In January 2020 I had the honor of being invited to the Vermont Maple Conference to make a couple of presentations on historical research I had conducted in the last few years. One presentation was a condensed version of the story of George C. Cary and the Cary Maple Sugar Company, which is the topic of my book Maple King: The Making of a Maple Syrup Empire. The second presentation was on new research I have completed for an article currently in review for publication in the journal Vermont History. This research traces the early origins and development of the use of plastic tubing for gathering maple sap in the maple syrup industry.
University of Vermont Extension Maple Specialist Mark Isselhardt arranged to have the audio from both presentations recorded in association with the presentation slides and posted these on the UVM Extension Maple Website. You can click on the following presentation titles or the title slides here to link to the full audio/slide show for each one. Enjoy!
Readers of this website may recall a similar post in the past outlining the relationship of the Vermont Maid Syrup company to other Vermont maple syrup and blended syrup companies. However, after seeing an August 2019 local-interest news clip from a Burlington, Vermont television station incorrectly describe the beginnings of the Vermont Maid company I thought I would write a more detailed, and accurate accounting of the company’s early years. Unfortunately, the presenters in the news piece didn’t do their research and repeated a popular, but inaccurate, narrative that Vermont Maid was started by the Welch Brothers Maple Products Company in Burlington in 1906 and was the first blended syrup on the market. Moreover, this news bit featured a representative from the Vermont Historical Society, in this case the Executive Director, affording the story a bit of unwarranted authority.
Earliest version of Vermont Maid Syrup tin and label from Essex Junction period, ca. 1920-1923. From the Tom McCrumm Collection.
Then on April 7, 1919 Fletcher sold his controlling interest in Vermont Maple Syrup Company, including the Essex Junction facilities, to George C. Cary, at that time one of the company’s minor shareholders.[2]
Group of Four Vermont Maid Syrup Ads that Appeared in the Muskogee Daily Phoenix Newspaper in February and March 1922.
Soon after in late April 1919 the Vermont Maid name was registered as a trademark by the Vermont Maple Syrup Company of Essex Junction and advertisements selling Vermont Maid blended cane and maple syrup began to appear at least as early as the fall of 1921.[3]
The first advertisement I have been able to find featuring the iconic logo of a young maiden at the center of an art nouveau styled shield and sporting a white bonnet in front of an outdoor scene of buildings, field, trees, and sky date to February 1922.[4]
Sugar Bird Syrup Tin, ca. 1916-1919. From the Tom McCrumm Collection.
Following the conclusion of a court case settling a disagreement between F.N. Johnson and George C. Cary over another syrup brand (Sugar Bird Syrup) that Cary incorrectly believed to be included in the sale of the Vermont Maple Syrup Company, Cary and his co-investors reorganized the Vermont Maple Syrup Company in June of 1922 and in February 1923 moved the company from Essex Junction to St. Johnsbury.[5]
Vermont Maid Syrup bottle and label from the St. Johnsbury period.
In 1926 F. N. Johnson returns to the story with a newly formed American Maple Corporation with the purchase of the Welch Brothers Maple Products Company of Burlington, Vermont, including their Pine and Marble Street bottling plant. That same year the American Maple Corporation also acquired Cary’s Vermont Maple Syrup Company and the Vermont Maid brand. By late 1926 or early 1927 the Vermont Maid brand had undoubtedly moved from St. Johnsbury to the old Welch Brothers plant on Pine and Marble Streets in Burlington. Following their various mergers and acquisitions the American Maple Products officially settled on the name of Vermont Maple Syrup Company in the spring of 1927.[6]
Large size single loop handle bottle with early, post-bonnet logo from Burlington bottling plant , ca. 1928-1932.
The Vermont Maple Syrup Company (formerly American Maple Corporation) did not hang onto the Vermont Maid brand for long and in October 1928 the Vermont Maple Syrup Company, including the Vermont Maid brand and the Burlington plant, was sold to Penick & Ford, Inc., a large national syrup company with products and interests in molasses, cane syrup, and corn syrup. The Vermont Maid brand continued to be bottled under Penick & Ford ownership in Burlington until it was sold to R. J. Reynolds in 1965. The plant continued to be used by RJ Reynolds Foods for bottling Vermont Maid syrup for another ten years, before the plant was closed and the bottle facilities moved to New Jersey in 1975.[7]
As stated at the beginning of this post, Vermont Maid Syrup or the the Vermont Maid brand was never a brand or part of the Welch Brothers Maple Products Company in Burlington. It is true that Vermont Maid was bottled in the same plant that was built for and once used by the Welch Brothers company, but Vermont Maid was neither started by Welch Brothers nor ever owned and operated by Welch Brothers. For some it may seem like splitting hairs, but good history is based on good research and it is important to get the story right. The confusion about that comes from the various companies and facilities that were consolidated and purchased by the American Maple Corporation/Vermont Maple Syrup Company. As for the idea that starting in 1906 the Welch Brothers first came up with the idea to bottle blended syrup combining maple and cane syrup couldn’t be further from the truth. There were literally dozens of syrup blenders at work at the same time if not long before the Welch Brothers formed in 1890.[8]
For collectors of maple syrup and Vermont Maid Syrup items, it is possible to find earliest tins and bottles with labels showing the Vermont Maid maiden wearing the white bonnet. These date from the short-lived Essex Junction period (ca. 1920 to 1923) and the St. Johnsbury period (1923 to 1926/27). The earliest labels also feature the words “VERMONT MAID” in an arched script above the word “SYRUP” at the top of the label. By the early Burlington period (1926/27 to 1929) the maiden has lost her white bonnet and the word “SYRUP” is no long present at the top of the label under “Vermont Maid”. All three of these earliest labels include a white panel or box with red print at the bottom of the label stating the town in which it was packed.
Left to right, earliest Vermont Maid Syrup labels. Left – Essex Junction period, middle – St. Johnsbury period, right – Burlington period.
Early bottle shapes include a clear glass round bodied, long neck form (see image near top if post) without a loop handle. Later a round bodied bottle with a single loop handle and reinforced lip at the junction of the neck and shoulder. It is not clear if the single loop handle bottle was used at the Essex Junction or St. Johnsbury bottling plant, but the single loop bottle was definitely in use in the early years of the Burlington bottling plant, ca. 1928-1932.
Example of early single loop handle bottle, ca. 1929-1932.
By 1930 the white box stating the location of manufacturing has disappeared. Advertisements from these early periods indicate that Vermont Maid syrup was packed in both tins and bottles with three sizes of tins and two sizes of bottle, as well as a sample size bottle.
Example of large size metal tin (ca. 1929-1932) and sample size glass bottle (ca. 1928-1929).
By 1932 the background behind the maiden has changed from an outdoor scene to a solid color and a lighter colored panel below the image of the maiden is replaced by a solid green background label.
Vermont Maid Syrup label with solid background in shield surrounding maiden and solid green primary label, ca 1932-1935.
The early bottles in both large and small sizes have a single loop handle. The slightly flattened, double loop handle bottle was patented and introduced in 1933, replacing the round single loop handle bottles.
1933 patent sheet for double loop handle bottle and example of early double loop handle bottle with 1935 copyright on logo.
After 1933 the Vermont Maid label witnessed subtle changes, most notably and useful for collectors, the addition and regular updating of the copyright date at the bottom of the label, with 1935, 1939, and 1942. Depending on the state labeling requirements for the state where the syrup was to be, labels varied based on their different ingredients and the amounts that were used. Some simply said “Made from Cane and Maple Sugar.” While others listed the percentages (85% cane and 15% maple) or in the case of a 1942 copyright label 50% Cane, 25% (Dextrose, Maltose, and Dextrines) and 25% Maple Sugar.
Examples of 1930s and 1940s Vermont Maid Syrup labels from double loop handle bottles with copyright years marked on label, left to right 1935, 1939, 1942, 1949.Vermont Maid Syrup example of standardized bottle for use by blended syrup companies during later years of World War II.
During the years of World War II, the War Production Board – Containers Division required all blended syrup companies to use a standardized bottle shape and size. Production of glass containers was limited by the government to a small range of specific bottle shapes and sizes to allow glass manufacturers to focus their efforts on more important wartime production and not creating specialty glass containers. As a result, like all other blended syrup, from around 1943 to 1947 Vermont Maid was sold in what was sometimes called the “stubby round” bottle, more commonly recognized today as a molasses or vinegar bottle. Following the end of the war, Vermont Maid returned to being bottled in the double loop handle bottle. Use of this bottle shape continued well into the late 1960s and possibly the early 1970s.
One might wonder from where did the idea for the maiden label and logo come? Having lost the right to use the Sugar Bird Syrup brand in 1921, George Cary and the Vermont Maple Syrup Company needed a new logo for their blended syrup and somehow settled on the Vermont Maid name. It is striking how similar the initial bonneted maiden on the Vermont Maid Syrup logo was to the bonneted maiden of the Sun-Maid Raisins logo, also introduced around this time.
Side-by-side comparison of early Vermont Maid maiden with white bonnet and Sun Maid maiden with red bonnet.
Sun-Maid Raisins began to display a maiden on their logo in 1915, predating the Vermont Maid Syrup logo, and the similarities between the two labels are. Interestingly, the image of the girl in the Sun-Maid Raisins logo is based on a real person named Lorraine Collett, although her likeness evolved over time. In contrast, it is not known if the Vermont Maid Syrup maiden was similarly based on a real person or was more of an imaginary caricature of a persona, more like the fictitious Betty Crocker.
There have been other uses of the name Vermont Maid as a brand, such as for cottage cheese, and there are other table syrups featuring maidens and the word “Maid” in their name like Dixie Maid, Kitchen Maid, and Yankee Maid. These all date to a period after this Vermont Maid Syrup began.
Example of tin for Towle’s Vermont Maid Pure Sap Maple Syrup, ca. 1910-1915. From the collection of Scott Benjamine.
But perhaps the most likely candidate for the source of the name and image was from an earlier Vermont Maid Pure Sap Maple Syrup that was bottled and canned by the Towle’s Maple Products Company in St. Johnsbury and St. Paul between 1910 and 1914. The Towle’s Company was more famous for their Log Cabin brand of syrup that came in cabin shaped metal tins. Towle’s bottled their syrups in their St. Paul plant until a fire in the fall of 1909 nearly gutted the facility. Needing a place to quickly set up a new plant while they rebuilt. George Cary of the Cary Maple Sugar Company sold the Towle Company his St. Johnsbury plant. Cary at that time was buying millions of pounds of maple sugar for resale to the tobacco industry and had not yet entered the syrup bottling and blending side of the maple industry. The Towle Company operated in St. Johnsbury for five years (1910 to 1914), bottling both their iconic Log Cabin Syrup label, as well as a host of other labels, including Towle’s Vermont Maid Pure Sap Maple Syrup, which unlike Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup was supposed to a 100% pure maple syrup. Considering this was in the period after the enactment of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, when testing and prosecution of adulteration was common, it is likely true that the Towle’s Vermont Maid syrup was 100% pure maple syrup and not a blend.
There is no strong indication that the Towle’s Vermont Maid Syrup label was used beyond the Towle Company’s presence in St. Johnsbury, although there are some grocers’ advertisements that continued to list Towle’s Vermont Maid Syrup for sale as late as 1918, possibly selling older stock that was bottled and canned a few years earlier. George Cary and his co-investors were certainly familiar with the Towle’s Vermont Maid brand and that it was no long in use when they trademarked the name in 1919.
For the student of advertising history and collector of Vermont Maid Syrup bottles and tins, the label and bottle shapes evolved over the years, sometimes reflecting the different ownerships and bottling facilities and sometimes reflecting the changing tastes in packaging design and function. What has not changed is the presence of a female maiden centered on a green panel, emphasizing the well-recognized color of the state of Vermont.
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[1] “New Maple Syrup Industry,” Rutland News October 17, 1916; “New Vermont Corporations: Canton Bros. of Barre and Vermont Maple Syrup Co. of Essex Junction,” The Barre Daily Times September 28, 1916;
[2] “ ‘Sugar Bird Brand’ Causes Suit in Court: George Cary Interested in Maple Sugar Suit in U.S. Court,” The Caledonian Record March 18, 1921.
[3]The Pittsburg Press September 30, 1921; Springfield Reporter December 29, 1921;
[4]Muskogee Daily Phoenix February 28, 1922; Muskogee Daily Phoenix April 11, 1922; Muskogee Daily Phoenix April 22, 1922; Muskogee Daily Phoenix April 15, 1922.
[5] “VT. Maple Syrup CO. had been Incorporated in St. Johnsbury,” The Barre Daily Times June 19,1922; The Landmark (White River Junction) February 22, 1923; Groton Times February 23, 1923.
[6] “Welch Retires from Maple Co.,” Burlington Free Press July 23, 1926; “Maple Corp. Has $600,000 Capital,” Burlington Free Press September 27, 1926; “American Maple Corporation to Put Out 2942 Preferred Shares,” Burlington Free Press November 11, 1926; Burlington Free Press November 23, 1926; Burlington Free Press February 28, 1927.
[7] “Maple Syrup Co. Sold to New Yorkers,” Burlington Free Press October 12, 1928; Penick & Ford Acquires Company,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle October 18, 1928; “R J Reynolds Tobacco Buying Penick & Ford LTD,” Burlington Free Press March 2, 1965; “RJ Reynolds Foods To Close Vermont Maid Syrup Plant, Burlington,” Burlington Free Press August 23, 1975.
[8] “Wanted Maple Syrup!,” Orleans County Monitor July 28, 1890; “A New Maple Sugar Company,” Burlington Free Press January 22, 1891.
In the mid-twentieth century there was increasing concern about the levels of lead present in maple syrup. Numerous sources of lead were present in maple syrup making equipment at that time which had the potential to introduce unacceptable levels of lead into maple sap and ultimately be concentrated in maple syrup. Lead-based paint was used on pails and equipment. Brass components and sheet metals like terne-plate and galvanized steel contained lead in their alloys or as exterior coatings, and lead solder was used in fabricating metal evaporators, gathering tanks, and collection pails.
With the enactment of the Food and Drug Act of 1906 the Federal Government took a more active role in addressing food safety concerns, although the primary focus at that time was on protecting consumers from being sold fake, impure, dangerous products through false labeling and adulteration. Substances like lead were known to be poisonous, but how much and in what forms was a topic of great debate. State departments of agriculture in the maple syrup producing regions were aware of the problem and conducted limited testing of maple syrup for lead levels and begun research on alternative lead-free paints appropriate for the maple syrup industry.
The Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began expressing its concerns with lead levels in maple syrup in the early 1930s. With the enactment of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act (FDCA) of 1938, new language empowered the FDA to develop standards and safe levels of otherwise dangerous substances like lead in maple syrup and engage in more direct enforcement actions.
Cary Maple Syrup Company plant in St. Johnsbury, Vermont in 1938. Photo by Hansel Mieth.
The nexus for the application and enforcement of the FDCA of 1938 was through the constitutional provision allowing congress to regulate interstate commerce. The FDA needed to make a point with its initial enforcement and get the attention of the maple industry, but at the same time to not punish a small maple syrup producer who couldn’t afford the court challenge. Wisely the FDA selected the biggest in the business for its test case. In June of 1938, United States Marshalls seized over 900 barrels of maple syrup being shipped by United Maple Products, LTD. of Croghan, New York, to St. Johnsbury, Vermont for the Cary Maple Sugar Company. The Cary Company was the largest buyer of maple syrup in the world, conducting its bottling operations at their four-story plant in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
FDA chemists tested the maple syrup in the confiscated barrels and determined that some of the syrup contained an “added poisonous or deleterious ingredient, lead, which may render the article injurious to health” and brought civil charges under the curious title of United States vs. 52 Drums Maple Syrup in which the civil action was brought against the property itself and not specifically the Cary Maple Sugar Company who was the owner of the maple syrup.
Vermont Federal District Court Judge and one-time candidate for Vermont Governor, Harland B. Howe.
The following year, on July 24, 1939 in Montpelier in the United States District Court of Vermont presentation of the case began in front of a jury and Federal Judge Harland B. Howe. As it turns out, Judge Howe was to retire on medical disability the following year and this case was one of the very last cases he oversaw from the bench in Montpelier. Moreover, as a life-long Vermonter and native of St. Johnsbury, Judge Howe was more than familiar with the world of maple syrup production and the Cary Maple Syrup Company. Howe was also undoubtedly familiar with St. Johnsbury attorney Arthur L. Graves, who represented the Cary Company on numerous occasions.
The trial lasted seven days spread across two weeks and as recounted in detailed daily blow-by-blow reports in the Burlington Free Press, “the courtroom was packed with spectators including representatives of the State Department of Agriculture which is interested in the proceeding as a test case having serious bearing on the future of maple syrup in interstate commerce.”
As suggested, this case garnered a great deal of attention in Vermont and among the maple syrup industry. Interestingly, the initial editorial response by the Burlington Free Press was to point out that the lead levels in the syrup were minuscule and there were no known cases of anyone ever getting poisoned by lead in maple syrup, and moreover, that the in spite of the case being heard in a Vermont court, the syrup in question came from New York.
Barrels of maple syrup being unloaded at the Cary Maple Sugar Company plant in St. Johnsbury, Vermont in 1938. Photo by Hansel Mieth.
FDA chemists testified that lead levels in the tested syrup ranged from .001 to .136 grains of lead per pound. However, Cary Company chemist testified that the average lead levels in the tested syrup amounted to .0101 grains per pound. Against the objection of prosecuting Federal District Attorney Joseph A. McNamara, Cary’s attorney Graves offered as further evidence a federal government bulletin that stated that “maple syrup containing not more than .025 grains of lead is proper, not poisonous and not injurious”. Attorney McNamara counted that “there was no authority for the statements contained in the bulletin since the department had never established a regulation on lead tolerance”.
Cary attorney Graves further argued that the Cary Company considered the syrup coming into its plant as a raw product and not consumer ready food product. Once in the plant the syrup would be processed and “de-leaded” prior to being bottled or repackaged, thus it was premature to test the syrup in the barrels coming into the plant for lead levels.
Burlington Free Press headline from August 2nd, 1939.
On August 1st, 1939, the jury of Vermonters ruled against the Federal Government and in favor of the 52 barrels of syrup and the Cary Company. In reviewing their decision, Judge Howe “expressed open and enthusiastic approval of the verdict” and was quoted as saying to the jury “I think your verdict speaks the truth” and “I am very proud of you, it shows good sense”. He further added that “he regretted there were no more cases for a jury of such high caliber to consider”.
Cary Maple Sugar Company statement in the Rutland Daily Herald, August 8, 1939.
By the end of the trial the Burlington Free Press did come around to promoting the need for maple producers to “take reasonable measures to completely eliminate such small amounts of lead as may be discovered in maple syrup produced in this state”. The Cary Company, feeling vindicated by the jury decision, took out ads on August 8th thanking the FDA for their efforts to protect the public’s health and echoing the words of the Editors of the Burlington Free Press.
However, the Cary Company possibly spoke to soon, and the following day Federal District Attorney McNamara announced that the U.S. Government would appeal the decision on technical grounds to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It was agreed that all the syrup with the exception of one barrel would be returned to the Cary Company, and the one barrel would be retained for evidence in moving the case to appeal.
In April of 1940, after hearing appeals testimony from attorneys McNamara and Graves, the three member U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City reversed the decision of the District Court jury. The appeal was granted on the grounds that Judge Howe should never have allowed testimony claiming that the syrup was an unfinished product that would later be processed and the lead removed prior to being made available and sold to consumers. The federal government argued, and the appeals judges agreed, that the claim that the syrup in the barrels was an unprocessed raw product and what happened or how it was later handled (supposedly de-leaded) in the plant in St. Johnsbury was immaterial and should not have been admitted.
The maple industry had hoped that one outcome of the case would be that the federal government would establish a lead tolerance level to serve as a guide for the industry in the future. The appeals judges made no definitive statement on the relative levels of lead in the syrup or what standards constituted lead contamination outside of acknowledging that “the government has established what is called a working tolerance of .025 grains of lead per pound which for present purposes may be treated as the maximum amount of lead maple syrup may contain without being barred from interstate shipment”.
In the end the maple industry, with the urging and assistance of state and provincial departments of agriculture, has worked to reduce and eliminate lead in maple syrup through the elimination of lead-based paints, and the modernization and replacement of equipment containing lead-based metals, solder, or coatings, like tin, terne-plate, bronze and galvanized steel. The widespread use of stainless steel, welding rather than solder, and a variety of plastics has nearly eliminated lead in maple syrup.
For much of the twentieth century maple syrup was packaged for sale and shipment in metal containers. The first half of the century was witness to maple producers pasting paper labels onto bare metal gallon, half-gallon, and quart-sized tins. But by the mid-point of the century a new, more attractive and colorful option came onto the market.
Color lithographed square tins with maple sugaring scenes were first introduced for individual maple producers in Vermont for the 1948 season’s crop. Sugarmaker S. Allen Soule of Fairfield, Vermont developed the cans in 1947 after seeing olive oil sold in gallon size square tins with colorful graphics on the exterior, known as double O tins in the can industry.
1947 advertisement for S. Allen Soule’s maple syrup showing his new color lithographed can, which made available for sale to maple producers in the 1948 season.
In a March 2019 interview with S. Allen Soule’s son, John Soule shared that his father contacted the Empire Can Company in Brooklyn, New York and asked if they could make a can similar to the double O can, but for maple syrup. Empire Can said they could, and S. Allen Soule and his wife Betty worked with a New England artist to design the exterior featuring a sugaring scene on the two larger faces of the can and a short history of maple syrup and a few maple recipes on the side panels. The front panel read “Pure Vermont Maple Syrup” and initially included a blank white rectangle where the individual maple syrup producer could stamp their name and address.
Image of the four sizes of cans offered for sale by S. Allen Soule. Note the blue oval for syrup makers to add their name and address.
Of course, you could order a stamp with your sugarbush name from S. Allen Soule to go with your order of empty cans. A few years later the blank white rectangle was replaced with a more attractive blank blue oval. The initial cans were made in one gallon, a half-gallon and one-quart sizes with the focus on pushing the smaller quart size can as a more attractive size for tourists and more distant markets in the urban areas.
It should be noted that S. Allen Soule and his can and syrup packing and selling operation (later named Fairfield Farm) was not the same company as the George H. Soule evaporator and maple sugaring equipment company. George H. Soule and S. Allen Soule were cousins and both from the Fairfield area, but they were distinctly different families and businesses, despite the similar names and even the later reuse of the Fairfield Farms name by S. Allen Soule in the 1960s following the closing of G.H. Soule’s Fairfield Farms in the 1950s.
1967 Maple Digest advertisements for the Empire Can Company showing the three styles of cans it was offering, including the style developed by S. Allen Soule in 1947.
Following the success of S. Allen Soule’s introduction of the lithographed square tin, the Empire Can Company got into the business of directly marketing and selling color lithographed tins to maple producers in the mid-1950s, albeit with a different and even more generic design and label, to appeal to maple producers in states outside of Vermont. According to S. Allen Soule’s son, Empire Can’s entry in the can market as a seller and not just as a can maker was to the surprise of S. Allen Soule who was working under the belief that he had an exclusive arrangement with Empire Can Company.
Empire Can Company’s color lithographed generic maple syrup can.
1957 ad for the Stern Can Company’s color lithographed maple syrup can.
Empire Can’s entry in to the maple syrup can market was soon followed by the appearance of additional stock color lithographed square cans from the Stern Can Company of Boston, Massachusetts in the later 1950s and the Eastern Can Company of Passaic, New Jersey in the early 1960s. Maple producers had the options of buying totally generic tins or buying tins with labels of Pure Maple Syrup with their respective state names. States with specific cans printed with their names generally included Vermont, New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Eastern Can Company square color lithographed cans introduced in 1967.
By the early 1970s production of stock square cans for the maple syrup industry had fallen off and it was becoming increasingly difficult to purchase square color lithographed cans in the United States. The Empire Can Company was the last large volume can producer and was not producing enough cans to meet industry needs. In addition, new production methods were resulting in more and more defective cans. Concerns about can availability worsened when the Empire Can Company announced it was getting out of the maple syrup can business in 1978.
In response, the Leader Evaporator Company formed Maple Country Can Company and in a controversial move, secured a public loan in combination with private financing to purchase and move the Empire Can Company equipment to a new facility under construction in St. Albans, Vermont. Maple Country Can Co. was a short-lived venture and closed its doors a few years later in 1980, selling its canning equipment to the New England Container Company in Swanton, Vermont.
Packaging maple syrup metal cans, including a reintroduction of the log cabin shaped can, continues to this day but the introduction of plastic containers in 1970 and the greater use of smaller and fancy glass containers in a wide range of shapes and sizes has pushed packaging in metal cans to the background.
1953 advertisement for the new Quebec round can for pure maple syrup.
In Quebec, a generic color lithographed can was introduced for maple syrup makers in the early 1950s. Moving away from the industry standard of a plain square metal can with glued on paper labels, the Quebec Ministry of Agriculture held a design competition in 1951 asking for submissions with a maple sugaring scene to illustrate their new 26 ounce round cans. According to one telling of this history, it is not exactly clear what was the initial winning design or if there was more than one design chosen, and unfortunately the name of the wining artist has yet to be discovered.
Examples of a range of different generic pure Quebec maple syrup round cans.
Over time, the design of the standard stock round can for maple syrup in Quebec has evolved and the design has changed. Unlike in the U.S., in Quebec square tins became less common. With the assistance of the Ministry of Agriculture and the support of the Quebec Maple Producers Federation, round tins became the norm and are now something of an iconic symbol of the Quebec maple industry.
Image of the current version of the stock pure Quebec maple syrup round can.1920’s image of a Highland Pure Maple Sap Syrup round can from the Cary Maple Sugar Company out of St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
Although Quebec has embraced the round can, they were not the first to use if for packaging maple syrup. Maple King, George C. Cary was canning pure maple syrup in round, soup can-sized tins with color lithographed exteriors as early as 1923. Before Cary’s use of a round lithographed can, the Towle’s Log Cabin syrup company was canning blended maple and cane syrup starting in the late 19-teens. The Towle’s Log Cabin company color lithographed cans initially were limited to the Log Cabin Brand in its colorful cabin shaped tins with interesting scenes printed on all sides. In the early 1920s, The Towle’s company also began marketing Wigwam brand blended maple and cane syrup in a unique wedge shaped color lithographed can.
There are many well known names in the early 20th century history of maple syrup, most often heading manufacturing and packing companies emblazoned with their names such as George C. Cary, George H. Soule, G. H. Grimm, Leader, and True and Blanchard to name a few. A less well-known, but influential man with a long history in the industry, was John D. Rickaby.
Rickaby spent 46 years, most of his whole adult life, working with maple syrup as a buyer, packer, plant manager, and company owner in Vermont and Massachusetts. Having worked with some of the largest maple syrup packing firms in the country, Rickaby became well-known throughout the maple industry as an experienced and knowledgeable businessman. So much so, that by the end of his career, the Burlington Free Press referred to him in 1946 as the Dean of the Vermont maple syrup and maple sugar industry.
Born in 1873 in Lyster, Quebec , Rickaby’s family emigrated to St. Johnsbury, Vermont in 1877. Growing up in St. Johnsbury, Caledonia County was home to Rickaby and throughout his career, he was drawn back to the area. Rickaby began his long career as a businessman at a young age when he went to work helping his father with insurance and real estate sales as a teenager. At age 16, Rickaby lost a leg in a sailing accident and left high school after his second year, possibly in connection to the leg injury. Not surprisingly, this injury kept Rickaby out of World War I. At some point as a young man, Rickaby learned how to take notes in shorthand and became a skilled stenographer. He even offered classes as a private shorthand instructor.
Photo of John Rickaby from 1939 Burlington Free Press story.
In the late 1890s and very early 1900s, Rickaby travelled back and forth between St. Johnsbury; Hartford, Connecticut; and Chelsea, Massachusetts working with a variety of different insurance companies. It was in 1902 that his connection to the maple industry began when he settled into a position as stenographer and bookkeeper to George C. Cary in St. Johnsbury. The Cary Company was quickly growing in size and importance as a buyer and packer of maple sugar and maple syrup. In 1904, the Cary Company formally incorporated to become the George C. Cary Maple Sugar Company with John Rickaby listed as clerk. From the very early years of the Cary Company incorporation, Rickaby was a minor stockholder, later becoming a member of the board of directors and eventually elected company vice-president in 1909.
Rickaby was a close confidant of George Cary and while working as the company bookkeeper also served as the real estate broker for many of Cary’s purchases and sales of farms and maple woods in the North Danville area. Rickaby and his wife even stayed on Cary’s Lookout Farm (which Rickaby helped Cary purchase) a few miles from St. Johnsbury one summer before buying two acres of the farm from Cary and building his own summer cottage.
Rickaby’s eight years with the Cary Company paid off, when in 1910 he was selected to be the manager of a new bottling and packing plant to be opened by Towle’s Maple Products Company in St. Johnsbury. The Towle’s Company out of St. Paul, Minnesota was the manufacturer of Log Cabin Syrup, one of the largest buyers and bottlers of pure and blended maple syrup in the world. Leading the expansion and entry of the midwestern company into Vermont and the heart of the maple syrup producing world was a significant recognition of Rickaby’s connections to the Vermont industry and his business acumen.
The arrival of Towle’s Maple Products Company in St. Johnsbury was facilitated by the Cary Company selling their plant on Bay Street and moving to a new location in the old St. Johnsbury Grocery building a block away. When operated by the Cary Company, the primary focus of operations was to receive mostly maple sugar and some maple syrup and reconstitute it into large blocks of maple sugar for sale and shipment to tobacco companies for curing and flavoring tobacco. As a blending and bottling facility for Log Cabin syrups, a few improvements were needed. Under Rickaby’s direction, Towle’s quickly upgraded the facilities, adding steam jacketed kettles, storage tanks, and many feet of piping for filling bottles and the signature log cabin shaped metal cans.
In spite of the apparent success of the St. Johnsbury operations, following the death of company founder, Patrick J.Towle in 1912, the new leadership of the Towle’s company announced in December 1914 they had decided to close the St. Johnsbury plant the following year. Recognizing he was soon to be out of work, Rickaby purchased a share of the New England Maple Syrup Company and took on a new role as the company’s plant manager in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The New England Maple Syrup Company was described by one newspaper in 1915 as the largest maple syrup concern in the country. It was certainly one of the biggest, selling blended and pure maple syrup under the labels of Uncle John’s Cane and Maple Syrup, Golden Tree Syrup, Rock Maple 100% Vermont Maple Sap Syrup, and Gold Leaf Brand Maple Flavored Corn Syrup. The company also sold individually wrapped maple candies called maple kisses.
Under Rickaby’s leadership, the New England Maple Syrup Company grew, spreading the Uncle John’s label and their syrups all across the United States. However, as befalls many blended syrups, the implication from their packaging and advertising that their products were all pure maple syrup occasionally caught up with them and they were found guilty of adulteration or false labeling on a number of occasions.
Processing and blending sugar and maple syrup on a large scale meant the company usually purchased its ingredients in very large quantities. However, in 1921 this strategy cost them when the price of granulated cane sugar dropped enormously and the New England Maple Syrup Company found themselves sitting on many tons of sugar they already paid for. In the end the price drop was more than they could absorb and the company was forced into bankruptcy by its creditors.
Following bankruptcy proceedings, an auction of their equipment and facilities, and a reorganization, John Rickaby and C.M. Tice purchased the company as the sole owners, relocating to nearby Chelsea, Massachusetts. Rickaby left the reformed company not long after and in 1923 went to work for the Washburn- Crosby Milling Company of Minneapolis as a superintendent for the construction of a cereal production plant in Chicago. Rickaby stayed with Washburn-Crosby a few more years working out of Hartford, Connecticut.
In 1929 George C. Cary persuaded Rickaby to return to St. Johnsbury and the maple business when the Cary Company purchased Maple Grove Candies. Rickaby was selected as the initial Maple Grove Candies company treasurer and manager and oversaw the construction of a new two-story brick building for Maple Grove Candies located in front of the large Cary Company plant on Portland Street in St. Johnsbury.
1931 grand opening of new Maple Grove Candies building on Portland Street in St. Johnsbury.
With the completion of the new Maple Grove Candies building, Rickaby opted to take on his own maple syrup venture and, in partnership with W.W. Parsons and his brother-in-law Arthur R. Menut, formed Vermont Maple Orchards, Inc. to manufacture and sell a blended maple and cane syrup. Initially located in a former maple syrup processing building in Essex Junction, Vermont, in the summer of 1930 the company moved to the former Vermont Milk Chocolate Company building on Park Street in Burlington in 1932. Although he was no longer employed by the Cary Company, Rickaby was still a stockholder for the Cary Company and retained a strong tie to the Cary family. In fact, following the bankruptcy and death of George Cary in 1931, John Rickaby asked George’s son, Clinton Cary, then vice-president of the Cary Company to come and work with him in his new company in Essex Junction. Clinton Cary took him up on that offer and worked for Rickaby for a few years before returning to the Cary Company in St. Johnsbury.
Photo from 1932 with John Rickaby on the right unloading barrels of syrup from Vermont for a maple festival in Massachusetts.
Rickaby stayed at the helm of the Vermont Maple Orchards, Inc. as president-treasurer until 1941 when he sold his interests due to deteriorating health. He then returned to St. Johnsbury and started a new maple sugar candy company called “Maple Bush” which was in operation for three years before Rickaby took a position in St. Albans with the George H. Soule Company’s Fairfield Farms Maple Company. The following year Fairfield Farms shut down its candy making operation and Rickaby returned to St. Johnsbury at which time he retired from active work with the maple syrup industry.
It is perhaps fitting that Rickaby was a product of St. Johnsbury, since it was the Maple Capital of the World at that time. It was common to see men like Rickaby, who had close associations with the Cary Company and Cary family, carry their knowledge and connections beyond the walls of the Cary Company, influencing the maple industry in the years to come.
Following five years of battling Parkinson’s disease, Rickaby died in St. Johnsbury in 1951 at the age of 78. John Rickaby and his wife Charlotte J. Menut Rickaby had no children.
There is an interesting and sometimes complex and convoluted history of a group of maple syrup packing companies in Vermont in the first part of the twentieth century. At that time in the history of the maple industry, many producers sold the bulk of their maple syrup and maple sugar to packing companies that handled the shipping, marketing and repackaging of the maple products into smaller containers for retail sales to consumers. A large part of the packing industry was also engaged in blending maple syrup with cane or corn syrup to create less expensive maple flavored table syrups like the well known Log Cabin syrup and Vermont Maid syrup.
1890 newspaper advertisement for the Welch Brothers Maple Company.
This tangled story starts in 1890 when brothers Llewellyn Welch and Charles Welch along with Harry Miller started the Welch Brothers Maple Company in South Burlington, Vermont. The three met in St. Joseph, Missouri when the two Ohio born brothers were in the general syrup and preserves business. In 1890, all three men came to Burlington, Vermont to specifically start a maple products company. The first plant that they built was on Battery and Cherry Street in Burlington where they made bottled maple syrup, but also made maple sugar candies, maple creams, maple cough drops, and other confections like chocolate bon-bons and caramels. The company was formally incorporated in 1891 with C.B. Welch as president and L.W. Welch as secretary. By the time of the meeting of the 1895 board of directors, C.B. Welch was no longer an officer or member of the board and L.W. Welch had moved into the position of president. The following year, The C.B. Welch Maple Co. was in court against Welch Brothers Maple Co. Under Llewelyn Welch’s leadership, the Welch Brothers Maple Company continued successfully doing business in Burlington. In 1917 Welch Brothers contracted to build a new three-story brick, fireproof plant at the corner of Pine and Marble Streets in Burlington.
Modern street view of Welch Brothers Maple Company building on Pine and Marble Streets, Burlington, Vermont.
C.B. Welch made his way from Burlington to St. Johnsbury and in 1904 incorporated a new maple company to purchase, blend, can and bottle maple syrup. However, it appears that this company never got off the ground and a few years later C.B. Welch turns up in Rutland, Vermont trying to interest the town leaders in supporting the establishment of a maple products canning and bottling facility. C.B. Welch was successful in his pitch and in 1908 efforts began to raise capital for the Maple Tree Sugar Company with C.B. Welch as manager and secretary. Formal articles of incorporation were filed in September of 1908 and in 1909 the company occupied a space at the corner of Edson and Willow Streets in Rutland.
The Maple Tree Sugar Company in Rutland got off the ground, but C.B. Welch did not stick around for long and possibly left under difficult terms, as suggested by his again being in court in Rutland in 1911 against Maple Tree Sugar Company. In 1910 C.B. Welch appeared in the communities of Canton, Gouvenuer, and Lowville in northern New York drumming up support for a new corporation and plant for canning and bottling maple syrup. C.B. Welch’s efforts met with success and in the fall of 1910 the Adirondacks Maple Syrup Company was incorporated with $50,000 of capital stock and plans were put into place for construction of a two-story, 40 by 100 foot factory near the railroad in Lowville, NY. As was typical of his pattern of work, C.B. Welch appears to have moved on from the Adirondack Maple Syrup Company the following year.
Portrait of Fletcher N. Johnson.
Another chapter in the story features Fletcher N. Johnson, who got his start as a grocery wholesaler in Bellefontaine, Ohio in 1900, incorporating in 1901 as the F.N. Johnson Company. He expanded that business to become a major maple sugar and syrup wholesale dealer, selling syrup under the Sugar Bird brand as early as 1913. In late 1916 he formed a new company as the F.N. Johnson Maple Syrup Company in Bellefontaine. In the intervening years, he tried his hand at politics unsuccessfully running for Congress in Ohio in 1910. As a maple wholesaler, F.N. Johnson often travelled to Vermont to purchase large amounts of syrup and some sugar. Having a familiarity with Vermont, in late September 1916 F.N. Johnson formed a new venture called the Vermont Maple Syrup Company in Essex Junction. F. N. Johnson was joined by his brother in law, Laurrell M. DeVore of Bellefontaine, Ohio, along with Adelbert B. Beeman of Fairfax, and Arthur A. Beeman of Essex Junction, and A.B. Rugg of Essex Junction.
1922 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map for Essex Junction showing the Vermont Maple Syrup Company building at lower left.
The Vermont Maple Syrup Company built a new two-story wood building in Essex Junction and began operations in 1917, buying bulk maple syrup for blending and bottling with most of their sales occurring in the western United States.
Portrait of the Maple King George C. Cary of the Cary Maple Syrup Company.
At some point in the later 19-teens, the maple sugar magnate, George C. Cary, became a minor stockholder in the Vermont Maple Syrup Company. In 1919 F.N. Johnson sold his 50% controlling share of the Vermont Maple Syrup Company to George Cary, then the very next day, sued his former company for trademark infringement over the use of the “Sugar Bird” brand, something Johnson had brought with him from his Ohio-based F.N. Johnson Company, and had been using for its blended syrup since at least 1913. Cary was caught off guard and assumed that he was free to continue to use the un-trademarked brand name just as the Vermont Maple Syrup Company had in the past. It would appear that Johnson had anticipated the potential for the suit and he and his lawyers were ready with their response the very next day.
Vermont Maple Syrup Company building in Essex Junction.
Despite the legal issues with the Sugar Bird brand, under Cary’s new ownership the Essex Junction plant was expanded with a new addition on the back of the building to house a new larger boiler. Also, in 1919, F.N. Johnson and L.M. DeVore set up a new F.N. Johnson Maple Company in Burlington for bottling maple syrup, leasing the old Welch Brothers plant on Battery and Cherry Streets.
Example of one of the brands of blended cane and maple syrup packaged and sold by the Vermont Maple Syrup Company. Date unknown.
In 1921, the court ruled in Johnson’s favor on his trademark lawsuit. Following that label fiasco, in 1922 George Cary, along with his son Clinton Cary, and Cary Maple Sugar Company employees and personal friends Earl Franklin and Gertrude Franklin along with Harry Wilson of Boston, reorganized the Vermont Maple Syrup Company as a new corporate enterprise and in 1923 left Essex Junction, moving the re-organized company to Cary’s plant in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. That same year the Vermont Maple Products Co-operative Exchange began to lease the now vacated Vermont Maple Syrup Company building in Essex Junction.
In January 1925, F.N. Johnson came back around in the picture when he purchased a controlling interest in the stock of the Adirondack Maple Syrup Company in Lowville, New York. Johnson then combined his still operating F.N. Johnson Maple Company in Ohio with the Adirondack Maple Syrup Company under a new corporation called the American Maple Corporation. In 1927, the American Maple Corporation is formally incorporated in Burlington, Vermont under the leadership of F.N. Johnson. Interestingly, Harry Miller, who was working for Welch Brothers Maple Company would later managed Penick & Ford’s Vermont Maid plant, was also on the new board of directors of the American Maple Corporation. The Adirondack Maple Company corporate name was formally dissolved in 1927 and in 1929 the maple processing machinery in the Lowville plant was sold to the Cary Company in St. Johnsbury.
Example, circa 1926 to 1927, of the earliest Vermont Maid Syrup logo featuring the maid with a bonnet and a field in the background. Also note the manufacturer as the Vermont Maple Syrup Company of St. Johnsbury Vermont.
The Vermont Maple Syrup Company under the ownership of Cary and company trademarked the Vermont Maid name in 1919 and began selling blended syrup under the popular Vermont Maid brand name around 1920 or 1921 and it was in 1922, that the famous Vermont Maid logo featuring the portrait of a young women with pigtails and a bonnet, began to be used in advertisements and on labels. Interestingly, Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup Company also sold a Vermont Maid brand pure maple sap syrup during their short period of production out of St. Johnsbury from 1910 to 1915, but there is not indication of a direct connection between the two labels, other than George Cary would have been well aware of the idea and availability of the brand name by by 1920.
Towle’s Vermont Maid Pure Sap Maple Syrup packaged in St. Johnsbury, Vermont between 1910 and 1915.Early Vermont Maid Boston Globe newspaper advertisement from February 1926 showing the iconic Vermont Maid logo and bottle from the Vermont Maple Syrup Company of St. Johnsbury, Vermont.
Between 1925 and 1926, a series of transactions and corporate shuffling occurred between St. Johnsbury and Burlington. First, F.N. Johnson charters the American Maple Corporation, first in Ohio in 1925 and then in 1926 in Vermont. In doing so, he merged the F.N. Johnson Maple Syrup Company with the Adirondack Maple Company, both of which he had controlling interests.
In July 1926, Llewellyn Welch sold the Welch Brothers Maple Products Company to the newly forming American Maple Company. With this sale, Llewellyn Welch retired from nearly forty years in the maple business. As noted earlier, Charles Welch left the Welch Brothers company some years earlier and would pass away in New York City in 1928. Llewelyn Welch himself died in 1935. Harry Miller stayed on with the new owners, the American maple Corporation (later Vermont Maple Syrup Company), as manager and on through the next owner, Penick & Ford. Miller would go on to have a 60-year long career in the Vermont maple industry, retiring in 1950 as the Vermont Division manager for Penick & Ford.
Then, in early November 1926, the newly formed American Maple Corporation of Burlington merged with George C. Cary ‘s Vermont Maple Syrup Company of St. Johnsbury. In January 1927, the new board of American Maple Corporation met, with F.N. Johnson voted president. Interestingly, there was no mention of George Cary or his usual collaborators on the new board, suggesting American Maple Corporation purchased, rather than merged with, the Vermont Maple Syrup Company. In February, the American Maple Corporation changes its name to the Vermont Maple Syrup Company, and by midway through 1927 begins listing its place of business as Burlington.
1928 Boston Globe newspaper advertisement for Vermont Maid Syrup with the manufacturer Vermont Maple Syrup Company now located in Burlington, Vermont.
In October 1928 in a cash transaction, the Vermont Maple Syrup Company sold their Burlington operation to Penick & Ford, a Louisiana Company that at the time were the largest packers of corn and cane syrups and molasses in the United States. This sale included the former Welch Brothers building on Pine and Marble in Burlington, and all associated brands and labels, including Vermont Maid.
Following this sale, there is no indication that F.N. Johnson had any further involvement with Penick & Ford or the maple products industry in Vermont. F.N. Johnson’s grocery business in Bellefontaine, Ohio was still in operation and he returned to Ohio to direct that until his death in 1945. Incidentally, F.N. Johnson’s daughter in law, Helen Clark Johnson, unexpectedly passed away in Burlington in March of 1928. Her husband Russell Morton Johnson was the manager of the F.N. Johnson Maple Syrup Company, which leads one to wonder if this loss in anyway affected the decision to sell his maple company and leave Vermont.
In 1965, Penick & Ford and the Vermont Maid brand was sold to R. J. Reynolds, and despite operating under a new parent company, little changed in the Burlington plant. However, in 1975, R.J. Reynolds closed the Vermont Maid Syrup bottling plant on Pine Street and Marble Avenue in Burlington. Consolidating of a number of their brands and products, the Vermont Maid were moved operations to New Brunswick, New Jersey. Subsequently, in 1985, R.J. Reynolds acquired the Nabisco brand and formed RJNabisco as a single company. Later on, in 1997, Nabisco sold the Vermont Maid brand to B & G Foods, owner of Maple Grove Farms of Vermont and other syrup brands like Spring Tree Maple Syrup and Cary’s Maple Syrup.
Originally published May 5, 2019 – Revised February 7, 2020
There is a short lived, but lively history of two evaporator companies from northern Franklin County, in Vermont. For about ten years in the 1800s, the makers of the Climax Evaporator out of Berkshire Center and the Champion Evaporator of West Berkshire waged a hard-fought battle for the hearts and customers of the area.
The Climax Evaporator was the invention of George Cutter of nearby Sutton, Quebec, who patented his unique design in Canada on June 10, 1881 and in the United States in August 1881 following a May 31, 1881 application filing. The Climax evaporator featured series of horizontal tubes instead of drop or raised flues to increase surface area of sap exposed to heat in the back or sap pan.
Design drawing of Climax Evaporator from Cutter’s 1881 patent application (US244983).
Cutter sold his Climax Evaporator on the Quebec side of the border through his own sales business of Cutter & Co. Across the border on the Vermont side, Homer S. Clark, out of the town of Berkshire or Berkshire Center obtained a sole proprietor for U.S. sales of Cutter’s Climax beginning in 1881. By December 1881, H.S. Clark had reported that he had sold 40 evaporators in Franklin and Lamoille Counties.
The West Berkshire Champion Evaporator was invented by Philo S. Ewins just a few miles down the road from the home of Clark’s Climax Evaporator. Not to be confused with the G.H. Grimm Company’s Champion Evaporator, Ewins’ evaporator was patented in the U.S. and Canada in 1882 and featured a tubular flue design similar in appearance to the Climax Evaporator, which led to a fair amount of friendly and not so friendly competition between the two neighboring companies.
Design drawing from Ewins 1882 Champion Evaporator patent application (US261325).
Getting his invention and manufacturing off the ground, P.S. Ewins partnered with local tin worker M.B. Marsh in 1882 to manufacture the Champion evaporator. Marsh had begun running a tin works in West Berkshire since 1878, but left the partnership to move to Massachusetts in 1883. In January 1885, Ewins relocated his Champion manufacturing shop from West Berkshire to the nearby town of Richford and brought Mr. Harlow C. Ayer on board to assist with evaporator sales.
In the following months strong words and criticism were shared in the local newspaper, the Richmond Journal and Gazette, between people connected to the two companies and a back and forth battle raged for the better part of a year. Criticism largely centered on claims and accusations of poor-quality workmanship, bad business practices, and inferior performance of each of the competitors.
Advertisement from 1883 for H.S. Clark’s sales of the Climax Evaporator out of Berkshire Center, Vermont.
Following the spirited back and forth, tit for tat and he said she said, spat in the newspaper that played out from January into late March of 1885, Ewins laid down $500 for a head-to-head challenge of his Champion Evaporator against Clark’s Climax Evaporator in a performance test to see which evaporator could make more syrup in 12 hours under identical conditions. Clark responded with a lesser wager that the editors of the paper made clear was not equal and insufficient to match the challenge. To further complicate matters, in April in 1885 Ewins filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Clark and the Climax evaporator. Such a challenge is itself interesting since the Climax Evaporator was patented over 6 months prior to the Champion design. However, it seems to have had the effect of taking the stuffing out of Clark in their back and forth argument.
Advertisement for the “Improved” Champion and Defiance Evaporators by the Champion Evaporator Company of Richford, Vermont.
In spite of the substantial amount of ink that was spent in trading insults in print, it is unclear if the proposed competition was ever carried out or, if so, what was the outcome. Similarly, the results of the patent infringement lawsuit are not known. Following the introduction of the lawsuit and the possibly failed head-to-head challenge, we see no more mention of Clark or the Climax Sap Evaporator in the Richford newspaper. We do know not that not long after, Clark and his wife moved from Berkshire to Somerville, Massachusetts. On the Canadian side of the border, the Climax Evaporator continued to be manufactured and sold by Cutter & Co. out of Sutton, Quebec as late as 1891 and possibly longer. George Cutter the inventor of the Climax Evaporator passed away in Sutton in 1932 at age 78.
By March 1886, the Champion Evaporator Company had started to manufacture another evaporator line called the Defiance Evaporator which featured the more popular drop flue design. The arrival on the scene and the growing success of G.H. Grimm’s Champion evaporator, out of Ohio at that time, may have prompted Ewins to abandon the use of the name Champion in his evaporator, not to mention the realities of the superior design in Grimm’s raised flue evaporator over the tubular design.
The last advertisement we see selling the Champion and Defiance Evaporators by The Champion Evaporator Company of Richmond, Vermont is in 1887 although the name of Champion Evaporator Company continued to be used into 1888 in selling stoves, ranges, and farm equipment. In early 1888 L.D. Rowley, a local businessman who owned a horse and livery operation joined H.C. Ayer in running the Champion Evaporator Company. The Champion Evaporator Company continued to advertise as a farm implement dealer into 1888, but despite their name, was no longer listing evaporators among the tools and equipment they were offering. By the 1890s H.C. Ayer and L.D. Rowley had started a beeswax oil company, and later Rowley was running a hotel in Richford, and Ayer was selling coal.
Portrait of William E. Burt, founder and president of the Leader Evaporator Company.
The Leader Evaporator Company is arguably the largest maple syrup equipment manufacturing and supply company in the world. Like many of the evaporator companies in the past, its beginning was small and humble. William E. Burt started the company as a tin shop under the name of W.E. Burt & Co. in 1888 in partnership with Alfred Simkins in Enosburg Falls, Vermont. Their original location was in the old Woodworth Feed Store on Railroad Street in Enosburg Falls, Vermont before moving their business to Main Street, and finally to a building on Bismark Street. They moved the company from Enosburg Falls to Burlington, Vermont in 1904.
Patent drawing for Hall and Wright’s evaporator design that would be purchased by W.E. Burt and become his Leader Evaporator.
The evaporator that W.E. Burt & Co. sold as the Improved Leader Evaporator was based on a design developed and patented by William Henry Wright and Clark Hall out of the East Farnham/Cowansville area of Quebec. Hall and Wright’s evaporator design was patented in Canada in 1888 (CA28644/CA32481) and the US in 1889 (US415653) and featured drop flues, alternating draw offs to reverse sap flows, a sap preheater, and a maze of baffles and compartments to facilitate the flow of sap to finished syrup.
In 1889, a short while after opening their doors, John A. Potter joined W.E. Burt & Co. in the hardware business, which became colloquially known as Burt & Potter. In January of 1890, a fire in downtown Enosburg Falls destroyed the W.E. Burt & Co. hardware store, as well as the home and barn of W.E. Burt. The fire appeared to have started when a stove exploded in the nearby millinery store of W.E. Burt’s wife, also located on Main Street. Numerous downtown buildings were destroyed and for a time it was thought the entire village may be lost if not for the aid of a heavy rain.
Advertisement from 1891 for W.E. Burt & Co. on Main Street in Enosburg Falls, Vermont and selling “Hall & Wright’s” Patent Improved Leader Evaporator.
W.E. Burt and J.A. Potter may have had a difficult time recovering from the fire, since in September 1891, W.E. Burt & Co. was in court for insolvency. Sometime in 1891, the name W.E. Burt & Co. was dropped in favor of doing business as the Leader Evaporator Co., possibly related to or a result of settling the insolvency.
As the new name implies, in the 1890s, Burt focused his energies and tin works on manufacturing evaporators. In an 1894 government report of metal implement manufacturers related to the effects of tariffs on their businesses, the Leader Evaporator Company noted that its value of production was $8000 for the year of 1893. They employed two skilled men at a rate of two dollars a day, two common laborers at one dollar a day, all at sixty hours a week, and also had the assistance and time of W.E. Burt’s son. They had a number of sales agents that worked on commission. Their evaporators were manufactured from tin plate, and their sugaring off pans from Russian iron, galvanized iron, and tin plate. Leader Company arches were made of iron and their sugaring tools of tin plate.
Sanborn fire insurance map from 1895 for Enosburg Falls showing in blue the location of W.E. Burt’s tin shop on Bismarck Street.
In 1894, Burt sold the tin ware and stove portion of his business to N.A. Gilbert in Enosburg Falls and focused his energies on manufacturing maple sugaring evaporators and selling maple sugaring tools and supplies. Later that year it was reported that the Leader Evaporator Co. had outgrown its old space and W.E. Burt was building a new building fronting on Bismarck Street in Enosburg Falls.
Current view looking northeast of the building that once served as W.E. Burt’s tin shop on Bismarck Street in Enosburg Falls, Vermont.Patent design drawing for W.E. Burt’s Monitor sap gathering tank.
Although the design for the main evaporator made by the Leader Evaporator Company came from the patent of two Canadian inventors, W.E. Burt and the company designed and manufactured other notable maple sugaring implements. In particular, in 1894, Burt patented his design for a sap gathering tank (US559358/CA54042) which the Leader Company manufactured and sold as the popular Monitor Gathering Tank.
It is not clear when Alfred Simkins and W.E. Burt parted ways as partners and Simkins left the company, it may have been only a year or two after they started the company together in 1888. However; by late 1896, Burt was on his own and Simkins was in court for bankruptcy. Also in 1896, W.E. Burt announced that the Leader Company was starting to sell evaporators in Canada with Julius M. Ruiter of Brome, Quebec handling sales across the border.
Sanborn FIre Insurance map from 1906 for Burlington, Vermont showing the location of the new Leader Evaporator Company near the northeast corner of College Street and Battery Street.
In the spring of 1904, the Leader Company decided it was going to relocate its factory to either Essex Junction, Vermont or Burlington, Vermont, putting the two communities in competition with one another to see which might offer the Leader Company an exemption from city taxes for ten years. A gathering of Burlington citizens was called for by the mayor and the citizens agreed to grant the exemption.
Close up of 1906 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map showing Leader Evaporator Company building outlined in gray, indicating that the building was clad in metal.
Property was purchase and on May 25, ground was broken on Battery Street, near the corner of College Street, for the construction of a 36 x 72-foot, three-story, wood-framed building, with a tin roof and brick and iron siding. Initially the company employed around twelve men but expected to increase its workforce in the coming years. Burt’s brother in law J. M. Ruiter was a key figure in the company by this time and was instrumental in ensuring a smooth process for the relocation of their facilities from Enosburg Falls to Burlington in 1904.
In April 1910, the Leader Evaporator Company was formally incorporated in the State of Vermont, with a capital stock of $100,000. Shareholders were nearly all family members, consisting of William E. Burt, his wife Tillie J. Burt, his brother in law J.M. Ruiter, his nephew A.A. Hunter, and prominent Burlington businessman and investor F.O. Sinclair.
Leader Company advertisement from 1907 promoting the prize winning New Double Leader Evaporator that has reached “near perfection” in design with guaranteed satisfaction.
Interestingly, five years later, Ruiter, along with shareholder, Leader employee, and fellow family member, A.A. Hunter, broke with Burt and partnered with George H. Soule in 1915 to form the Burlington Evaporator Company. The relationship with Ruiter, Hunter, and Soule was short-lived and the Burlington Evaporator Company partnership was dissolved a year later. Two years later Soule reorganized the Burlington Evaporator Company to form the George H. Soule Company.
It would appear that Hunter and Ruiter’s split from the Leader Company was probably less than amicable since the Leader Company took out ads in newspapers all over Vermont announcing to sugarmakers that Hunter and Ruiter no longer represented the Leader Company. However, in the 1920s local gossip in the newspapers indicated that the Burt, Ruiter, and Hunter families were vacationing together, so any internal family misgivings appeared to be relatively short-lived.
Leader Evaporator Company letterhead from the 1930s.
Leadership of the company during the period it was owned by W.E. Burt was very much a family organization. In the 1930s, letterhead for the company lists W.E. Burt as president, his son in law George E. Partridge as vice-president, his wife T.J. Burt (Matilda “Tillie” J. Burt) treasurer, and his daughter B.B. Partridge (Beth Burt Partridge) as assistant-treasurer.
Tillie Burt passed away in 1941 and W.E. Burt remarried to Lucille Roy in 1945. In September of 1955, W.E. Burt himself passed away in the hospital in Burlington, Chittenden County, Vermont at age 94. Following the death of W.E. Burt, Lucille Roy Burt continued to run the company with the assistance of longtime employee and manager Alton E. Lynde. Lynde died a few years later in 1961. Lester C. Brown followed behind Lynde as the manager of the company.
Leader Evaporator Company advertisement from their 1961 catalog promoting their sales and distribution of the Mapleflo sap gathering system manufactured by the 3M company.
Changes in the technology of the maple industry was relatively slow and almost stagnant between the 1920s to the 1960s. Notable new inventions were portable power tappers, plastic sap collection bags, metal lithographed cans, gas burners, and eventually flexible plastic tubing for sap collection. The Leader Company of course got on board with sales of most of these products. Most notably among these was the Leader Company securing an exclusive dealership in the United States with the 3M company for the sale of their new plastic tubing called Mapleflo for the 1958 season. In time, other vendors carried the 3M tubing, but the Leader Company was out of the gate at the same time in a side-by-side race with the Lamb Plastic Tubing Company and their Naturalfow tubing.
Image of a typical Leader Evaporator Company boiling arch from the first 100 or so years of production. Note the scripted letter “L” on each door of the arch front, a feature unique to the Leader Evaporators.
In May of 1963 the Burlington Free Press announced that the Leader Evaporator Company was being sold and Lucille Roy Burt was stepping down from her post as president and treasurer. The purchase was led by a local group of men including Leader Company manager Lester C. Brown, who assumed the role of president, as well as Robert C. Coombs of Jacksonville, Charles E. Branon of Fairfield, and Fortis H. Abbott of Essex Junction, three well-known men in the maple industry; and Leonard O. Bombard of Burlington. Other new stockholders included Harold W. Cook of DeRuyter, NY; and W.W. Manes of East Orwell, Ohio.
The Willard Building in St. Albans showing the Leader Evaporator Company sign following the acquisition of the building with the purchase of the George H. Soule Co.
The new Leader Evaporator Company stockholders wasted no time in breathing new life into the company and the following spring announced that they had purchased the George H. Soule Company and were moving the majority of their operations from their space on Battery Street in Burlington to the factory space of their newly acquired Soule Company in the Willard Building in St. Albans, Vermont.
In 1978 the Leader Company made the controversial decision to enter the can manufacturing business when it purchased the maple syrup can production arm from the Empire Can Company of Brooklyn, New York. Despite building a nearly 10,000 square foot production facility and moving equipment from New York to St. Albans, by June 1980, Leader’s can manufacturing venture was short-lived. Two years later the can making equipment was sold to Rollie Devost and the New England Can Company in Swanton, Vermont.
Leader Evaporator Company advertisement from the 1990s showing their promotion of their subsidiary companies G.H. Grimm and Lamb Naturallow tubing. In time, the Grimm and Lamb names would be dropped and it would just become the Leader Evaporator Company.
Over the next few decades the Leader Company continued to grow, largely through the purchase and absorption of other maple syrup equipment manufacturers. In 1972 the Leader Company purchased the Vermont Evaporator Company of Ogdensburg, New York and in October 1989 it was announced that Leader had purchased the G.H. Grimm Company of Rutland, VT. The purchase of Grimm brought Grimm’s previous purchases of Lightning Evaporator Company and its partnership with the Lamb Naturalflow Tubing Company into the Leader Company. Now the Leader Company was the undisputedly the largest maple sugaring equipment company in the world.
As a privately held company with a 120-year history, the Leader Company has had surprisingly few presidents. Beginning with William E. Burt, followed by his second wife Lucille Roy Burt, Lester C. Brown served as president from 1961 to the mid 1960s, and later Robert Bordeau served from the 1960s to 1980. For 25 years, from 1980 to 2015, Gary Gaudette led the company and in 2015 Bradley Gillilan took over the reins as president.
In 2005 the Leader Company relocated operations to an industrial park in Swanton, Vermont. In doing so, the Leader Company vacated the Willard Building in St. Albans, and the G.H. Grimm building they continued to use in Rutland, Vermont, consolidating the companies under one roof in a more expansive and modern 85,000 square-foot manufacturing and sales facility.
The George H. Soule company was one of the most important evaporator companies in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. The Soule company has its beginnings in Fairfield and then Burlington, Vermont before moving to its long-time home of St. Albans, Vermont.
George Henry Soule, the founder of the company, was born into a maple sugaring and farming family in the Fairfield area of Franklin County, Vermont in 1865. After graduating from Goddard Seminary in 1887 in Barre, Vermont, George returned to assist his widower father with their extensive farm holdings. The Soule farm, located on South Road about three miles south of Fairfield town center, was established by George’s grandfather, Joseph A. Soule in the 1840s or 1850s. The farm included a two and a half story Greek Revival style farm house and a collection of mid-19th century barns, tin shop, and wood shed. Away from the farm center in the adjoining sugarbush were a handful of sugarhouses.
Modern view of Soule family farm on South Rd. Fairfield County, Vermont.
George especially took to the maple sugaring operations and in no time grew their sugarbush to become one of the largest in the state. As early as 1893 he had 4,500 taps feeding two sugar houses. By 1905 he had grown to around 7,000-8,000 taps with room for many more. In fact, as one of the single largest producers in New England at the time, he was widely referred to as the “Maple Sugar King,” a title he would share with the famous sugar buyer George C. Cary of St. Johnsbury.
Soule’s prominence as a maple sugar maker in the 1890s and early 1900s was illustrated by the use of his name in advertisements by two of the most important evaporator and sugaring equipment companies. The Vermont Farm Machine Company in 1897 featured a testimonial for their evaporator by Soule, including a note that his syrup had won the first-place prize that January at the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Convention. In a 1906 advertisement, The G. H. Grimm Company noted that George H. Soule, who has the largest sugarbush in Vermont with 8,000 taps, uses the Grimm sap spout.
As a notable sugarmaker in Vermont, George Soule was active from the beginning years of the Vermont Maple Sugarmakers Association, but it was in 1910 when he was elected President of the Association that his leadership began to emerge. He was re-elected to the post for a second year in 1911.
George H. Soule’s 1913 evaporator patent design drawing (US1049935).
Soule did not only spend his time tapping trees and raising dairy cattle on his 1,100-acre farm. He also put his own ideas to work on designing and improving sugaring evaporators and other equipment. In fact, as early as 1897 he applied for an evaporator patent design (US635876) that was later assigned (sold) to the Vermont Farm Machine Company. In 1911, working from the tin shop on his farm, George improved upon his earlier design with the additions of a series of deep drop flues, a rear sap preheater, and external sap regulators. Patented in 1913 (US1049935), these design elements became the basic features of the evaporators that later formed the backbone of Soule’s evaporator company.
1916 patent design drawing for George H. Soule’s famous sap spout (US1207444).
In the next few years Soule patented a few more items, including a “sap-gathering apparatus” which was a sap collection pail and cover with a hook fixed to the cover that allowed the cover and pail to pivot or rotate on the tap while still attached to the tree, permitting the emptying of the pail by pouring from the side without having to detach it from the spout. It does not appear that this invention was put into production. However, Soule’s sap spout design (US1207444) was mass produced and the Soule spout became one of the most widely-used cast metal spouts in the history of the maple industry.
Examples of the hooked and hookless Soule Sap Spout.
By June 1915, George H. Soule was ready to enter the maple evaporator business and formed the Burlington Evaporator Company on Battery Street in Burlington, Vermont, occupying a three-story building with 7,000 square feet of space with a side alongside the railroad tracks.
1920 Sanborn Fire Insurance map showing Aldis Street location of Soule Company factory in St. Albans, Vermont.
In forming the company Soule partnered with J.M. Ruiter and A.A. Hunter, two men that for years had worked for the Leader Evaporator Company, also in Burlington. The story of Ruiter and Hunter will be covered in greater detail in the post on history of the Leader Evaporator Company in this series, but suffice it to say, the Leader Company was not happy with their shift in allegiance. In July 1915 Leader posted ads in several Vermont newspapers stating in no uncertain terms that Ruiter and Hunter no longer represented the Leader Company in any way. Of course, George Soule loved the free advertising and even said so in an ad of his own!
Leader Evaporator Company newspaper notice from 1915 announcing that Mister Hunter and Mister Ruiter were no longer representing the Leader Company.George H. Soule’s Burlington Evaporator Company advertisement from 1915 in response to the Leader Company notice.
From the very beginning Soule named his evaporator the Maple King, but he also had the Maple Queen evaporator in 1915. The origins of use of the brand name of King for his evaporator most likely comes from Soule himself being referred to as the “Maple Sugar King”; however, there is another version of the story. According to the descendants of Albert James King, the King Evaporator was named after Albert J. King. Albert was Soule’s friend and neighbor from early Buck Hollow and had worked for Soule at one time. Soule reportedly chose King as the brand name for the evaporator as a thank you for Albert J. King’s assistance with the regulator design of what became Soule’s patented evaporator. Use of the Maple Queen name for an evaporator by Soule lasted roughly from 1915 to 1916. Letterhead for the Burlington Evaporator Company lists them as the “Manufacturers of the King and Queen Evaporators.” By 1918, the Maple Queen name had disappeared and the Maple King Evaporator became just the King Evaporator.
Example of the King Evaporator with its famous dollar signs on the cast iron arch front.
Incidentally, there was another evaporator with the King name around this time that was entirely unrelated to the design and manufacture of George H. Soule. Harlow Henry Mower, a hardware store and tin shop owner from nearby Sheldon, Vermont manufactured and sold his own King Evaporator in the late 19-teens and early 1920s. Little is known of his design, how many he made or how he chose the name King. One wonders how the Soule Company felt about H.H. Mower’s use of the King name for his evaporator. In the end, the Mower version of the King Evaporator was fairly short-lived.
The Burlington Evaporator Company partnership that started in 1915 ended when Ruiter and Hunter relinquished their interests to George H. Soule a year later, giving George complete control of the Burlington Evaporator Company in July 1916. George H. Soule continued to operate into 1918 as the Burlington Evaporator Company out of the building near the corner of Battery and Maple Streets.
A few years later in September 1918, Soule formed a new partnership with Frederick T. Bradish, now operating under the name George H. Soule & Co. Bradish had been in the butter tub and creamery supplies business in Medford, Massachusetts for many years before going to work as the advertising manager for the Vermont Farm Machine Company of Bellows Falls, so he had a knowledge and familiarity with maple sugaring equipment and sales. Bradish was with the firm 10 years before he died in 1928 at the age of 63, again leaving Soule with sole control of his evaporator and maple sugaring supplies company.
Sanborn Fire Insurance map from 1946 of George H Soule Company and Fairfield Farms Maple Company building on Stowell Street in St. Albans, Vermont.
To house the new Geo. H. Soule & Co. firm, Soule and Bradish erected a large factory building on Aldis Street, adjacent to the Central Vermont Railroad in St. Albans, Vermont. Instead of building from the ground up, they moved an existing three-story building onto the site and added a two-story factory and office space with the entire building covering 9,000 square feet.
Modern image the renovated George H. Soule Company and Fairfield Farms Maple Products Company building, also known as the Willard Building in St. Albans, Vermont.
In the 1920s the Soule Company served as a buying agent for the George C. Cary Maple Sugar Company, bringing in barrels and cans of maple sugar and maple syrup to their Aldis Street factory and shipping them to Cary in St. Johnsbury. Soule got into the buying agent business as a result of accepting maple sugar and syrup in exchange for cash when selling his evaporators and equipment to producers. The Soule company in turn would sell it to the Cary company. The Soule Company than added the responsibility of operating as a buying agent for Cary. However, when Cary filed for bankruptcy and the Cary Company was taken into receivership in 1931, the Soule Company was left with many pounds of sugar and syrup on their hands. In response, George H. Soule decided to go into the maple products business and formed Fairfield Farms Maple Company in September 1931 with the doors opening for business in April 1932.
Example of the cover of a George H. Soule Company King Sugar Tools catalog from the 1930s.
To house his new concern, George H. Soule purchased the two-story, wood framed Willard Manufacturing Company building on Stowell Street in St. Albans, a short distance away from his Aldis Street factory. By 1935 Fairfield Farms was purchasing over 2 million pounds of maple syrup that they bottled, canned, and turned into maple sugar and other maple-based products.
In the spring of 1937, there was more activity in the Soule sugarbush in Fairfield than the usual men gathering sap. That April a Universal Newsreel film crew from Boston was in Vermont for four days to catch scenes of maple sugaring and boiling on film. At the time George Soule was operating 15,000 taps in his sugarbush spread across four farms including some acres that were equipped with the Gooseneck metal pipeline to move sap from the trees to collection tanks near the sugarhouse. George himself spent some time outdoor in the sugarbush with the film crew in mid-April which must make one wonder if soon after it led to his demise. Following a week of illness, George H. Soule died of pneumonia on May 8, 1937 of age 71.
Image of George H. Soule from the mid-1930s.
Having never married with no children of his own, George Soule’s nephews Everett I. Soule and Raymond L. Soule soon took over ownership and running the George H. Soule Company and Fairfield Farms Maple Products. Although the Soule family in general has a long and wide history as maple syrup producers, it is unclear to what degree Everett and Raymond Soule had been involved with sugaring in their earlier years. Regardless, both were experienced with running a business having both been a part of running their father Chilo Lee Soule’s tobacco company in Burlington for many years.
Exploded perspective of Soule’s King Evaporator from 1950s era.Soule’s King Brand sap gathering tank.
Everett would take the helm as president of the companies with Raymond going in a different direction, becoming the city assessor and building inspector for the city of Burlington. Everett’s son Richard C. Soule came on board in 1939, rising to the post of vice-president before shifting to the insurance business in 1952. Richard C. Soule would go on to be a Vermont state senator for Franklin County from 1968 to 1985.
Patent design drawing from 1962 of R.L. Soule and E.I. Soule’s portable poser tree tapper (US2563195).
Under the leadership of Everett Soule, the company introduced a few new inventions that were right in line with new post-war technologies and innovations common in industry and agriculture. Most notable was the King Power Tapper, a portable, backpack mounted gasoline powered drill and the plastic sap bag. The “King Portable Power Tree Tapper”, patented by Raymond L. Soule and Everett I. Soule in 1951 (US2563195) was not the first portable tree tapper to be invented but it was the first to be produced for widespread commercial sale. The speed and ease with which it allowed sugarmakers to tap many times more trees than with the traditional drill or brace and bit was a game changer in the sugarbush at the time.
Advertising brochure for the King Portable Power Tree Tapper.
The other important Soule Company invention in the 1940s and 1950s was a flexible plastic sap collection bag that would replace the use of the wood or metal pail or bucket. The King Sap Bag was developed by the Soule brothers in the 1940s when plastics were the new inexpensive and magical material that would change the world. After years of tweaking, it became available for purchase and use in the 1951 sugaring season. Designed to be washed and reusable for few seasons, it was made from a heavy-duty clear plastic called vinylite. The bags hung on a traditional hookless sap spout and would hold up to 15 quarts of sap. Everett Soule obtained a Canadian patent (CA598853) on the bags in 1960, but for some reason the bags were never patented in the United States. You can read more about the history of plastic sap bags at this earlier post on this website.
Advertising brochure for the Soule Company’s King Maple Sap Bag.
As someone with a fair amount of experience applying plastics to sap collection, Everett I. Soule was an early proponent and designer to hop on the bandwagon for flexible plastic tubing and himself obtained one of the earliest patents for a system of tubing, spouts, and fittings. Everett Soule’s patent (US2944369/CA652474 and CA673374) for a flexible plastic tubing system was applied for in 1958 and awarded in 1960, but it seems to never have been put into use. Through my other research efforts, I discovered that the 3M company, who manufactured the Mapleflo tubing system, was known for purchasing patent rights and issuing patent interference claims. So, it is possible that the Soule tubing system was a contested patent. My research on this topic continues.
Advertisement for the King Sap Bag from a French language agricultural magazine from Quebec, showing the wide distribution of the Soule Company products.
Sometime in the 1940s, possibly in 1942, the George H. Soule Company left its Aldis Street factory and moved into the Willard Manufacturing Building to be under the same roof as the Fairfield Farms Maple Company. In 1948, Everett I. Soule announced the closing of the candy making operations at Fairfield Farms due to a shrinking interest in maple sugar candy. By 1950, Fairfield Farms no longer appears in the St. Albans city directory and in 1952, the same year Richard Soule left to pursue a career in insurance, Fairfield Farms Maple Products announced it would no longer be buying maple syrup.
Raymond Soule continued as city assessor through 1951 before becoming vice-president of the clothing manufacturer, O.L. Hinds. Raymond Soule passed away in 1956 at the age of 69. Everett I. Soule himself was listed as both retired and company president in 1958, but clearly his involvement with the company had lessened.
Photo from the 1970s of the former Soule Co. building (aka Willard Building) following the purchase of the company by the Leader Evaporator Company. Notice the Leader name on the building.
In June 1964 Leader Evaporator Company purchased George H. Soule Company and moved a portion of its manufacturing team from Rutland to its St. Albans facilities. A few months later, following a short illness, Everett I. Soule died in Florida on August 18, 1964 at age 72.
Sometime after the George H. Soule Company ended their operation of Fairfield Farms Maple Products, a different Soule family rekindled the Fairfield Farms name. S. Allen Soule of Fairfield, a cousin of Everett I. Soule, was a syrup packer and sold one of the earliest lithographed syrup cans, and he began to use the Fairfield Farms name to do business in the mid-1950s. Despite having the same name of Soule (and being related) and both using the Fairfield Farms brand, the S. Allen Soule and George H. Soule companies were entirely separate entities.
Special thanks to Nancy J. King and David A. King for information on the history and connection of their great grandfather, Albert J. King, to George H. Soule and the source for the name of the King Evaporator.
1949 portrait of Henry Fairfax Ayres painted by Norman Rockwell, from the Northern Woodlands article “The Colonel: A Sort of Remembrance.” VMI Archives.
An excellent and fascinating story by Dave Mance III was recently published that tells the history of Vermont maple sugaring legend, Colonel Henry Fairfax Ayres. From Mance’s story, one gets the impression that Ayers was a larger-than-life figure, and the sort of person you only read about and almost never meet in real life. From his military pedigree and exploits, to his friendship with Norman Rockwell, Ayres, who died in 1979, was a man you noticed and remembered. Mance himself has his own connection to Ayres, as he now taps the same Shaftsbury, Vermont sugarbush worked by Ayres for over 4o years.
Patent drawing of Henry Fairfax Ayres check-valve sap spout (US2825182).
The Colonel was an inventive man as well, both in and out of the sugarbush. He installed a pipeline of one-inch steel with stand pipes for moving sap in his sugarbush years before today’s plastic tubing became the norm. He patented an early version of a check-valve style maple sugaring spile, and perhaps most well-known was his invention of a combination thermometer and hydrometer for sugarmakers, called a hydrotherm. Rather than my recounting any more of the interesting bits and pieces of his life, or his role and influence on the maple sugar industry, I’ll let you read and enjoy the article yourself.
Cover of the spring 2019 edition of Northern Woodlands magazine.
The article appeared in the spring 2019 edition of Northern Woodlands, the magazine of the Center for Northern Woodlands Education. Northern Woodlands is a great magazine published four times a year and covers a wide range of forest related topics, with Dave Mance, himself a sugarmaker, at the helm as editor. As a fan of maple syrup history, Dave Mance was kind enough to share a copy of the article which can be found at this link or by clicking on the the above image Ayres. I strongly encourage you to check out Northern Woodlands magazine.
Correction – An earlier version of this blog post rather embarrassingly misspelled Colonel Ayres’ last name as Ayers. A special thank you to Henry Ayres, Colonel Ayres grandson, for alerting me of my mistake.
