar, but incorrect Sure Seal Lightning style lids. The clear glass lid for RB 320-9 is identical to the correct Ball Blue colored lid, only differing in color.
Examples of other contemporary clear glass product jars with beaded neck Lightning style closures and glass lids, presumably manufactured by the Ball Company. Rigney & Co. Packers of Maple Products on left and Golden Tree Brand Syrup on the right.
There are a number of clear glass jars of a similar shape and size and specialty packer jars with the Lightning style glass lid and wire closures that were almost certainly made by Ball. These jars have similar embossed wording and were even used for packing blended maple flavored syrups, such as Golden Tree Syrup from the New England Syrup Company and Park Brand syrup from Rigney & Co. Packers of Maple Products out of Brooklyn, NY. However, these jars are of slightly different dimension and volume than the Towle’s St. Johnsbury Ball jars and technically classified as a separate group by Ball jar experts.
As one can see, for the serious collector of Ball jars or Log Cabin Syrup antiques and memorabilia, there are many nuances and details to consider and recognize when seeking to build a complete collection of these jars. Of course the holy grail of Towle’s St. Johnsbury Ball jars are those with an intact paper label. With luck, more such jars will be found and shared.
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Special thanks to John Patterson, Linda White, Marty Troxell, Scott Benjamine, and Joe Coulson for there assistance with advice and permission to share images of jars from their private collections.
Click on the image above for a link to a PDF of the article.
I am happy to be able to share my recent article on on the origins and early years of the Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup Company. Log Cabin Syrup was started in 1888 by Patrick J. Towle in St. Paul, Minnesota, so it was fitting that this article was published by the Ramsey County Historical Society, home to St. Paul. This article appears in the Spring 2022 edition of the Ramsey County History magazine.
Special attention in the story is given to the company founder, Patrick J. Towle, and his introduction and use of the unique cabin shaped metal can to package and market his syrup made from a blend of maple syrup and cane syrup. Additional topics of note addressed in the article are the realities behind the question of where the idea for the log cabin name and can shape came from, as well as the company’s early use of advertising and promotion in national publications, something that was uncommon for a syrup company in the early part of the 1900s.
The fate of the Log Cabin Syrup company brand was ultimately to be sold to the Postum Company, later to be named General Foods, but as the story shares, that was not the end of the blended syrup business for the Towle family in St. Paul.
Click this link to access a PDF copy of the article.
There is an interesting and sometimes complex and convoluted history of a group of maple syrup packing companies in Vermont in the first part of the twentieth century. At that time in the history of the maple industry, many producers sold the bulk of their maple syrup and maple sugar to packing companies that handled the shipping, marketing and repackaging of the maple products into smaller containers for retail sales to consumers. A large part of the packing industry was also engaged in blending maple syrup with cane or corn syrup to create less expensive maple flavored table syrups like the well known Log Cabin syrup and Vermont Maid syrup.
1890 newspaper advertisement for the Welch Brothers Maple Company.
This tangled story starts in 1890 when brothers Llewellyn Welch and Charles Welch along with Harry Miller started the Welch Brothers Maple Company in South Burlington, Vermont. The three met in St. Joseph, Missouri when the two Ohio born brothers were in the general syrup and preserves business. In 1890, all three men came to Burlington, Vermont to specifically start a maple products company. The first plant that they built was on Battery and Cherry Street in Burlington where they made bottled maple syrup, but also made maple sugar candies, maple creams, maple cough drops, and other confections like chocolate bon-bons and caramels. The company was formally incorporated in 1891 with C.B. Welch as president and L.W. Welch as secretary. By the time of the meeting of the 1895 board of directors, C.B. Welch was no longer an officer or member of the board and L.W. Welch had moved into the position of president. The following year, The C.B. Welch Maple Co. was in court against Welch Brothers Maple Co. Under Llewelyn Welch’s leadership, the Welch Brothers Maple Company continued successfully doing business in Burlington. In 1917 Welch Brothers contracted to build a new three-story brick, fireproof plant at the corner of Pine and Marble Streets in Burlington.
Modern street view of Welch Brothers Maple Company building on Pine and Marble Streets, Burlington, Vermont.
C.B. Welch made his way from Burlington to St. Johnsbury and in 1904 incorporated a new maple company to purchase, blend, can and bottle maple syrup. However, it appears that this company never got off the ground and a few years later C.B. Welch turns up in Rutland, Vermont trying to interest the town leaders in supporting the establishment of a maple products canning and bottling facility. C.B. Welch was successful in his pitch and in 1908 efforts began to raise capital for the Maple Tree Sugar Company with C.B. Welch as manager and secretary. Formal articles of incorporation were filed in September of 1908 and in 1909 the company occupied a space at the corner of Edson and Willow Streets in Rutland.
The Maple Tree Sugar Company in Rutland got off the ground, but C.B. Welch did not stick around for long and possibly left under difficult terms, as suggested by his again being in court in Rutland in 1911 against Maple Tree Sugar Company. In 1910 C.B. Welch appeared in the communities of Canton, Gouvenuer, and Lowville in northern New York drumming up support for a new corporation and plant for canning and bottling maple syrup. C.B. Welch’s efforts met with success and in the fall of 1910 the Adirondacks Maple Syrup Company was incorporated with $50,000 of capital stock and plans were put into place for construction of a two-story, 40 by 100 foot factory near the railroad in Lowville, NY. As was typical of his pattern of work, C.B. Welch appears to have moved on from the Adirondack Maple Syrup Company the following year.
Portrait of Fletcher N. Johnson.
Another chapter in the story features Fletcher N. Johnson, who got his start as a grocery wholesaler in Bellefontaine, Ohio in 1900, incorporating in 1901 as the F.N. Johnson Company. He expanded that business to become a major maple sugar and syrup wholesale dealer, selling syrup under the Sugar Bird brand as early as 1913. In late 1916 he formed a new company as the F.N. Johnson Maple Syrup Company in Bellefontaine. In the intervening years, he tried his hand at politics unsuccessfully running for Congress in Ohio in 1910. As a maple wholesaler, F.N. Johnson often travelled to Vermont to purchase large amounts of syrup and some sugar. Having a familiarity with Vermont, in late September 1916 F.N. Johnson formed a new venture called the Vermont Maple Syrup Company in Essex Junction. F. N. Johnson was joined by his brother in law, Laurrell M. DeVore of Bellefontaine, Ohio, along with Adelbert B. Beeman of Fairfax, and Arthur A. Beeman of Essex Junction, and A.B. Rugg of Essex Junction.
1922 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map for Essex Junction showing the Vermont Maple Syrup Company building at lower left.
The Vermont Maple Syrup Company built a new two-story wood building in Essex Junction and began operations in 1917, buying bulk maple syrup for blending and bottling with most of their sales occurring in the western United States.
Portrait of the Maple King George C. Cary of the Cary Maple Syrup Company.
At some point in the later 19-teens, the maple sugar magnate, George C. Cary, became a minor stockholder in the Vermont Maple Syrup Company. In 1919 F.N. Johnson sold his 50% controlling share of the Vermont Maple Syrup Company to George Cary, then the very next day, sued his former company for trademark infringement over the use of the “Sugar Bird” brand, something Johnson had brought with him from his Ohio-based F.N. Johnson Company, and had been using for its blended syrup since at least 1913. Cary was caught off guard and assumed that he was free to continue to use the un-trademarked brand name just as the Vermont Maple Syrup Company had in the past. It would appear that Johnson had anticipated the potential for the suit and he and his lawyers were ready with their response the very next day.
Vermont Maple Syrup Company building in Essex Junction.
Despite the legal issues with the Sugar Bird brand, under Cary’s new ownership the Essex Junction plant was expanded with a new addition on the back of the building to house a new larger boiler. Also, in 1919, F.N. Johnson and L.M. DeVore set up a new F.N. Johnson Maple Company in Burlington for bottling maple syrup, leasing the old Welch Brothers plant on Battery and Cherry Streets.
Example of one of the brands of blended cane and maple syrup packaged and sold by the Vermont Maple Syrup Company. Date unknown.
In 1921, the court ruled in Johnson’s favor on his trademark lawsuit. Following that label fiasco, in 1922 George Cary, along with his son Clinton Cary, and Cary Maple Sugar Company employees and personal friends Earl Franklin and Gertrude Franklin along with Harry Wilson of Boston, reorganized the Vermont Maple Syrup Company as a new corporate enterprise and in 1923 left Essex Junction, moving the re-organized company to Cary’s plant in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. That same year the Vermont Maple Products Co-operative Exchange began to lease the now vacated Vermont Maple Syrup Company building in Essex Junction.
In January 1925, F.N. Johnson came back around in the picture when he purchased a controlling interest in the stock of the Adirondack Maple Syrup Company in Lowville, New York. Johnson then combined his still operating F.N. Johnson Maple Company in Ohio with the Adirondack Maple Syrup Company under a new corporation called the American Maple Corporation. In 1927, the American Maple Corporation is formally incorporated in Burlington, Vermont under the leadership of F.N. Johnson. Interestingly, Harry Miller, who was working for Welch Brothers Maple Company would later managed Penick & Ford’s Vermont Maid plant, was also on the new board of directors of the American Maple Corporation. The Adirondack Maple Company corporate name was formally dissolved in 1927 and in 1929 the maple processing machinery in the Lowville plant was sold to the Cary Company in St. Johnsbury.
Example, circa 1926 to 1927, of the earliest Vermont Maid Syrup logo featuring the maid with a bonnet and a field in the background. Also note the manufacturer as the Vermont Maple Syrup Company of St. Johnsbury Vermont.
The Vermont Maple Syrup Company under the ownership of Cary and company trademarked the Vermont Maid name in 1919 and began selling blended syrup under the popular Vermont Maid brand name around 1920 or 1921 and it was in 1922, that the famous Vermont Maid logo featuring the portrait of a young women with pigtails and a bonnet, began to be used in advertisements and on labels. Interestingly, Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup Company also sold a Vermont Maid brand pure maple sap syrup during their short period of production out of St. Johnsbury from 1910 to 1915, but there is not indication of a direct connection between the two labels, other than George Cary would have been well aware of the idea and availability of the brand name by by 1920.
Towle’s Vermont Maid Pure Sap Maple Syrup packaged in St. Johnsbury, Vermont between 1910 and 1915.Early Vermont Maid Boston Globe newspaper advertisement from February 1926 showing the iconic Vermont Maid logo and bottle from the Vermont Maple Syrup Company of St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
Between 1925 and 1926, a series of transactions and corporate shuffling occurred between St. Johnsbury and Burlington. First, F.N. Johnson charters the American Maple Corporation, first in Ohio in 1925 and then in 1926 in Vermont. In doing so, he merged the F.N. Johnson Maple Syrup Company with the Adirondack Maple Company, both of which he had controlling interests.
In July 1926, Llewellyn Welch sold the Welch Brothers Maple Products Company to the newly forming American Maple Company. With this sale, Llewellyn Welch retired from nearly forty years in the maple business. As noted earlier, Charles Welch left the Welch Brothers company some years earlier and would pass away in New York City in 1928. Llewelyn Welch himself died in 1935. Harry Miller stayed on with the new owners, the American maple Corporation (later Vermont Maple Syrup Company), as manager and on through the next owner, Penick & Ford. Miller would go on to have a 60-year long career in the Vermont maple industry, retiring in 1950 as the Vermont Division manager for Penick & Ford.
Then, in early November 1926, the newly formed American Maple Corporation of Burlington merged with George C. Cary ‘s Vermont Maple Syrup Company of St. Johnsbury. In January 1927, the new board of American Maple Corporation met, with F.N. Johnson voted president. Interestingly, there was no mention of George Cary or his usual collaborators on the new board, suggesting American Maple Corporation purchased, rather than merged with, the Vermont Maple Syrup Company. In February, the American Maple Corporation changes its name to the Vermont Maple Syrup Company, and by midway through 1927 begins listing its place of business as Burlington.
1928 Boston Globe newspaper advertisement for Vermont Maid Syrup with the manufacturer Vermont Maple Syrup Company now located in Burlington, Vermont.
In October 1928 in a cash transaction, the Vermont Maple Syrup Company sold their Burlington operation to Penick & Ford, a Louisiana Company that at the time were the largest packers of corn and cane syrups and molasses in the United States. This sale included the former Welch Brothers building on Pine and Marble in Burlington, and all associated brands and labels, including Vermont Maid.
Following this sale, there is no indication that F.N. Johnson had any further involvement with Penick & Ford or the maple products industry in Vermont. F.N. Johnson’s grocery business in Bellefontaine, Ohio was still in operation and he returned to Ohio to direct that until his death in 1945. Incidentally, F.N. Johnson’s daughter in law, Helen Clark Johnson, unexpectedly passed away in Burlington in March of 1928. Her husband Russell Morton Johnson was the manager of the F.N. Johnson Maple Syrup Company, which leads one to wonder if this loss in anyway affected the decision to sell his maple company and leave Vermont.
In 1965, Penick & Ford and the Vermont Maid brand was sold to R. J. Reynolds, and despite operating under a new parent company, little changed in the Burlington plant. However, in 1975, R.J. Reynolds closed the Vermont Maid Syrup bottling plant on Pine Street and Marble Avenue in Burlington. Consolidating of a number of their brands and products, the Vermont Maid were moved operations to New Brunswick, New Jersey. Subsequently, in 1985, R.J. Reynolds acquired the Nabisco brand and formed RJNabisco as a single company. Later on, in 1997, Nabisco sold the Vermont Maid brand to B & G Foods, owner of Maple Grove Farms of Vermont and other syrup brands like Spring Tree Maple Syrup and Cary’s Maple Syrup.
Originally published May 5, 2019 – Revised February 7, 2020
I’m very excited to announce that a book I have been researching and writing for many years is finally finished and available for purchase from Amazon.com. The book is titled Maple King: The Making of a Maple Syrup Empire and traces the history of George C. Cary and his Cary Maple Sugar Company from its humble beginnings, through an amazing period of growth and industry domination, and on to its eventual collapse. The story also retells how the Cary Company absorbed the smaller Maple Grove Candies Company in the 1920s only to evolve and later split back into two companies in the 1950s. The Cary Company experienced a difficult future, while the Maple Grove Company continued to evolve into today’s Maple Grove Farms, proving to be a strong and lasting company and brand.
The book follows the the story of George Cary and the Cary Company across 186 pages in seven chapters with over 70 photo, postcard, and map illustrations. The extensive research that went into telling the Cary story is documented in hundreds of endnote references to help future historians and satisfy the curiosity of those looking for more information. One-part company history, one-part biography, one-part maple syrup history, and one -part Vermont and St. Johnsbury history, the story has a little bit of everything for a wide range of readers.
Here is the description of the book from the back cover:
Like many North American industries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the business of making maple sugar and syrup went through a period of maturation and modernization. Much of this change and new business model was influenced and controlled by one man and the company he created in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. George C. Cary and the Cary Maple Sugar Company grew in size and influence such that it controlled as much as 80 percent of the bulk maple sugar market, bestowing on Cary the title of Maple King and St. Johnsbury as the Maple Capital of the World. This book recounts the rise of the Cary Company and takes a closer look at who Cary was and the maple sugar and maple syrup empire that he created. As encompassing as the Cary Empire was, it overreached its limits and came tumbling to the ground with the stunning bankruptcy and death of its leader in 1931. However, Cary’s legacy did not die with him, and as told here, St. Johnsbury continued to have a significant place and role in the ever-evolving maple sugar and syrup industry.
This book is available for purchase from Amazon.com for $19.95. Get your copy today!
One of the most interesting ways to study the history of maple sugaring is to watch it in action in vintage films. There are a number of films available to watch online and others available in libraries and archives in the maple sugaring region.
Although the black and white films depicting sugaring activities, both in the sugarbush and in the sugarhouse were generally staged or “directed,” taking away a certain degree of spontaneity and authenticity, they still provide a useful glimpse of the methods, technology, and landscapes in use at the time. Most of these films include scenes of men and boys gathering sap from pails on trees, boiling in kettles in the open air and in evaporators in sugarhouses, as well as finishing and bottling. Many films also illustrate sugar on snow parties and enjoying maple syrup on pancakes.
What follows is a listing and links to a handful of early 20th century maple sugaring films, mostly from the 1920s and the silent film era.
The metadata from the Youtube post claims that this 14 minute silent film from around 1925 titled “Maple Sugar” was from the Library of Congress’ Prelinger Archives; however, I have not been able to find this film in the Prelinger’s online listings, so I cannot confirm that is the source. It appears from this same youtube info that this film was produced by the Mogull Brothers.
The Library and Archives of Canada has made available an 8:14 minute color film from 1941 titled “Maple Sugar Time”.
Library and Archives of Canada maple sugaring film from 1941.
Northeast Historic Film
Another film I am especially familiar with is a black and white silent film shot on silver nitrate stock in the sugarbush, sugarhouse, and factory of George Cary in 1927. The film is archived at Northeast Historic Film in Bucksport, Maine and was donated for stabilization and preservation as part of the Philippe Beaudry Collection. The film is extremely deteriorated in some sections but overall is clear enough with windows of very clean images, to see what was being documented and displayed. This film is not available online in its entirety and there are severe restrictions on its use, but there is a 4:45 minute sample clip of the film on the Northeast Historic Film website and many still photos taken the same day as filming have been published over the years. Copies of the film for public viewing have been donated to the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, the archives at the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, the Vermont Historical Society archives, and the Special Collections at the Bailey Howe Library at the University of Vermont.
Through my ongoing research on George Cary and the Cary Maple Sugar Company, I have found this film and its history especially interesting. As a result I have dug a little deeper into the story of how and where this film was made.
Here are a number of stills from the Cary film followed by an excerpt about the film from my recently completed book on George Cary titled, Maple King: The Rise and Fall of a Maple Syrup Empire, which will be available for purchase in spring 2018.
Excerpt from Chapter Four of Maple King: The Rise and Fall of a Maple Syrup Empire –
Movie Making
Wishing to display both the evolution of sap gathering and maple sugar making as well as the modern process employed by the Cary Maple Sugar Company, George Cary arranged for a silent moving picture to be made in 1927. The film included outdoor scenes from the sugarbush and sugarhouses at Cary’s Highland Farm, along with action shots of processing and packing syrup and sugar in the Cary Company plant in St. Johnsbury. Today, a copy of the film, which was originally shot on 35 mm nitrate stock, has been archived in the Philippe Beaudry Collection at Northeast Historic Film, a repository in Bucksport, Maine.[i]
The silent moving picture, along with an extensive collection of still photographs of the same sugarbush and sugarhouse scenes as featured in the film, were shot over several days by well-known photographers Harry and Alice Richardson of Newport, Vermont. The Richardson’s were widely regarded for their many outdoor and studio photographs of the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont, including a number of colorful novelty postcards. It was announced as early as 1926 that the Richardson’s would be making a moving picture for the Cary Maple Sugar Company.[ii]
Scenes in the sugarbush focused on three romanticized periods in the history of maple sugaring; Native American sugaring, nineteenth century Euro-American/Euro-Canadian sugaring, and early twentieth century Euro-American/Euro-Canadian sugaring. For the telling of the Native American story, Cary hired a full-blooded Penobscot Indian named John Lewey from Old Town, Maine. Mr. Lewey was accompanied by his son Roy Lewey. Posing in the snow in a full-feathered Plains Indian-style headdress, buckskins, and polished leather dress shoes, Lewey is shown tapping a few maple trees, gathering sap with wood pails from wood troughs, and boiling sap in a large iron kettle suspended from a tripod in front of a newly constructed log cabin. Sap was gathered from about one hundred split log wood troughs fed by hand carved flat wood taps.[iii]
The nineteenth century methods of sugaring featured a Yankee farmer played by Albert Leland, himself a sugarmaker from Barton, Vermont. Leland was dressed for the part, complete with wide brimmed straw hat, a thick full-length beard, and high boots. Equipped with a shoulder yoke and two wooden gathering pails, Leland was shown hustling from tree to tree collecting sap from wood collecting pails set on the ground and transporting it to a gathering tank pulled by oxen through the snow.[iv] A young Richard Franklin, son of Earl Franklin, a Cary employee, was shown leading a pair of steers with a goad stick, while in another scene, Mr. Cary himself appears driving a different pair of oxen along a road in the sugarbush.
Twentieth century sugaring was depicted both with the collection of sap in covered galvanized metal pails hung from the trees along with the cutting-edge Brower Sap Piping System. In one scene a man is shown installing the Gooseneck section of the Brower pipeline in a taphole in the tree. Later he is shown connecting sections of the pipeline along their wire supports, while in another he is walking along and checking the metal pipeline for leaks.
There are also numerous scenes of Cary’s Highland Farm sugarhouses in action with steam billowing from the cupola, men feeding the boiling arches and drawing off syrup. Other men are seen moving barrels of syrup, along with gathering and unloading tanks of fresh sap pulled on sleds by teams of Cary’s prized oxen.
Besides the footage of the sap gathering and syrup making process in the sugarbush and sugarhouses, the filmmakers also shot footage inside Cary’s St. Johnsbury plant. Such shots included a worker filling wooden boxes lined with waxed paper on a conveyor line with thick hot maple sugar from an overhead vat as well as a room full of hundreds of such boxes of sugar in a warehouse cooling. In contrast to the dirt and soot of the scenes from the sugarbush and sugarhouses, the shots from the plant interior feature employees clad in all white smocks and hats working with processing and automated packing equipment in a sterile-like white painted and polished interior. Shipping boxes labelled “Highland Pure Maple” are shown being nailed together and one scene a worker displays a can of “Highland Pure Maple Syrup”.
One-part marketing tool and one part educational materials, the film was likely shown in theaters as a short before feature films began. A few years after the shooting of the film, a reporter from the Caledonian Record who had been on hand to document the movie making told of his delight at seeing the film while in a movie house in Seattle, Washington. The reporter was even more shocked to see a few seconds of himself on the film where they had captured close-up images of him drinking fresh sap from a metal collection pail behind a large tree.
Notes
[i] The Cary silent film was donated as 2,600 feet on four reels to Northeast Historic Film in 1997 by Philippe Beaudry of Longueuil, Quebec for safe and secure archiving. The reels included footage of the Vermont flood of 1927 and is archived under the title “Cary Maple Sugar Company –outtakes” in the Philippe Beaudry Collection at Northeast Historic Film. The film has been converted to VHS and DVD masters for safe handling and reproduction. Unfortunately, restrictions on reproducing still images from the film coupled with the often poor quality of the images on the deteriorating film prevent the display many of the various scenes from the film, in particular scenes from the interior of the Cary plant and activity at the Stanton (now Jones) and Waterman (now Newell) sugarhouses (see Chapter Five). However, many of the still photographs made by the Richardson’s at the time of filming the moving picture display the same scenes in better quality. Copies of the film in DVD format are maintained at the Vermont Historical Society, UVM Bailey Howe Library, the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium Archives and the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum for educational purposes.
[ii] Florence A. Kendall, “Moving Pictures of Maple Sugar Making,” The Vermonter, Vol. 31, No. 9 (1926).
[iii] Lois Goodwin Greer, “America’s Maple Sugar King: George C. Cary,” The Vermonter Vol. 34, No. 1: 3-8 (1929); “Real Romance in VT. Maple Sugar Making : Three Epochs in Its Development Shown in Cary Camps” Unknown Newspaper, April 7, 1927. News clipping found in photocopy version of Cary Family Album in the George C. Cary Papers, Fairbanks Museum Archives (St. Johnsbury, VT).
[iv] “Real Romance in VT. Maple Sugar Making: Three Epochs in Its Development Shown in Cary Camps” Unknown Newspaper, April 7, 1927. News clipping found in photocopy version of Cary Family Album in the George C. Cary Papers, Fairbanks Museum Archives (St. Johnsbury, VT).
Note: Readers interested in the history of the Log Cabin Syrup company will want to read a more recent blog post and article available at this link.
By Matthew M. Thomas
As one of the most iconic syrup brands in U.S. history, Log Cabin, has the dubious honor today of containing zero maple syrup. But that wasn’t always the case.
In fact, at the turn of the last century, the syrups in the lineup of the Towle Maple Products Company included both a real maple syrup known as Towle’s Log Cabin Selected Maple Syrup as well as their more popular blend of cane and maple syrup referred to then as simply Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup and Towle’s Log Cabin Camp Syrup. From 1904 to 1909 there was also a fourth syrup called Towle’s Log Cabin Penoche Syrup, which was made from cane sugar and marketed for candy making. It is not entirely clear what amount of maple syrup was going into Log Cabin’s cans and bottles in the early years of the company, which was started in 1888 by a St. Paul, Minnesota grocer named Patrick J. Towle. As discussed below the first Log Cabin tins likely contained a significant amount of pure maple syrup with a shift towards a blended syrup in the early 1900s, before transitioning to a fully blended cane and maple syrup.
Reportedly, the earliest blended Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup originally contained about 45 percent maple syrup but it was probably more like 25 percent, which is printed on the label of some cans and bottles from the 19-teens. By 1950, the percentage of maple syrup had been reduced to about 15 percent, and as recently as 2002 the Log Cabin Company confirmed to me that their syrup contained some maple syrup but refused to disclose in what percentage. Today the ingredients list on a bottle of Log Cabin Original Syrup contains absolutely no mention of maple sugar or syrup.
Excerpt from 1905 Towle’s advertisement featuring the paper red label of Log Cabin Maple Syrup and the black label of Log Cabin Penoche Syrup.
The official company history, often repeated in the years after the company was purchased in 1927 by General Foods is that Patrick Towle began marketing a blended syrup from the very beginning. However, the truth is harder to discern. A closer examination of packaging, advertisements, and newspaper accounts from that era question the accuracy of this story. Instead, one might argue that a convenient narrative was developed and promoted later in time around the image and personality of Patrick Towle and his iconic Log Cabin label that supported the uniqueness and originality of the Log Cabin product.
Very early (circa 1888-89) Log Cabin Pure Maple Syrup one quart metal tin with paper label. Notice the company name of Towle & McCormick, St. Paul, Minn, a precursor to the Towle Maple Syrup Company and later the Towle Maple Products Company.
Towle got his start as a grocer in Chicago under the name P.J. Towle & Co., selling coffee, tea, and spices. Unfortunately, lax attention to the books and leniency with delinquent customers left Towle owing creditors about $100,000 in early 1888. After going bankrupt and settling the claims against him with a federal judge in Chicago, he moved to St. Paul where he entered into a partnership with Thomas F. McCormick and in mid-1888 and began selling Log Cabin Pure Maple Syrup. The arrangement with McCormick was short lived and the dissolution of their partnership was announced in the St. Paul Globe in April 1889. The following week the Towle Syrup Company was incorporated for the sale of Towle’s Log Cabin Maple Syrup. Trademark protection for the iconic Log Cabin logo was applied for in November of 1894. By the early 1900s the company was known as the Towle Maple Syrup Company and with the expansion in 1910 beyond St. Paul and into Vermont, as discussed below, the company was renamed the Towle Maple Products Company.
James W. Fuller’s 1897 design patent for the log cabin shaped syrup tin.
The first log cabin shape metal tin used by Towle was patented in 1897 by James W. Fuller, a salesman for Towle, and was covered in paper labeling. Before that, Towle used a tall rectangular metal tin can in quart and half gallon sizes for packaging maple syrup. The early cabin shaped tins with their paper labels claim that the contents were maple syrup and included a claim of purity that offered a $500 reward if someone found evidence of adulteration in their maple syrup, even though they were most surely a blend.
Image of late 1890s Towle’s Log Cabin Maple Syrup metal tin with paper label and certificate of purity on back.
In the years between 1904 and 1909, and especially after greater enforcement of labeling laws with the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, magazine advertisements by Towle list three distinct syrup products, differentiating between cane syrup (Penoche), blended syrup (Camp), and real maple syrup (plain Log Cabin).
Based on the language in their advertisements and packages, it appears that the packaging of pure maple syrup by the Towle’s Syrup Company ended around 1909, after which the company focused its attention on only selling their cane and maple syrup blend as Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup. This change happened to coincide with a fire in December 1909 that destroyed the top two floors of their St. Paul plant, and in response the company opened a processing and packaging plant in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
In April 1910, Towle’s Log Cabin Maple Products Company opened a canning and bottling facility in St. Johnsbury in what had been the main facilities of the Cary Maple Sugar Company, adjacent to Ide’s Mill on Bay Street. George Cary, who was purported to be a member of the Board of Directors at Log Cabin sold to Towle the maple syrup bottling portion of his business at the time and focused his energies on buying bulk maple sugar.
Postcard image of the St. Johnsbury Bay Street waterfront circa 1911.Close up of the Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup building adjacent to Ide’s Mill on Bay Street.
Log Cabin soon after updated the Cary facility, adding a new boiler and eight large boiling kettles, and by 1911 was operating year-round from seven in the morning until midnight most evenings. A November 1911 article in the St. Johnsbury Caledonian provided the following description of their modern operation –
The maple syrup which has been purchased from the farmer is placed in two 250 gallon and four 150 gallon copper kettles. This sugar is remelted by steam until it has reached the correct specific gravity and then it is pumped through a filter press which removes any dirt or nitre which may be in the sugar, into four large storage tanks which have a capacity of 550 gallons each. Then, as needed, it is piped downstairs to copper kettles where it is reheated by steam and then passes into the filling machine which fills six receptacles of any kind at the same time. From there the syrup passes to the capping machine which automatically caps the can or bottle with the crown stopper or to another machine which corks the receptacles as the case may be.
By 1912, Log Cabin was doing one million dollars worth of business out of their St. Johnsbury facility. This level of growth and activity necessitated abandoning the old Cary plant in 1913 and moving down the street to a vacant 50 by 150 foot, two-story brick fireproof building, known as the Pillsbury Baldwin Plant. From this new plant Log Cabin could load as many as twelve railroad cars a day.
In spite of the company’s rapid growth, with the death of P.J. Towle in 1912 and a subsequent reorganization of the company by his sons, Log Cabin’s St. Johnsbury operation was shuttered in 1915 and moved back to St. Paul. During the period of Log Cabin’s short but significant residence in St. Johnsbury, nearly all of their national advertisements, syrup cans, and syrup bottles noted that St. Johnsbury, along with St. Paul were the location of its refineries and packing.
Although today the maple industry looks upon Log Cabin Syrup with a reasonable amount of disdain and distate for its promotion of pancake and table syrups with absolutely no maple ingredients, the beginning years of Towle’s Log Cabin were situated within the maple industry as a buyer, packer, blender, and marketer of pure maple syrup. While still a family owned business in early 1900s the company also had a short-lived presence in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, the often cited Maple Capital of the World. Over time, with changes in ownership and emphases on maximum profits over maximum flavor, Log Cabin gradually reduced and ultimately abandoned both its inclusion of maple syrup and its connection to the maple industry.
Originally posted August 31, 2017
Revised February 17, 2020 ad November 4, 2021.
References
“Announcement,” The St. Paul Globe (St. Paul, MN) April 12, 1889.
Hovey Burgess, “The Blended Maple Sirup Industry”, Report of Proceedings of the Conference on Maple Products (Philadelphia, PA, 1950).
Business Activity – Towle Maple Products Company Working Overtime,” St. Johnsbury Caledonian (St. Johnsbury, VT) November 8, 1911.
Edward T. Fairbanks, “Business Notes – Maple Sugar,” The Town of St. Johnsbury, VT; A Review of One Hundred Twenty-Five Years to the Anniversary Pageant 1912 (St. Johnsbury, VT.: The Cowles Press 1929).
“Greater Vermont Notes,” The Burlington Free Press and Times (Burlington, VT) April 17, 1913.
“Heavy Failure: Patrick Towle of Chicago, Goes Under – Anthony Kelly of Minneapolis, the Largest Creditor,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) January 25, 1888.
Clair Dunne Johnson, “I See By the Paper…” An Informal History of St. Johnsbury, VT, (Cowles Press, St. Johnsbury, VT 1987) 224.
Norman Reed, the Log Cabin Syrup Tin—A History, Tin Type Magazine, 1981 (Denver, CO) 1-12.
“P.J. Towle Dead,” The Retail Grocers Advocate, September 20, (1912), 31.
“P.J. Towle Passes Suddenly,” Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) September 7, 1912.
“P.J. Towle Confesses Judgement,” Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL) January 25, 1888.
“St. Johnsbury Vermont” Western New England Magazine, June No. 6 (1913): 272.
“To Leave St. Johnsbury – Towle Maple Products Company to Open Factory in Chicago,” St. Johnsbury Caledonian (St. Johnsbury, VT), December 30, 1914; “News of the State,” Essex County Herald (Guildhall, VT), February 12, 1915.
“Towle Maple Products Company Has Leased Pillsbury Baldwin Plant,” St. Johnsbury Caledonian (St. Johnsbury, VT), March 13, 1913.
James Trager, The Food Chronology: A Food Lover’s Compendium of Events and Anecdotes, from Prehistory to Present (New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1995) 326.
April 20, 2024 – St. Johnsbury, Vermont
