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.
The maple syrup industry lost one of its longstanding historians in May with the passing of Wilson “Bill” S. Clark, age 89 of Wells and Pawlet, Vermont. Bill was well known within the maple world for his many leadership and spokesperson roles, including past roles as president of the Rutland County Maple Producers (RCMP), President of the International Maple Syrup Institute, President of the North American Maple Syrup Council, and a 32 year run as president of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association (VMSMA). Amongst a variety of awards and recognition, Bill was also inducted into the Maple Syrup Hall of Fame in 1995. With his connections to and experience with the world of maple syrup, Bill was more than simply interested in maple history, he was a part of making history and understood the importance of recording and preserving that history for future generations.
In 2018 Bill published a history of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association in the Vermont Country Sampler, telling some of the highlights of the first 100 years of the organization. Bill also worked with Betty Ann and Don Lockhart to put together a detailed timeline of the history of maple sugaring in Vermont and the larger maple sugaring world. Various examples of this timeline have appeared in print in past editions of the program for the Vermont Maplerama, the popular tour and showcase of local sugarmakers. The version of the history timeline shared here is from the 2014 Maplerama program.
In addition to his telling the story of the activities of the VMSMA and the RCMP in the latter half of the 20th century, Bill also wrote a short memoir in 2001 on the most busy years of his life with maple that he titled Forty Years and Five Days: A Vermont Story.
My first memory of Bill was meeting him at his home in the spring of 2001 when I was on a research trip to Vermont to begin my “education” on maple syrup history. And boy did I ever dive in head first. Bill spoke to me non-stop of three hours as I scribbled notes as fast as my pencil could write. For those that knew Bill, it was clear that Bill was a thoughtful man and one heck of a talker. He was a treasure trove of recollections and knowledge and also one of very strong opinions that he was never afraid to share. His passion for maple history and his sharing of that by putting much of what he had learned in writing has served us all. Thank you Bill. Rest in Peace.
Below are links to a few of the maple history writings put together and shared by Bill Clark over the years.
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Bill Clark’s history of the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association which appeared in the March 2018 edition of The Vermont Country Sampler.
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A Vermont Maple History Timeline compiled by Betty Ann Lockhart and Don Lockhart with substantial contributions by Bill Clark.
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Bill Clark’s history of the beginnings of the Vermont Maplerama, which appeared in the 2014 Maplerama program.
A new project was recently launched in Vermont to document the many historic sugarhouses that dot the the state’s rural landscape. Be they abandoned, inactive, or currently in use, the project, led by Dori Ross, a maple syrup maker and founder of Tonewood maple products company, is aimed at creating a well-illustrated record of old sugarhouses, and where possible and appropriate, helping share information on preservation tools and funding opportunities for these iconic symbols of the maple syrup industry.
Sugarhouse Vermont website for documenting historic sugarhouses.
A major tool in gathering information on where these sugarhouses are found is on the Sugarhouse Vermont website where sugarhouse owners can fill out an online form to share details and information on the sugarhouse’s location as a prelude to a more intensive photo and written documentation by the project team.
Dori Ross, Sugarhouse Vermont project leader.
In addition to sugarhouse documentation and creating an inventory of old sugarhouses, another long term goal of the project is to publish a photo history book as a tool to preserve and share the story, beauty, and histories of Vermont sugarhouses. I am pleased to be a part of the project team as an advisor and the project historian and I plan to contribute a chapter on the history and evolution of the sugarhouse for the book. In addition to myself and Dori Ross, our project team has the assistance of Sawyer Loftus, an experienced journalist and University of Vermont student made available through the support of the UVM Center for Research on Vermont.
If you own an old or just plain older sugarhouse, or know where a less well known historic sugarhouse is located, please consider contacting us through the information provided at the Sugarhouse Vermont website. You can learn more about the project at the Sugarhouse Vermont website or read and hear more about it in a recent Vermont Public Radio story that aired on April 8, 2021.
The Vermont Historical Society’s journal Vermont History recently published an article I wrote on the origins of plastic tubing for making maple syrup. Specifically titled, “From Pails to Pipelines: The Origins and Early Adoption of Plastic Tubing in the Maple Syrup Industry,” the article examines the evolution of pipeline and tubing technology for gathering and moving maple sap with special attention to the relationship and interplay of the three men who carried plastic tubing from idea and experiment to commercial reality. The article appears in Volume 89, Number 1, Winter/Spring 2021 and is sent to all members of the Vermont Historical Society.
Unfortunately, since this is the current issue of the Vermont History and is hot off the presses, I am not permitted to share an electronic copy of the article for 6 months. But anyone can join the Vermont Historical Society and get the paper journal mailed to their door as well as online access to all their current and past journals (including this issue), all the while supporting the preservation and sharing of Vermont history.
This fall I will post a PDF copy of this article on this blog, so check back in September to get a copy.
This post continues the story of the fictitious John Shelby, the Maple Sugar Man of Barre, Vermont. Part One of the story, focusing in the events surrounding the origins of the name and the company can be found here.
Preston C. Cummings as he appeared in an advertisement promoting his candidacy for Barre Alderman in 1951. Barre Daily Times, March 3, 1951.
In 1945, five years after becoming an owner of the mail order maple products business with his purchase of the Black Sign Maple Syrup Company and the John Shelby label, Preston C. Cummings and Black Sign purchased the Vermont Maple Products Company. Buying out the South Royalton from Amos and Wendell Eaton, Cummings acquired the company name, their direct order mailing list, packaging equipment and supplies and their maple syrup inventory. The following year Black Sign changes its name to the Vermont Maple Products Company.
The company added Alfred W. Lane to its leadership in March 1947 ahead of plans for expanding the scale and sales of their operation. The following month the Cummings, Lane and R. Barton Sargent incorporated the Green Mountain Syrup Company occupying the same space as the Vermont Maple Products Company on Ayers Street in Barre. A year later, in February 1948, the Green Mountain Syrup Company formally changed its name to John Shelby, Inc. with Preston C. Cummings as president.
The trademarked name and imaginary signature of John Shelby as it appeared on the company packaging, promotional brochures, and maple museum.
At some point in the late 1940s or around 1950 the Vermont Maple Products Company added exhibits to their plant, started offering tours, and began calling it the John Shelby Maple Museum. The name of John Shelby, The Maple Sugar Man was formally trademarked by the Vermont Maple Products Company in 1951.
The eight mural paintings created in 1951 by Chelsea, Vermont artist Paul V. Winters for the John Shelby Maple Museum. The paintings depicted the evolution and history of maple sugaring. Image taken from a John Shelby Maple Museum brochure ca. 1963.
Cummings further expanded the museum in the spring of 1952 with the addition of eight of painted murals created by Chelsea, Vermont artist Paul V. Winters. The murals depicted the evolution of the maple syrup industry from Native American sugaring to the colonial period and onto modern sugaring methods and equipment. The museum was popular and well promoted and was relatively unique at a time when few collections of maple sugaring antiques were on display elsewhere in Vermont.
Cover of a John Shelby Maple Museum promotional brochure. ca. 1963.
Although the museum was a popular attraction it would appear that not everyone was pleased with how Mr. Cummings ran his business. In December of 1956 charges were filed in federal court against the Vermont Maple Products Company and Preston C. Cumming for violating the fair labor standards act. Specifically, Cummings was accused of paying employees under the then $1.00 legal minimum wage.
Image of Hal C. Miller, Jr. from news article in the Bennington Banner, April 14, 1964.
A few months later in March 1957 Cummings sold the Vermont Maple Products Company mail order operations, including the John Shelby name and museum, to Ezra R. Armstrong and Hal C. Miller, Jr. , both from Barre. Miller was an owner of the local Coca-Cola bottling company.
However, in selling the company, Cummings was not free of his legal troubles. It turns out that Cummings was also under investigation for tax fraud covering the years 1954, 1955 and 1956. Cummings was accused of filing false personal income tax returns and falsifying the taxable wages to employees he reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Cummings pled guilty in June 1960 on 16 counts and was sentenced to one year and a day in federal prison. Later the following year, Cummings appeared in a newspaper advertisement as the manager of the Barre branch of the Eastern Investment Corporation.
Full color promotional postcard illustrating a color lithographed syrup can from John Shelby, The Maple Sugar Man.
At some point around 1960 it appears that Miller and Armstrong sold the Vermont Maple Products Company and John Shelby Museum to Louis Hall, an associate of Miller with the Coca-Cola bottling company of Barre. As owner and full-time manager of the maple museum, Hall was engaged in the day-to-day operation of the mail order business and the tourist attraction, even serving as the president of the Vermont Attraction Association for a few years. In 1966 Hall sold the John Shelby Maple Museum to Rudolph “Shorty” Danforth and Clifford Eaton. A year later the museum building was purchased and razed to accommodate the expansion of what was then the neighboring Carle and Seaver tire shop.
Ad for the House of Maple in Royalton, Vermont. Note the statement “New Home of the John Shelby Maple Museum.” This ad appeared in the Bennington Banner, June 28, 1968.
In 1966 Danforth and Eaton expanded their existing sugarhouse on State Route 14 in south Royalton to become a roadside maple themed restaurant called the House o’ Maple Vermont Sugar House. The artifacts and memorabilia from the purchase of the Shelby Maple Museum became a center piece and important attraction at the restaurant, bringing an end to the life of the fictitious John Shelby.
Color postcard of Danforth and Eaton’s House of Maple Vermont Sugar House, c. late 1960s to early 1970s.
In 1975 Clifford Eaton bought out his partner Shorty Danforth’s portion of the restaurant business and in turn Danforth purchased Eaton’s share of the maple museum collection. Not long after, Shorty Danforth (who was a large man) sold the maple museum collection to Tom Olson of Rutland. Olson gave the collection a new home as the centerpiece of the New England Maple Museum which he built and opened in 1977 in Pittsford, Vermont. The museum is still open to this day preserving and sharing the collections, painted murals, and legacy of the mysterious Maple Sugar Man, John Shelby.
Barre, Vermont was at one time home to the John Shelby Maple Museum and pure Vermont maple syrup packed by John Shelby, the Maple Sugar Man. Over time the artifacts in the John Shelby Maple Museum traded hands and later became the core of what is today the New England Maple Museum. But who was this John Shelby and where did he come from? As it turns out, there never was a John Shelby. Like some famous foods, it was a made-up trade name of the Black Sign Maple Syrup Company. But that’s not where the story gets interesting. Let me start from the beginning.
Max Schwarzschild. Burlington Free Press, February 13, 1940.
The Black Sign Maple Syrup Company was a maple syrup packing and maple candy company started around 1935 in Barre, Vermont by Max Schwarzschild. Max was an industrious man who emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1908. After working in sales and the imported food business in New York City and Chicago, he served in the United States Army during World War I. Later while in the Army’s Quartermaster Corps, he discovered Vermont when sent to the Green Mountain state to assist the Civilian Conservation Corps. After discharging from the Army, he moved to Barre, where he started a mail order maple syrup and candy company called Black Sign with the name a translation of his own German name, with schwarz meaning black and schild meaning sign or shield.
Advertisement for Black Sign Maple Syrup Co. on Prospect Street in Barre. Note the absence of name John Shelby in the ad. From 1937 Barre Directory.
Not long after starting his new company, Schwarzschild married a widow named Ethel Sheplee Sartelle and began using the name John Shelby to sell his maple products. It is not known exactly when or how Max Schwarzschild came up with the name of John Shelby. The earliest dated reference I could find of Schwarzschild using the name John Shelby was 1940. Perhaps he was self-conscious of his German heritage in the period between the wars and wanted a more Yankee sounding name on his label. For example, one 1940 newspaper article about Schwarzschild noted that his wife was “a member of the Shelby family of Barre who can trace their lineage back to Ethan Allen.” We know that she wasn’t a Shelby and examination of the city directories for Barre in the first half of the 20th century show no families with the name Shelby. It is hard to ignore the similarities between his wife Ethel’s maiden name of Sheplee and the name Shelby.
Early image of the building that housed the Black Sign Maple Syrup Company and later the John Shelby Maple Museum. Real Photo Post Card.
The Black Sign Company began operations on Prospect Street in Barre, but in 1938 built a new house for the business in Barre at the end of Ayers Street near the corner with West Patterson Street. The new Black Sign plant was equipped with modern equipment for the handling and bottling of maple syrup and manufacture of maple candy. After five years, successful advertising and attractive packaging helped the Black Sign company grow to 12 employees preparing and packing maple products to send to mail order customers around the country and around the world.
Former location of Black Sign Maple Syrup Company and the John Shelby Museum at the corner of Ayers and Patterson Streets in Barre, Vermont. See building in lower left in black and white photo from 1964 and the empty lot today in the color photo on the right.
However, in late June of 1940, it began to appear that there was another side to the story of Black Sign’s success when it was reported that Max Schwarzschild had been missing from work and home for a couple of weeks. Inquiries into his disappearance and possible whereabouts uncovered that earlier in the month he had secured a loan for $11,000 from a local Barre bank using 140 barrels of maple syrup he had in storage as collateral. Investigations of his business discovered that the barrels did not in fact contain maple syrup as expected but instead had been filled with water. Upon that realization, a warrant was put out for Schwarzschild’s arrest. By then he had been tracked to Chicago where local authorities detained him. Washington County Sheriff Henry Lawson then flew from Vermont to Chicago to return Schwarzschild to Vermont to face charges of grand larceny as well as additional charges for writing a worthless check for over $4000 to the Lamoille County Savings Bank. With Schwarzschild’s arrest and inability to meet bail, a Federal Judge put the Black Sign Maple Syrup Company into receivership and appointed Arthur Simpson, Director of the State’s Old Age Assistance Department and a stockholder and chairman of the board of directors of the Cary Maple Sugar Company, to manage the company during Schwarzschild’s incarceration and trial.
Cover of a promotional recipe booklet from the Black Sign Maple Syrup Company “Gathered by John Shelby.”
Further investigations revealed that Schwarzschild had previously arranged for the delivery of the barrels to St. Johnsbury where the syrup they contained was sold to the Cary Maple Sugar Company. Schwarzschild then had an equal number of barrels filled with water in the Barre warehouse. Unfortunately for him the bank had recorded the serial numbers on the original syrup barrels at the time of making the loan and the numbers on the water filled barrels did not match what was in the bank’s records.
While Schwarzschild sat in jail during the summer of 1940, further investigations revealed the extent of his unpaid business transactions and working on credit with liabilities totaling $80,000, including debts to the Cary Maple Sugar Company amounting to $40,000. Despite company assets adding up to $103,000 a United States District Court judge declared Max Schwarzschild and the Black Sign Maple Syrup Company to be involuntarily bankrupt. Arthur Simpson was then chosen as the Trustee to manage the bankruptcy of the company. In late October of 1940, a few days before Schwarzschild went on trial, the Black Sign Company was sold by Simpson to the People’s National Bank who in turn promptly sold the company to Preston C. Cummings of Burlington and Norbert C. Goettler of Montpelier. Cummings and Goettler quickly took possession of the plant and continued operations under the existing names of Black Sign Maple Syrup Company and the John Shelby brand. The following January Preston C. Cummings, his wife Nina B. Cummings, and new business partner Willis B. Venable of Barre formally filed articles of incorporation for the Black Sign Maple Products Company with $10,000 worth of stock.
Schwarzschild was found guilty and sentenced to two to four years in state prison at Windsor, Vermont. He served about one year of the sentence before being released but never returned to the business of selling maple products.
With that the first half of the Black Sign and John Shelby story come to a close….but wait, there’s more to be told in part two of this saga.
The initial application of plastic tubing for gathering maple sap in the 1950s was indisputably one of the most significant technological developments of the maple industry in the twentieth century. However, the first viable tubing system was introduced over forty years earlier as a gravity drawn system made completely of metal. Invented in the shadows of the Adirondack Mountains near Mayfield, New York, by William C. Brower, Jr., the system carried sap directly from the tree to the sugarhouse through an interconnected series of specialized taps, tubes and connectors. Formally known as the Brower Sap Piping System, the pipeline was popularly referred to as the Gooseneck system because one of the key segments of the pipeline resembled the curved neck of a goose.
Brower Sap Piping System installed in an early 20th century sugarbush.
Born in Mayfield, New York in 1874, Brower was the consummate Yankee tinkerer and inventor. As a machinist, mechanic, and jack of all trades, his education did not come from the classroom, but rather, from trying to solve and improve on the problems and dilemmas he and his neighbors faced every day. Brower was also a sugarmaker, making him well aware of the difficulties of tapping and gathering sap with buckets and teams of horses or oxen in deep snow on and on steep slopes.
Drawing of components from William J. Brower’s 1916 Sap Piping System patent (US1,186,471).
After coming up with the idea of using the natural gravity of the mountains to eliminate the laborious task of hand gathering sap, it took Brower nearly three years of trial and error to perfect the system. The initial patent application occurred in December 1914. A year and a half later in June 1916, the United States Patent Office awarded Brower patent number 1,186,741 for his “Sap-Collecting System”. Likewise, an identical application by Brower was awarded a Canadian patent in August of 1917.
Drawing of layout from William J. Brower’s 1916 Sap Piping System patent (US1,186,471).
In order to support the weight of the folded sheet metal tubing and the sap flowing through it, the Gooseneck pipeline was suspended by small hooks on a network of wires strung through the sugarbush supported by posts and trees. The wire used was usually a heavy gauge fence wire or reused telegraph wire. The labor required for set up at the beginning of the season was greater than that of traditional gathering systems using metal spouts, pails and covers; but this cost was easily made up with a reduction in labor for gathering as well as the elimination of sap lost by overflowing buckets that were difficult to tend to in deep snow and on steep slopes.
The pipeline quickly caught the attention of many sugarmaker’s in the region; however Brower continued to manufacture the tubing and spiles out of his small workshop, limiting his ability to mass produce the system. According to his grandson, Brower was a man more interested and skilled in working with his hands than in promoting and selling his invention.
Following completion of the pipeline design in 1914, Brower traveled from his Mayfield home to St. Johnsbury, Vermont to try and interest George C. Cary of the Cary Maple Sugar Company in using the pipeline in the large sugarbush on Cary’s 4,000 acre farm. Initially, Cary was not interested, but Brower persisted, finally convincing Cary to try the system on 1500 trees during the 1915 maple season. As president of what was then, the world’s largest maple sugar business, and as owner of one of Vermont’s largest sugarbushes, Cary had the wealth, liberty, and interest in experimenting with more efficient and cost effective methods and equipment. After only one season of use, Cary was sold, placing an order for enough tubing to connect 9000 more trees. Ultimately Cary would have 15,000 trees on the pipeline at his North Danville sugarbush.
Image of the cover of sales booklet for Brower’s Sap Piping System offer by the Cary Maple Sugar Company out of St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
Continued satisfaction with the system led the Cary Maple Sugar Company to form a partnership with Brower in 1918, with the company providing the facilities and financing to expand production and sale of the pipeline. Although his family stayed in New York, Brower temporarily relocated to St. Johnsbury to direct production in this new venture.
According to a promotional brochure, during the first year of production in St. Johnsbury, sales more than doubled and orders were coming in faster than they were able to manufacture the pipeline. The brochure goes on to say that many producers tried a small amount of the tubing at first but were so satisfied that they followed-up with much larger orders. Owners of larger sugarbushes were especially interested in the system. In one instance an estimated 30,000 feet of pipeline was used in one 1,700 tap sugarbush. With mass production in full swing, the 1920 prices for the system ranged from thirty-five to forty-two dollars for one thousand feet of half inch to one inch diameter pipeline, and seven dollars per one hundred for both spouts and Goosenecks. The half inch and one inch diameter pipeline sections came in three foot lengths with a manufacturer’ estimated costs of sixty to seventy cents per tree.
1921 Vermont newspaper advertisement for Brower Sap Piping manufactured out of St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
An impressive endorsement of the quality of maple sugar one could make using the pipeline came from M.J. Corliss, the Secretary and Treasurer of the Vermont Sugarmaker’s Association. At the annual meeting of the Association in 1926, Corliss noted that he had “been taking careful note and for the last two or three years it is a fact that the men who have carried off most of the blue ribbons or first prizes are the men who have used the piping system”. One of the greatest strengths of the pipeline was the elimination of debris and the near immediate delivery of clean, fresh sap, which was especially important in the 1920s and 1930s when and our understanding of bacterial growth in sap and the tap holes was in its infancy and sap gathering was traditionally done with out the aid of engines and machines.
With the Cary Company’s assistance and wide reaching influence, the pipeline began to make a dent in the equipment market. While, the pipeline system never became as popular as tubing has today, it was added to the sap gathering process in a number of maple operations. A 1925 study of 457 maple producing farms in Vermont found that 18, or roughly four percent, were using the pipeline on some of their trees. In those 18 sugarbushes, an average of 28 percent of the trees were tapped with the pipeline, ranging from as few as 8 percent to as many as 75 percent of the trees. In that same year, pipeline users averaged 400 taps on tubing and had been gathering sap with the system for an average of 4 years. This study also found the average estimated value of the pipeline to be $268 or 67 cents per tap, which was consistent with the price estimate promoted by the Cary Company.
It is not clear when the Cary Maple Sugar Company discontinued its production of the pipeline; however, it may have been as early as the mid-1920. By the late 1930s, it appears that the Gooseneck system had fallen out of favor and was no longer used by many maple producers. George Cary himself went bankrupt and died in 1931, leading to the reorganization of the company and the sale of his farm and sugarbush. With the end of production of the pipeline in St. Johnsbury, William Brower returned to his family in New York, where he lived until his death in 1940.
The pipeline was used primarily in the northeastern states of Vermont, New York, and New Hampshire; however, the system also made it as far west as Wisconsin. Evidence of its use was recently found in the northern part of the state on the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Archaeologists discovered spiles, Gooseneck connectors, rolls of wire, and thousands of sections of pipe from the Brower system at the former location of a late 1920s to early 1930s sugarhouse.
Like plastic tubing, it was important to not have any sag in the system where sap could collect in low spots and get sour. Some pipeline users reported that freezing was sometimes a problem, but that the metal warmed easily when the sun came out, quickly thawing the frozen sap in the pipeline. It was sometimes noted that at the end of the season sap gathered with the system was slightly sour and often had to be thrown away. Fallen limbs, ice, and deer occasionally disconnected sections of the pipeline, and the contraction of the metal in very cold conditions could result in the separation of the inserted pipe ends. Some maple producers stopped using the system because it was made from a kind of sheet metal known as Tern Plate, which was a combination of tin and lead. As one maple bulletin described it in 1949, “the use of such metal was strongly discouraged by State and Federal authorities for the processing of any food”. In spite of these drawbacks, the benefits at the time were clear. For sugarmakers with large, steep, and hard to get to sugarbushes who kept their equipment clean and processed their sap quickly, the Gooseneck system was an excellent innovation. While the system added more work at the beginning and end of the maple season with longer set up times and additional cleaning, it eliminated the laborious task of gathering sap once or twice a day.
Improvements in sap gathering methods have long since replaced the Gooseneck system, but the pipeline has not completely faded into memory. On the Lent family farm near Mayfield, New York, the pipeline continues to be used on a few hundred taps to gather and transport sap from their mountainside sugarbush. It is no coincidence that the family still uses the system or that their sugarbush is near Mayfield, the community where Brower first invented the pipeline. In fact, the Lent family has used the pipeline for over 80 years with their farm and sugarbush located next door to Brower’s former property. Many years after his death, the Lent family purchased William Brower’s former home and the workshop where the pipeline was invented. Today, a New York State historic marker points out the location of the workshop alongside Mountain Road (Highway 123) northeast of Mayfield.
The Gooseneck metal sap pipeline in use during the 2005 sugaring season in the Lent Family sugarbush, Mayfield, New York. Photo by Matthew M. Thomas
According to Lent family history, their ancestor, Edward L. Lent, worked with his neighbor Brower in the early 1900s to develop and improve the pipeline system, using the Lent sugarbush as a test site. Over the years the Lent family tried other methods of sap collection like metal pails, plastic bags, and plastic tubing, but has always kept a portion of their sugarbush on the Gooseneck system. At their peak in the 1980s, the Lent’s gathered sap with the pipeline from approximately 2500 taps. More recently, they have discontinued commercial production and scaled back their operation to a few hundred taps. The spring of 2004 was one of the first years that they did not tap, out of respect for the terminal illness and recent passing of the family patriarch, Edward W. Lent, grandson of Edward L. Lent. The 2005 season saw a return to the Lent family installation of the Gooseneck system.
As the preferred method of sap gathering in the modern sugarbush, plastic tubing has become commonplace over the last forty years. However, the basic idea, structure, and terminology of a sap gathering pipeline were established with the Gooseneck pipeline, setting the stage for the experiments with plastic tubing pipelines in the mid-1950s. In fact, one could argue that Brower would have probably chosen plastic rather than English Tin had flexible plastic PVC tubing been invented and available in the early 20th Century. In a flexible form, PVC tubing wasn’t available for non-military use until after World War II. It wasn’t until it became commercially available in the 1950s when pioneers like Nelson Griggs, George Breen, and Bob Lamb began to explore its application for gathering maple sap.
The Warner Sap Spout has it beginnings with James F. Warner, but its full story comes to life with the inclusion of his later partner, George D. Jarvis. Warner was born in Vermont in 1837. In the 1860 census he was a farm laborer in Jericho and by the 1870s and early 1880s, was a farmer and civil war veteran from Essex, VT. By the mid-1800s and 1890s Warner was working as an architect and builder in Essex with an additional business cleaning, repairing, and tuning pianos and organs.
Image of a young George D. Jarvis.
George De Alton Jarvis first appears in Burlington around 1882 managing a Singer sewing machine store. By 1890 Jarvis was working as a piano and organ salesman for G.H. and C.F. Hudson in Burlington, Vermont. He later went on to work for McKannon Bros. & Co. selling pianos before buying out McKannon Brothers and opening his own Geo. D. Jarvis & Son in Burlington in 1905.
However, Jarvis also had a side hustle as a peddler of patent medicines. Working under the trade name of Dr. Geo. D. Jarvis, for which there is no evidence of his ever earning a Doctorate in Medicine or any other field. Jarvis traveled around New England selling his Burlington Brand Extract of Lemon and Jarvis’ Blood Renovator. He was also part of the Burlington Extract Company who produced and sold Jarvis’ Cough Balsam. The Burlington Extract Company was initially incorporated in 1903 and reincorporated in 1905, this time with Jarvis as a shareholder.
Examples of bottles of Dr. Geo. D. Jarvis’s patent medicines. Photos of bottles Courtesy of Jerry Russin, Jr. and the Vermont Bottle Man Duane E. Chase of Jeffersonville, VT.Drawing from C.F. Warner’s 1893 sap spout patent (US509,980).
James F. Warner obtained his first patent design for a one-piece cast iron sap spout in 1893 with another patent for an improved design obtained in 1899. Exactly when in the 1890s and from where Warner began to manufacture and sell his patents is not entirely clear, presumably out of Essex. There are many examples of variations on the Warner Sap Spout that display elements that progress between the 1893 and the 1904 designs. Although Warner obtained his first patent in 1893 it appears that he used this design only generally in the initial production of his spouts. As discussed in detail in Hale Mattoon’s Maple Spouts Spiles Taps & Tools, over the 1890s and early 1900s Warner continued to make slight modifications to his designs never really adhering to the specifics of the patent image from any given year. One particular variation of the Warner spout was referred to as the “Jim Sap Spout” and in 1898 it was reported in various newspapers that James Warner of Essex had received an order from Canada for 20,000 “Jim” Spouts.
Drawing from C.F. Warner’s 1899 sap spout design patent (USD31,860).
Presumably it was the piano and organ business that brought Warner and Jarvis to know each other. In 1902 these men began working together on sap spout designs with Warner assigning his 1904 patent design to George D. Jarvis. In June 1902 Warner applied for a patent and the following year in April 1903 both men jointly applied for a new patent on a spout design with slight modifications to Warner’s design from a year earlier, notably the inclusion of the hook, an eyelet in the top tab for securing a pail cover.
Drawing of C.F. Warner’s 1904 sap spout patent (US76,324).
So sure were they of their plans, a few months before they had submitted their shared patent design in April 1903, they had begun advertising and promoting their new patent pending spout under the company name of Geo. D. Jarvis & Co. Notable in the patent images and description are that the 1904 spout could be made with or without a hook as part of the single cast piece. However, according to maple spout expert Hale Mattoon, sap collectors have yet to find an example of the 1904 spout with the hanging hook.
Drawing from C.F. Warner and G.D. Jarvis’ 1905 sap spout patent (US801,755).
The 1904 and 1905 designs of the Warner sap spout was immediately successful, catching the attention of maple equipment king G. H. Grimm who in January of 1904 challenged George D. Jarvis to a $100 wager to see which spout, the Grimm spout or the Warner spout, would draw the most sap from the same tree in a given amount of time. It is unclear if the challenge was accepted and if the two spouts ever faced off in this head to head competition.
Curiously, one never reads about James Warner’s role in the company after 1903 and it was never clear what were the terms of their partnership. As an experienced salesman, Jarvis was well aware of the value of trusted and recognizable brand names and as part of the Geo. D. Jarvis & Co business selling maple sugaring equipment, he offered other items under the Warner brand name, including sap pails and sap pail covers.
February 1903 advertisement for the Warner Sap Spout based on Warner and jarvis’ 1905 patent. Note the patent applied for and manufactured by of Geo. D. Jarvis & Co.1908 advertisement for Geo. D. Jarvis & Son piano sales in Burlington, Vermont.
In 1905 George D. Jarvis was operating two enterprises with similar names, one for Jarvis & Company for sugar making supplies and one with his oldest son De Forest Clinton Jarvis as Jarvis & Son for piano and organ sales, with both businesses listed at 45 Church Street. The piano sales business continued until 1915. Around 1910 Jarvis further expanded his Burlington businesses to open the Jarvis Palace Garage with his son De Alton Matthew Jarvis on South Winooski Avenue for automobile parts and repair.
1924 advertisement for the Leader Evaporator Company sales of the Warner Sap Spouts.
James F. Warner died of heart disease in 1907 in Essex, Vermont at the age 69. In the late 19-teens, Jarvis began to close up and sell his interest in his various business ventures. Around 1920 George D. Jarvis sold the patent rights to the Warner sap spout to the Leader Evaporator Company who continued to manufacture the Warner Sap Spout for many more decades. In 1921 Jarvis retired to Orange City, Florida where he remained until his death from cancer in 1927. George Jarvis’ son De Forest C. Jarvis went on to become a well-known medical doctor in Barre and in 1958 was the author of the best-selling book Folk Medicine: A Vermont Doctor’s Guide to Good Health which sat on the New York Times best seller list for two years and sold over a million copies.
Charles Covil Post, better known as C.C. Post, was the inventor and maker of one of the first and most widely used, mass produced metal maple sap spouts. Born on January 18, 1831 in Hinesburgh, Vermont, Post was the son of A.H. Post, an industrious builder, farmer and cheese maker.
C.C. Post tin shop in old brick general store on Main Street in Hinesburgh, Vermont.
As a young single man C.C. Post worked as a farmer, but soon after his marriage in 1851 Post shifted to the metal work business, opening C.C. Post’s stove and tinware shop in Hinesburgh near the corner of Main Street and Mechanicsville Road. At the time, Post occupied the former Hinesburgh general store, a brick building built in 1820 at the center of town.
1857 Map of Hinesburgh, Vermont showing location of C.C. Post tin shop.Advertisement from 1863 for the sale of Cook’s Sugar Evaporator with C.C. Post of Hinesburgh as the sales agent.
C.C. Post’s entry in the maple sugar equipment business came in late 1862 or early 1863 when he secured the rights to manufacture and sell the Cook’s Sugar Evaporator. Introduced in 1859 by Daniel McFarland Cook out of Mansfield, Ohio, the new Cook’s evaporator introduced a maze-like network of baffles that facilitated the continuous flow of sap into syrup, notably more advanced and efficient than the commonly used flat pans and kettles of the time. As a result the Cook’s evaporator saw immediate popularity; however, no one was manufacturing the units locally. With the first Cook’s evaporators manufactured in Ohio and shipped to Vermont, becoming the exclusive agent for sale in Vermont quickly spread the name C.C. Post among maple sugar makers.
Image from C.C. Post’s first sap spout design patent awarded in 1868 (US84032).
Although there is no indication C.C. Post was ever a sugarmaker, he know the business and basics of its operation and began to develop his own ideas on sap spout designs and in November 1868 was awarded a patent for his first sap spout design (US84032). Having his own sap spout to sell along with the popular Cook’s evaporator, in 1869 C.C. Post focused his metal manufacturing efforts from general tin and stove works to just making sap spouts and selling maple sugaring equipment. With this focus on maple equipment making he briefly moved his operation from Hinesburgh to Waterbury for the year 1869 then in 1870 moved his business and home to Burlington.
Advertisement for C.C. Post’s Eureka Sap Spout from 1869 with his location listed as Waterbury, Vermont as he transitioned his operations from Hinesburgh to Burlington.
Post later sold his tin works building in Hinesburgh in 1881 to John S. Patrick who started the Reed and Patrick tin works. While in Burlington, Post initially resided on Colchester Street before later buying a lot at 83 North Union Street and building a home there in 1877. It is unclear where exactly C.C. Post carried out the foundry work of pouring the hundreds of thousands of cast iron metal taps he made. There was once a large barn that was possibly workshop or warehouse on the property behind the house on North Union Street. The house was listed in Burlington directories as both his residential and the official business address for his maple hardware business. Current owners of the house informed me that the barn was in poor condition and torn down. A block of eight condos were more recently built on the site of the former barn.
Aerial shot of C.C. Post house at 83 North Union Street in Burlington, Vermont.
From the get-go C.C. Post called his spout the Eureka and as arguably the first widely available cast iron spout was very popular and used extensively across the maple industry. While more expensive than the commonly used tubular wood spouts, cast iron spouts were durable, nested snugly in the taphole, were less prone to getting sour during the season, and were easily washable for years of continued use.
Portrait drawing of C.C. Post.
The Eureka sap spout was probably the most popular and best-selling sap spout in the 1870s and 1880s and Post didn’t hesitate to defend his spout designs against possible patent infringement. In 1879 C.C. Post declared, contrary to the claims by F.E. Lord that the Boss Sap Spout did not infringe on the patent for the Eureka Sap Spout, the Boss design infringed on a design owned by Post that was originally patented to James B. Sargent in 1868 (US76530), later owned and re-issued by Post in 1878 (USRE8495). A history of the Boss sap spout will be covered in a later post. In another case with the makers of the Willis Sap Spout dating to 1880, patent law experts were consulted and as reported in the Burlington Free Press that “the Willis sap spout and bucket hanger was decided to be so clearly an infringement that the manufacturers decided to at once discontinue its manufacture and sale.”
Image from one of C.C. Post’s later sap spout design patents awarded in 1871 (US117326).
Post continued to tweak his sap spout design and was awarded at least two more patents for new sap spout designs (US117326 and US117457) on July 25, 1871. He also developed a unique metal sap pail in 1870 that featured an indented or curved face at the point of the hanging hole to more tightly fit against the curve of the tree (US107407). It is interesting to study and compare the designs in Post’s patents and the images of spouts that appear in his advertisements, since the drawings are sometimes very different.
Advertisement for C.C. Posts Eureka Sap Spouts No. 1 and No.2. Notice the claim of over 11 million spouts sold.
Even more interesting is to look at the actual preserved examples of C.C. Post’s spouts in various antique maple spout collections. To learn more about these spout variations I highly recommend consulting Hale Mattoon’s comprehensive book Maple Spouts Spiles & Taps and Tools. Mattoon has done an incredible job of analyzing and describing these many subtle differences and changes that occurred with Post’s new patent designs and production changes.
Image of evaporator patent from J.F. Ferguson and C.C. Post awarded in 1884 (US308407).
In 1884, in conjunction with Burlington-based dairy equipment manufacturer and tin worker James F. Ferguson, C.C. Post was awarded a patent for a maple sap evaporator (US308407); however, despite both men being experienced with making and selling metal tools and equipment to the maple industry, there is no indication that this evaporator design was ever put into production.
Following the marriage of his daughter Lora L. Post to Charles C. Stelle of Brooklyn, New York in 1892, C.C. Post sold his sap spout and maple equipment business to his new son-in-law Stelle and retired from business. With the sale to Stelle, the business address for the manufacturing of Eureka spouts moved from 83 North Union Street in Burlington to 81 Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.
1894 advertisement for Chas. C. Stelle’s sales of Eureka Sap Spouts with a Brooklyn business address.
C.C. Post died in October 1899 in Burlington, Vermont at age 68, either from the complications of a spinal injury from a bicycle accident, as reported in his obituary, or from the effects of a stroke as reported on his death record. With his death, the value of C.C. Post’s property and estate totaled $167,000 which was divided evenly among his five surviving daughters.
Although not a lot is known about Charles C. Stelle, who was better known in Brooklyn as a real estate agent, he carried on the production, sales and promotion of the Eureka sap spout into the early 1900s. In 1912 Stelle came up with his own modification to Post’s Eureka spout and obtained a patent on his design modification (US104834). Advertisements for the sale the Stelle-Eureka sap spout continued to appear through 1916, after which it appears that sales and production by Stelle ceased. Charles C. Stelle passed away at age 61 in his Huntington, New York home in 1924.
With any specialized activity a certain lingo, slang, or jargon develops over time and space. Terminology may include unique terms and phrases that form a vocabulary clearly understood by those that participate in the activity but which may be confusing or misunderstood by outsiders. The term maple sugaring is a good example of a term that is clearly understood by vast majority of people who make maple syrup to inclusively represent the entirety of the business of converting maple sap to some kind of maple syrup, sugar, candy, or confectionary product; yet, the term maple sugaring is confusing to outsiders and those not in the know.
Maple sugaring is an activity with a vocabulary all its own with terms and meanings that are broadly and universally understood by all maple producers across international borders. There are also regionally unique terms that are only used in different parts of the United States or Canada. In some cases, a term used in one region or state may be entirely foreign to another area. Other terms are now becoming antiquated with changing technology and the development of a more universal and less vernacular English language. Fortunately, a few individuals have taken time to document the terminology of maple sugaring which I have shared here.
First up is an article titled Maple Sugar Language in Vermont by Dr. Margaret M. Bryant, a professor of English at Brooklyn College, who spent time documenting maple sugaring vocabulary one summer in 1947 in Vermont. Dr. Bryant’s obituary described her as “an expert on grammar, linguistics, proverbs and folklore” suggesting she had a well-tuned ear and was sensitive to the importance of recording the cultural heritage of New England maple producers. She was a founding member and president of the American Name Society, a group dedicated to the study of, origin, history, and use of proper names. Dr. Bryant’s study, published by the American Dialect Society, is notable for the time period in which it was gathered and published, namely in the era before the replacement of stock animals by trucks and tractors and before the replacement of metal sap pails by flexible plastic tubing. To read the article, click on the image of the article above or select this link.
I encourage readers to scan through the Bryant article and see how many terms she documented are familiar to them and still used today and reflect on what new or different terms are currently in use. Language evolves and changes; old terms die off and new terms are born. What would we include in an updated version of this vocabulary?
A slightly more humorous take on regional differences in the language of maple producers was A sugaring vocabulary primer, written by John Page, a former University of Vermont Extension Agent March 8, 1978. Published in the Bennington Banner newspaper, Page used the differences in maple jargon in Michigan versus the “correct” terminology of Vermont to shed light on the sometimes quirky or distinctive words adopted by maple producers over time.
On the French language front, there is an even larger collection of maple sugaring terms and phrases documented between 1984 and 1986 by the Quebec Office of the French Language. Organized like an alphabetical dictionary, the document is entirely in French, but with the aid of Google Translate, English speakers can stumble through and discover the many words and phrases unique to French-speaking maple producers and maybe even learn a few terms that will raise an eyebrow in surprise from our maple producing friends across the border. Compiled by Jude Des Chênes and published in 1988, the Vocabulaire de l’acériculturecomprises 645 numbered terms and phrases. The “Vocabulaire” does includes an index in English to the numbered entries, but all the entries are in French, so back to Google Translate for a more careful reading. Surprisingly, this “vocabulaire” is virtually unavailable in libraries in the United States, so hopefully this complete PDF of the dictionary is useful to interested readers.
Here are a few additional links to websites with more contemporary lists of maple syrup lingo:
The maple syrup industry lost one of its longstanding historians in May with the 
Bill Clark’s history of the beginnings of the Vermont Maplerama, which appeared in the 2014 Maplerama program.
The 
