You can read my latest maple history contribution to the December 2023 edition of the Maple Syrup Digest newsletter at this link or by clicking on the image of the article. The Maple Syrup Digest, it is the official quarterly publication of the North American Maple Syrup Council.
This article looks at the short ten-year history of a unique laboratory constructed in Burlington, Vermont by the United States Forest Service. Named in honor of Vermont Senator George D. Aiken, the lab was created for the purpose of conducting research and outreach on topics important to the growth and promotion of the maple syrup industry. Staffed with foresters, biologists, and economists, this lab focused its attention on improvements in marketing maple products and developing more efficient technologies and methods for processing sap and syrup.
You can read the article at this link or by clinking on the accompanying image.
Example of Old Colony Maple Syrup label from Quebec Maple Products, LTD, 1934 trademark registration.
In the history of maple syrup brand names, “Old Colony Syrup” was a label used for over one hundred years by as many as six different companies in both the United States and Canada. The Old Colony brand was first used in the early 1900s by two unrelated syrup blending companies in Chicago and Boston. The name was later used in Canada and the United States from the 1920s to the early 2000s, handed down through a series of related companies.
Printing block for Scudder’s Syrup Company’s Old Colony Syrup label (image reversed).
The earliest example of the use of the Old Colony was a blended cane and maple syrup from the Scudder Syrup Company of Chicago, Illinois. The Scudder Company offered a variety of brands of blended cane and maple syrup starting in 1894, with Old Colony Syrup first appearing around 1896. The Scudder Company was one of many syrup blending companies operating in Chicago at this time and the Old Colony brand was one of their minor labels compared to more widely sold Scudder’s Canada Sap Syrup and later Scudder’s Brownie Brand Syrup.
Undated paper label for Old Colony Brand Cane & Maple Syrup from Bay State Maple Syrup Company.
The next early example of the use of the Old Colony name as a syrup brand comes from the Bay State Maple Syrup Company owned by C.M. Tice, operating out of Boston, Massachusetts. Like with the Scudder Company, the use of Old Colony by the Bay State Company was a minor label among other more prominent and popular syrup brands, such as Verhampshire, Fleur-de Lys, Mount Washington, and Mount Mansfield syrups. Since research has only uncovered examples of the label and no dated advertisements or other references, there is little information on the Bay State Company’s use of the Old Colony name and what years it was in use. We do know that the Bay State Company was most active from around 1905 to 1920.
However, the most long-lived and significant use of the Old Colony brand for packaging maple syrup began in 1920 with the Canada Maple Products Company in Toronto, Ontario. Unlike the first two examples of Old Colony Syrup, which were blends of cane and maple syrup, the Old Colony Syrup of the Canadian Maple Products Company was 100% pure maple syrup.
Maples, LTD., advertisement for Lion Brand Pure Maple Syrup from Toronto Daily Star, March 19, 1912.
The Canadian Maple Products Company was a syrup packing and maple products company that began around 1911 under the name of Maples, LTD. Initially, the company sold pure maple syrup and maple butter under the name of Lion Brand, which was only available in Canadian markets. Beginning in 1915, they changed the name of the maple butter to “Old Tyme Maple Butter.”
Early advertisement from Canadian Maple Products, LTD, for Old Colony Maple Syrup – Canadian Grocer, December 16, 1921.
In 1920, the Thornton Huyck family purchased Maples, LTD. and changed the name to the Canadian Maple Products Company, LTD. At this time, the company introduced the name Old Colony syrup name along with a colorful label featuring a yellow background, blue bands, and a splash of red maple leaves.
Advertisement for Old Colony Maple Syrup and Old Tyme Maple Butter – Canadian Grocer. April 1,1921.
In 1929 Thornton Huyck sold Canadian Maple Products Company, LTD., and its Old Colony and Old Tyme brands to the Cary Maple Sugar Company from St. Johnsbury, Vermont. The Cary Company was undertaking a massive expansion in Vermont and Québec, buying smaller syrup companies and expanding their footprint across the region. One of the Cary Company’s efforts was the construction of a modern three-story plant in Lennoxville, Québec for the processing and bottling of maple sugar and maple syrup. In preparation for operating the Lennoxville plant, the Cary Company also acquired a number of other maple syrup businesses from the surrounding Eastern Townships region of Québec, including the Boright Brothers and the Jenne Maple Syrup and Sugar Company, both from Sutton, Québec. As part of their sale to the Cary Company, the Boright Brothers and the Jenne Company sold their syrup manufacturing and bottling equipment and shipped it to Lennoxville. In addition, both Robert M. Boright and Frank Jenne became managers and key employees of Cary’s new Lennoxville plant.
Three story Cary Maple Sugar Company plant in Lennoxville, Québec circa 1929.
The Cary Company’s rapid expansion became a factor in the firm becoming over extended, contributing to the Cary Company’s colossal failure and bankruptcy in 1931. With the Cary Company in the midst of a reorganization, Robert Boright was elevated from general plant manager to the role of President of the entire Cary Company in the United States and Canada. With Boright’s shift to President, Frank Jenne become the Lennoxville plant manager.
Colorful 1930s-era one gallon round can for Old Colony Pure Maple Syrup from Québec Maple Products, LTD.
After a year of year of overseeing the operations and getting the Cary Company back on its feet, Robert Boright resigned his position as President and in late 1932 started his own company called Québec Maple Products, LTD. Conveniently, the newly constructed Cary Company plant in Lennoxville was for sale, which Boright purchased along with the former Canadian Maple Products Company brands of Old Tyme and Old Colony Syrup, with Frank Jenne continuing on as plant manager and a minor partner to Boright.
Early Québec Maple Products, LTD. glass bottle for Old Colony Maple Syrup next to February 28, 1935 – Windsor Start advertisement.
Québec Maple Products, LTD. soon after was offering Old Colony maple syrup to Canadian customers in 16- and 32-ounce circular glass jars and one gallon size tall round cans. The earliest of Québec Maple Products’ Old Colony labels were based on Canadian Maple Products’ earlier Old Colony Syrup design, with the yellow background, red text, and red maple leaves.
1950s era one gallon can with a winter sugaring scene for Old Colony Maple Syrup from Québec Maple Products, LTD.
In 1935, Québec Maple Products, LTD. began its own expansion and formed a subsidiary firm in St. Albans, Vermont called American Maple Products Corporation. With this expansion, Frank Jenne moved from the Lennoxville plant to St. Albans to be the Vice President and general manager of US operations. With the expansion across the border, it was easier for Québec Maple Products, through American Maple Products, to access American markets and introduced the Old Colony brand to a new group of American customers.
Two 1950s examples of early label designs for Old Colony Maple Syrup from American Maple Products Corporation.
American Maple Products Corporation moved from St. Albans, to Newport, Vermont in 1940. Two years later in 1942, Jenne and Boright bought out one another’s interests in Québec Maple Products, LTD., and American Maple Products Corporation. Boright took sole ownership of Québec business and Jenne took over American Maple Products with both continuing to use the Old Colony brand with their separate companies.
American Maple Products Corporation’s Old Colony Maple Syrup label from the 1960s.
Under Jenne’s ownership and later that of his son-in-law Sherb Doubleday, American Maple Products Corporation expanded the company’s variety of maple products and introduced its own designs for its Old Colony labels and containers. Over the next 50 years American Maple Products redesigned its Old Colony label at least four times.
Two versions of American Maple Products Corporation’s Old Colony Maple Syrup labels from the 1970s and 1980s.
American Maple Products Corporation continued to sell syrup under the Old Colony brand into at least the 1980s. American Maple Products Corporation closed its doors in 1994 when Roger Ames, the son-in-law of Sherb Doubleday and owner of the company, was accused and pled guilty to selling syrup labeled as pure maple syrup when it had been adulterated with beet sugar syrup.
Example of advertisement and bottle design for Quebec Maple Products’ Old Tyme Syrup from October 30, 1958 – Windsor Star.
Boright continued as owner of Quebec Maple Products until 1958 when he sold his company to the Canada Starch Company, LTD., and its best Foods Canada Division, with Old Colony and Old Tyme syrups continuing as the company brands. Best Foods was sold to Unilevel Company in 2000 and Unilevel sold the Old Colony and Old Tyme brands to ACH Foods in 2002. Old Colony Syrup continued to be available in Canadian markets until at least 2004 and their blended Old Tyme Pancake Syrup until around 2015.
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.
For Vermonters, the quickest way to start a fight or elicit an opinion is to declare where one can get the best maple creemee in the State. But what exactly is a creemee and from where does the name originate? In the past, some journalists and interested commentators have weighed in with their opinions, but few seem to have actually researched the question and looked at what the historical record might offer. So, with that in mind, I dug a little deeper and this is what I found.
The author enjoying a maple creemee on the porch of Bragg Farm and Sugarhouse in East Montpelier, Vermont.
Although many readers of this website are familiar with the creemee, it is important to first clarify and describe what exactly a creemee is and is not. A creemee is a kind of soft-serve ice milk (even though it is called ice cream) made from a liquid milk-based mix that includes sweeteners, flavorings, stabilizers, and emulsifiers and can be found in a variety of flavors. The mix goes into a specially designed machine that turns and chills the mix, adding air and forming small ice crystals, giving soft serve its smooth and creamy texture that is firm but not as hard as traditional ice cream with its larger ice crystals. Soft-serve machines are then able to dispense the ice-milk into a dish or cone in on-demand single servings.
In some cases, the flavoring is added by the manufacturers of the purchased mix, Un other cases, the flavoring is added by the machine on an individual basis as it is drawn from the machine’s freezing and turning drum before dispensing. What makes creemees, and any soft-serve ice-milk, different from traditional hard or hand-dipped ice cream is that creemees have a lower milk-fat content, have substantially more air by volume, and usually does not contain egg, unless it is frozen custard. Creemees are usually 5-8% milk fat, whereas ice cream is at least 10% and usually closer to 20% milk fat.
Having established what a creemee is (soft-served ice-milk), the real questions of interest here are where does the name creemee come from, and what are the origins of the maple flavored creemee that is so unique to Vermont? The spelling of the name itself is somewhat of a mixed bag. While the most common spelling is creemee with two Es and no hyphen, over the years the name has been spelled a variety of ways, ranging from creamie to creamee to cree-mee. As far the “correct” spelling goes, it seems that as long as it sounds the same, you can spell it any number of ways. For example, the Rutland County Maple Producers used three different spellings in the early years of selling their creemees at the Vermont State Fair.
It has sometimes been written in Vermont that the creemee name is unique to Vermont and that it is unclear where the creemee name originated. Some have offered a more romantic suggestion that the source for creemee came from neighboring French-speaking Quebec where the words for ice cream are crème glacée, from which a shortened contraction could get you cree-mee or creemee. However, a little historical research points us to a far less romantic origin to the name creemee. Additionally, it turns out that creemee soft serve ice cream was hardly unique to Vermont and that the creemee name has been around in Vermont and many other places in the United States for over 70 years.
Let’s start with the beginnings of soft serve. Looking at the history of soft-serve ice milk machines, we see that they were first invented in the late 1930s. By the early 1940s, there were a handful of soft-serve stores in the mid-west states. Following the end of World War II, soft-serve stands begin to appear in much greater numbers, usually as small, seasonal walk-up stands.
Interestingly, until the late 1940s, some states and local communities had regulations prohibiting the sale of soft-serve ice milk in individual servings. Some ice cream manufacturers were concerned that lower priced ice milk, with its lower milk-fat content was falsely being sold as ice cream, which by law had to have at least 10% milkfat. To protect their interests, across the country in places like Minnesota, Alabama, Hawaii and Florida, the ice cream lobby promoted rules that required all ice milk to be sold only in clearly labeled packages declaring the contents to be ice milk. Whether it was intentional is not clear, but such packaging and labeling rules had the results of preventing the sale of ice milk in individual cones or bowls to customers. A growing interest in the popular soft-serve stands, fueled by technological improvements in soft-serve machines encouraged business interests to push for changes in the ice- milk regulations and change the rules that previously only allowed ice-cream (based on milk-fat levels) to be sold in individual servings.
Ad for Cree-Mee store in Vergennes, Vermont, from the Enterprise and Vermonter, June 28, 1951, page 5.
As a result, a soft-serve explosion began around 1950 and continued for the next couple of years, when a handful of entrepreneurial businessmen promoted the opening of franchised soft-serve stands under names like Dari-Freeze, Tastee Freez, Dairy Queen, and most notably, Cree-Mee. In 1947 there were a few hundred soft serve stands around the country, but by 1955 there were estimated to be over 10,000 stands in operation. The Freez-King Company, also known as the Harlee Manufacturing Company, out of Chicago, Illinois promoted the Cree-Mee name as one of its soft-serve stand brand names. President and owner of the Freez-King Company, Leo Maranz stated that he opened his first franchise in March 1951 and by the end of 1955 he himself would have 1425 stands, including several Cree-Mee stands in Vermont.
The first Vermont stands with Cree-Mee in their name opened in June and August of 1951 in Vergennes as the Cree-Mee Custard Store, in Manchester as Bischoff’s Cree-Mee Stand, and Cree-Mee of Burlington.
Advertisement for Bischoff’s Cree-Mee Stand that appeared in the Rutland Daily Herald, June 14, 1952, page 11.
By 1952 there was also the Cree-Mee Park-Side Drive In north of Brattleboro, Lovella’s Cree-Mee on the Barre-Montpelier Rd., and perhaps a few others.
1952 ad for Lovella’s Cree-Mee stand in Barre, Vermont from the Barre Daily Times, June 3, page 7.
Through the rest of 1950s a few more Cree-Mee franchises opened in Vermont and, like the brand names of Kleenex for facial tissues or Band-Aid for adhesive bandages, Creem-Mee brand soft-serve was common and ubiquitous enough to take on the role as the universal term for soft-serve ice-milk in Vermont. As much as Vermonters love to think of the creemee as their own home-grown invention, the truth is far less romantic.
Advertisement for the Cree-Mee Park-Side Drive in Brattleboro, Vermont that appeared in the June 12, 1952 Brattleboro Reformer, page 5.
The creemee had its start elsewhere in the United States and has been a frozen desert staple in Vermont for over 70 years. Things get a little more interesting when looking at the origins of the maple flavored creemee, which is a flavor that is truly unique to Vermont. Initially, the flavors offered for creemees in the 1950s and 1960s were limited to vanilla and chocolate. Sometimes pineapple was on the menu as well as a weekly special flavor. However, there is no indication that maple was ever offered as a creemee flavor in Vermont (or anywhere else) until the 1980s.
Image of Carl Johnson and Jack Bittner’s Cree-Mee stand in Brattleboro. These Cree-Mee stands from the Harlee Manufacturing Company were of a unform design and may even have been prefabricated. Brattleboro Reformer, June 6, 1952, page 5.
The maple creemee was introduced by the Rutland County Maple Producers (RCMP) at their stand at the Vermont State Fair in Rutland in 1981. The first place I found mention of this detail was in a September 5, 2007, letter to the editor of the Rutland Daily Herald written by Pam Green, a Rutland County maple producer and member of the International Maple Hall of Fame. Wanting to know more, I contacted Pam Green and asked where she learned of the date and details of this event and if she could tell me more. Pam graciously shared that she learned of the RCMP origins of the maple creemee from the late Wilson “Bill” Clark, long-time Rutland County maple producer, past president of the Vermont Maple Sugarmakers Association and collector of Vermont maple heritage. Bill Clark told Pam Green of how, in 1981, C. Blake Roy, a recently retired maple marketing specialist for the Vermont Department of Agriculture, suggested the RCMP sell a maple flavored creemee at the Vermont State Fair. Taking Blake’s brainchild to the next step, Clark and RCMP president, Truman Young, brought the idea along with a few gallons of B Grade maple syrup to Tom Seward at Seward’s Dairy in Rutland, Vermont.
Examples of three spellings of “creemee” by the Rutland County Maple Producers, 1992, 1994, and 1999.
My next step was to try to get first-hand information that took me as close to the participants and events as I could. Unfortunately, C. Roy Blake had passed away in 1986 and Bill Clark died in 2021. Thankfully I was able to get in touch with Tom Seward, who confirmed the story shared by Pam Green and added important details. Tom told me that at that time, the RCMP had their own creemee machine at their Vermont State Fair stand and Seward’s had been providing the RCMP with the mix for making their vanilla creemees which were served with syrup poured on top.
According to Tom, the RCMP contacted Seward’s Dairy with the maple flavored creemee idea in 1980 or 1981. At the time, the Dairy was making their own vanilla and chocolate flavored creemee mixes for sale to creemee vendors in two and a half gallon bags. To make the maple flavored mix they used the recipe for the 5% fat content vanilla and replaced the liquid sugar in the recipe with maple syrup.
Image of the old Rutland County Maple Producers maple products stand at the Vermont State Fair where they sold many maple creemees over the years.
Tom went on to tell me, it was a special product made in small batches, 300 gallons at a time put up into 600 one half gallon containers. The Dairy mixed in the syrup at the end of the mixing process when it was all in the pasteurization vat. It was heated to 165F for 30 minutes then cooled in a tank and packaged into paper containers or bags.It was pasteurized and had a 21-day shelf life, long enough to last for the duration of the fair. For the RCMP’s maple flavored mix, it was requested that they put the mix into ½ gallon paper containers rather than the normal 2.5 gallon creemee mix bags. The paper containers were easier to handle by volunteers at the RCMP stand than the heavier and saggy 2.5 gallon bags.
The RCMP’s maple creemee was an instant hit, and by the second year they were being asked to make a second batch, since the first was selling out. At the end of the Vermont Fair, if there was still some mix left over, The RCMP took what little they had, froze it, and brought it to the Eastern States Expo to sell maple creemees. As a result, the specially made maple flavored mix was always used up and none went to waste. Seward’s made this maple mix only for the RCMP, continuing until around 1988.
In the end, the history of the Vermont maple creemee is perhaps not as romantic as one might expect. The creemee has been around for over 70 years in Vermont and the rest of the United States and thanks to some creative minds in the Rutland County Maple Producers, the maple creemee has been a delight since 1981.
At the end of prohibition the first alcohol to legally be distilled in the state of Vermont was produced using pure maple syrup as its base sugar instead of cane sugar or corn or grain. Soon after the production of alcohol for consumption was again made legal, the Green Mountain Distillery in Burlington began using maple syrup, a locally available commodity and well-loved food item, to create a unique and rum like liquor as well as a sweet liqueur.
The story of the Green Mountain Distillery’s beginning, short life, and ending are the focus of my latest contribution to the June 2023 edition of the Maple Syrup Digest(Vol. 62, no. 2). 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. You can read the article at this link or by clinking on the accompanying image.
Today it is common to find pure maple syrup for sale in a variety of attractive and interestingly shaped and sized glass bottles, such as maple leaves, snowmen, barrels and unique flasks, curets, and decanters. Fancy glass, or specialty glass bottles as they are sometimes called, began appearing in the maple industry in the 1980s and really took off in the late 1990s. Among this category of packaging, the cabin or chalet shaped glass bottle stands out for having a particularly interesting story. First introduced in 1998 by the Vetrerie Bruni glass company, this bottle was designed and sold for packaging maple syrup and was originally released as a 250 ml (8.45 ounce) bottle with a plastic or metal screw-on cap.
In 2000, this bottle was the center of a short-lived, but notable controversy, when Aurora Foods, Inc., the parent company of the Log Cabin Syrup brand, threatened a small Vermont maple syrup company with trademark violations for using this cabin shaped bottle. In February 2000, Aurora Foods (Aurora Foods bought the Log Cabin brand from Kraft- General Foods in 1997), sent both the L.L. Bean company of Portland, Maine, and Highland Sugarworks, then out of Starksboro, Vermont, threatening cease-and-desist letters. Specifically, the letters ordered L.L. Bean and Highland Sugarworks to stop using the cabin shaped bottle, to destroy all their inventory of the containers, and turn over all profits made from sale of the syrup in these bottles.
There was actually a precedent for Log Cabin Syrup being packaged in a glass cabin shaped bottle, but Aurora Foods made no mention of it in its threat to Highland Sugarworks. In 1965, while part of the General Foods corporate umbrella, Log Cabin Syrup was offered for one year in a special glass cabin shaped bottle that could be reused as a bank.
Examples of the 1965 one pint Log Cabin Syrup glass cabin bank.
One side featured a door and two windows, with the back side displaying two windows. The words “Log Cabin” were embossed on the roof on both sides of the bottle. The metal cap came with a pre-cut slot for coins with a cardboard insert in the cap that one removed after the syrup was emptied and the bottle cleaned.
At the time of the controversy, Highland Sugarworks was a relatively small independent maple syrup manufacturing and packing company owned and run by husband and wife, Judy MacIssac and Jim MacIsaac, the latter now deceased. L.L. Bean was a reseller of Highland Sugarworks’ syrup and, as a nationally known retailer, was an easy target. Worried about protecting their brand, L.L. Bean quickly acquiesced and pulled the cabin shaped bottles of syrup from their shelves and catalog.
Advertisement from 2000 for Log Cabin Syrup featuring a tall thin plastic bottle with a handle in the general shape of a log cabin.
Log Cabin Syrup was being sold in tall and narrow blow-molded plastic bottles, with decorative elements that gave it something of the shape of a log cabin. However, it in no way resembled the small squat cabin shaped of the Highland Sugarworks bottle or even to the cabin shaped tins used by the Log Cabin Syrup company many years before.
Examples of the Log Cabin Syrup commemorative cabin shaped metal banks with the 1971 version on the left and the 1979 version on the right.
In fact, the makers of Log Cabin Syrup had stopped selling syrup in their famous metal cabin shaped can in 1956, with the exception of a special limited edition commemorative tin issued in 1987 and toy banks in 1971 and 1979. Log Cabin issued another special edition cabin shaped tin in 2004.
On the left is the 1987 Log Cabin commemorative100 year anniversary cabin shaped tin, and on the right the 2004 special edition tin.
The attack on the Highland Sugarworks glass cabin was even more surprising considering that there was already a metal cabin shaped tin specifically designed and manufactured for packaging and selling maple syrup that had been on the market and available from the New England Container Company since 1984.
An early example of the New England Container Company cabin shaped metal tin that was introduced in 1984.
Rolie Devost, the owner of New England Container Co. at that time, shared in an interview that Aurora Foods made no effort or demands for an end to the manufacture and use of the New England Container Company’s metal cabin shaped can. Ironically, a few years later, Pinnacle Foods, Log Cabin Syrup’s next owner, contracted with New England Container to manufacture Log Cabin Syrup’s 2004 commemorative cabin shaped tin.
Besides Aurora’s claim that Highland Sugarworks benefitted from Log Cabin Syrup’s reputation by use of the cabin shaped bottle, Aurora’s claim of trademark infringement was simply false. It is true that years ago the Log Cabin Syrup name and logo were trademarked and that there have been various design patents for the earlier Log Cabin Syrup metal cabin shaped cans, but these have long ago expired. Based on current information, the various owners of the Log Cabin Syrup brand never held a trademark or copyright specifically on a cabin-shaped container.
It was surprising that Aurora Foods went after Highland Sugarworks when Highland Sugarworks was not even the manufacturer of the cabin bottle and did not hold the design patent. Highland Sugarworks was simply doing what many other syrup makers were doing, packaging, and selling their syrup in a cabin shaped bottle that was readily available to anyone to purchase for packaging and sale.
Examples of the three sizes of glass cabin shaped bottles in use over the years, 50 ml, 250 ml, and 750 ml.
At that time, these cabin shaped bottles, sometimes advertised as a “glass chalet,” were made by the famed glass makers, Vetrerie Bruni out of Milan, Italy. Bruni Glass was sold in 2015 and the cabin bottle is currently manufactured by Bruni Glass as a subsidiary of the Berlin Packaging Company in 50ml, 250ml, and 750ml sizes.
Not surprisingly, with the negative press and backlash that ensued from a large California based corporate food company wrongly attacking a small innocent Vermont family business, Aurora Foods quickly back peddled and by the end of the month had dropped their claims of trademark violation. In the end, the misguided efforts by Aurora Foods likely only hurt their brand and increased the popularity of the glass cabins and Highland Sugarworks’ sales of pure maple syrup.
Things didn’t get better for Aurora Foods, and one might speculate that their attack on Highland Sugarworks was a calculated distraction from the company’s other, much larger problems. The same week that Aurora Foods dropped its claim against Highland Sugarworks, it was announced that four of Aurora’s senior executives had resigned and the company was under investigation for serious accounting malpractice. As a result, its stock value plummeted from a normal $19 a share to $3 a share. The CEO subsequently pleaded guilty to fraud in 2001 and the company went into a bankruptcy restructuring in 2002, before merging with Pinnacle Foods in 2004.
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.
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.
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.
For those looking for a local, home grown history of maple sugaring from one small corner of Essex County, Vermont, there is a great, little known book that is sure to please.
Titled A Wicked Good Run: Generations of Maple Sugaring in A Vermont Town, the book was put together and published in 2010 by Lunenburg village’s Top of the Common Committee. The Top of the Common Committee was formed in 2005 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit group to lead efforts to restore the Lunenburg Congregational Church and Old Town Hall located on the Top of The Common in Lunenburg village.
With A Wicked Good Run, the committee expanded their focus to collect and preserve photos and stories of the history and legacy of maple sugaring from across the town of Lunenburg. Like most Vermont towns, maple sugaring has brought together many families and friends in the town of Lunenburg. While the number of sugarbushes and sugar houses has declined over the years, the town of 1300 souls is still home to a number of commercial and family level operations. The 115-page A Wicked Good Runcan be ordered from the Top of Town Committee and is an enjoyable read and a great addition to the library of anyone interesting in maple syrup history.
April 20, 2024 – St. Johnsbury, Vermont
