Vermont Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Maple Syrup History

Evaporator Company Histories: Leader Evaporator

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.

Evaporator Company Histories: George H. Soule

The George H. Soule company was one of the most important evaporator companies in the United States in the first half of the 20^th 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-19^th 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.

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.

A Maple Sugaring Legend: The Story of Henry Fairfax Ayres

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.

Evaporator Company Histories: G.H. Grimm Manufacturing Co.

The G.H. Grimm Company was one of the largest and most influential maple sugar evaporator companies of the late 19^th and all of the 20^th centuries. The company began with Gustav Henry Grimm who was born in Baden, Germany in 1850. He came to new world in 1864 with his parents, settling in Cleveland, Ohio. A few years later as a young man, around 1870 Grimm moved to Hudson, Ohio with his new wife. Grimm came from a family of tin workers, with the 1870 and 1880 census for the Cleveland area showing a number of other Grimms who immigrated from Germany to Ohio also listed as tin workers.

Image of Gustav Henry Grimm from 1987 Rutland Historical Society Quarterly article by Robert F. Moore.

The business of G.H. Grimm & Co. was established for manufacturing the Champion Evaporator in Hudson, Ohio in 1881 with the Champion marketed from the beginning as an evaporator for the making of maple sugar, sorghum, cider, and fruit jellies. In the first year the company produced less than a dozen evaporators. Gustav H. Grimm applied for his first patent in November of 1881 (US254476) for a raised flue evaporator with Horace M. Clark, with the patent formally registered in March of 1882.

Patent drawing from Grimm and Clark’s 1882 evaporator design (US254476).

Over the next few years Grimm continued to make design changes and improvements to his evaporator and as Grimm Company history tells it, the first “real Champion evaporator” was tested in 1883. As the company expanded, in 1883 G.H. Grimm took on W. C. Parsons of Akron, Ohio as a partner. Over the next few years Grimm continued to tweak his 1882 patent with patented (US296743) improvements to various features and accessories to the evaporator as well as a patent (US316893) for the process of folding the sheet metal to form the distinctive raised flues.

1885 Patent drawing from Grimm’s method of folding metal to form raised flues (US316893).

Through the 1880s the company continued to expand its sales and distribution reaching into New England, Pennsylvania, and New York. In October 1888 the company was formally incorporated in Ohio as the G. H. Grimm Manufacturing Co. with an authorized capital stock of $50,000. The first president was W.C. Parsons with G.H. Grimm listed as superintendent.

Advertisement from 1885 for the Champion Evaporator from G.H. Grimm and Co. out of Hudson, Ohio.

Interestingly, there was another, completely unrelated, Champion Evaporator Company that operated in Berkshire, Vermont and later Richford, Vermont about this same time in the 1880s. This company was relatively short lived with evaporators in production from 1882 to about 1887. The history of the Richford, Vermont Champion Evaporator Company will be covered in greater detail in a separate post in this series on evaporator company histories.

Recognizing the need to be more centrally located in the heart of the maple sugar producing territory, in June of 1890, G.H. Grimm secured a lease for land alongside the railroad in Rutland, Vermont and over that summer erected a 120 by 40-foot one-story building. Manufacturing of new evaporators began in the fall and by December 1890 advertising for the company prominently displayed their locations as Rutland, VT and Hudson, OH. By April 1891 the company reported that it had put out 500 evaporators in the state of Vermont.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from 1895 for Rutland, VT showing first location of G.H. Grimm building on northwest side of Pine Street.

With the construction of the Rutland factory, G.H Grimm also moved his family from Ohio to Vermont and built a large, elegant new house at 201 Grove Street in Rutland. This historic home is now listed on the Vermont State Register of Historic Places.

1891 advertisement for Grimm’s Champion Evaporator showing Rutland, VT and Hudson, OH as the locations of their plants.

In the fall of 1892 the Grimm Company further expanded into Canada. On October 28, 1892 Le Prix Courant, a business newspaper in Montreal, Quebec, under the heading of “new companies”, announced the arrival of the “G.H. Grimme Manufacturing Company (Limited)” incorporated under the laws of the state of Ohio with Gustave H. Grimm of Montreal as general manager. Gustave H. Grimm’s younger cousin John H. Grimm, relocated to Montreal from Rutland, Vermont to run the Quebec branch of the company.

1893 advertisement listing Hudson, OH and Montreal, Quebec with an excellent engraving of the Champion Evaporator.

With facilities in Hudson, Ohio; Rutland, Vermont; and Montreal, Quebec the company had solidified their presence in the heart of the maple syrup producing world. The company was producing over 1,000 evaporators a year. In a 1894 tariff inquiry report to congress under the category of metal manufacturing companies, Grimm reported that in 1893 they produced 900 evaporators in the United States and 200 in Canada with an average price for a unit being $100 to $125.

Grimm’s move to Rutland signified a shift in his company focus towards New England and away from Ohio. A few years later the G.H. Grimm Manufacturing Co. formally separated itself from its Hudson, Ohio facilities. In addition, advertisements and publications for G.H. Grimm Manufacturing Co. no longer list Hudson, Ohio as one of its locations after 1893.

1904 advert for the Champion Evaporator Company of Hudson, Ohio.

Charles Bouton purchased the Hudson portion of the company in 1895, after which the Ohio manufacturing company under his ownership was called the Champion Evaporator Company or sometimes the Champion Evaporator Works. Presumably the Hudson “Works” were manufacturing the Grimm-style Champion Evaporator under license or contract for the G.H. Grimm Co., although that is not exactly clear.

The new Champion Evaporator Company in Hudson took a little time to get on its feet when in late 1895 and again in spring 1896 there were reports of the factory in Hudson closing. In August of 1896 it was formally announced that the Champion Evaporator Works in Hudson had been purchased by Bouton & Son. Bouton (sometimes misspelled as Bonton) was a hotel and livery owner in Hudson and had earlier acquired financial interest in the G.H. Grimm Company in 1886. Prior to his ownership of the Hudson Works, Charles Bouton’s association with G.H. Grimm was more than investor. In early 1895 he invented and patented (US546648) a sap pail and cover with the patent assigned to the G.H. Grimm Co. As owner of the independent Champion Evaporator Company, in 1900 Bouton patented his own evaporator design (US647798) in partnership with Clayton S. Bediant.

Bouton continued operation of the Champion Evaporator Company in Hudson until his death in October 1910. It is presumed the company continued under the leadership of his son Clarence Bouton, until his death in 1920. Following a stint in the Navy, Albert H. Schow acquired the company in the early 1920s and managed it until it closed in the early 1940s. As late as 1941, Schow was advertising to hire metal workers for the Hudson evaporator works. In 1942, Schow and the company were listed for unpaid taxes and later accounts in Hudson, OH newspapers suggest the company was forced to close operations in 1943 when supplies of sheet metal became difficult to obtain due to the war effort. In 1979, the city of Hudson rehabilitated the old Champion Evaporator Company factory space and opened it as a series of retail and studio shops, appropriately named “The Evaporator Works.”

Sanborn Map from 1900 showing later location of G.H. Grimm building across Pine Street from the earlier building.

Back to the G.H. Grimm story – business continued to stream in for the company in Rutland and in the summer of 1898 they began construction on a new three-story, 50 by 150-foot building with a spacious basement on Pine Street. Machinery was moved from the old location in the fall and the company was ready for business at its new location by the start of 1899.

Early 1900s Illustration of G.H. Grimm factory on Pine Street. Notice the building dimensions of 50 x 150 included on the drawing.

In 1900, the Grimm Company went through another reorganization when the Grimm cousins decided to split the Rutland and Montreal branches of the company into two independent companies. The Rutland operation became known as G.H. Grimm Company, sometimes just G.H. Grimm, with the word “manufacturing” dropped from the name. While the Montreal firm under John H. Grimm became Grimm Manufacturing Co., LTD., dropping the initials G.H. at the beginning of its name.

Catalog cover for The Grimm Mfg. Co. LTD out of Montreal.

John H. Grimm and his brothers Charles E. Grimm, Henry E. Grimm, and Wendell Grimm formally incorporated in Quebec in 1910. John H. Grimm and Charles E. Grimm continued to run the Montreal company for the next three decades until their deaths with John in 1941 and Charles in 1943. After their deaths, Grimm Manufacturing Co. LTD of Montreal was sold to Sylvan LeBrun and his Dominion Evaporator Company in 1953 to become Dominion and Grimm. A part of the LeBrun story was covered in the earlier posted history of the Waterloo Evaporator history and a later post will cover the history of the Dominion Evaporator Company and Dominion and Grimm, Inc. in this series on evaporator company histories.

Advertisement flyer from around 1901 for the improved Grimm Spout and Cover.

Although the first two decades of the G.H. Grimm Company witnessed many changes in organization and location, by the beginning of the new century things were largely settled from the standpoint of facilities and infrastructure. Gustave H. Grimm had found a permanent home for his family and company in Rutland with the plant on Pine Street and had narrowed his focus to just managing and leading the G.H. Grimm Company in Rutland. While still selling maple sugaring evaporators and equipment designed and patented by G.H. Grimm, the Montreal Grimm’s and the Hudson Champion Evaporator Company were no longer under Gustave H. Grimm’s control or his responsibility.

Reverse side of advertisement flyer from around 1901 showing Grimm Spout No. 1 and the special production Horseshoe Cover, patented by Abbot Augustus Low (US668313).

As G.H. Grimm worked to grow the Rutland company he was fortunate to be chosen by Abbot Augustus Low to be the evaporator and equipment supplier for Low’s massive Horse Shoe Forestry Company maple sugaring operation in the Adirondacks of New York. Low purchased at least 19 large sized evaporators and taps and pails to gather sap from as many as 50,000 trees. Grimm took advantage of the notoriety of Low’s sugarbush as the largest in the world and emphasized in their advertising that Low was using Grimm sap spouts. As noted in an earlier blog post, Grimm and Low also partnered even more directly when the Grimm company put A.A. Low’s patent (US668313) design for a sap pail cover into production. The Horseshoe Cover as it was known, was primarily produced for use by Low in his Adirondacks sugarbush, but Grimm also advertised its availability for purchase by any interested customers.

Examples of Pure Vermont Maple Syrup packed by the G.H. Grimm Company out of Rutland, VT.

It should be noted that in addition to manufacturing and selling maple sugaring equipment, for a period of time in the 1890s and early 20^th century, the Grimm company in Rutland also bought maple sugar and maple syrup from producers in New England and New York and packaged it under the Grimm label. For example, in 1898 the Grimm company reported that by June it had shipped 10 tons of maple sugar and 6000 gallons of syrup which was about one third of the volume they had moved at the same time the year before.

One of the sheets of the patent drawing from July 19, 1904 showing Grimm’s sap spout no. 1 and his design for a sap pail cover (US765478). December 1904 patent drawing for Grimm sap spout designs for spouts no. 2, 3, 4, and 5 and sap pail cover (US778031).

The early 1900s saw G.H. Grimm expand his portfolio of sugaring equipment designs and patents (US729330, US765478, US778031) with a series of sap pail covers and sap spouts that were assigned numbers 1 through 5. The company continued to make improvements on their evaporators as well with three additional patents awarded for improvements to designs for sap preheaters and sap regulators (US884272, US962830, US1159213), with the final patent being awarded in 1915, posthumously following Grimm’s death in 1914.

Gustav H. Grimm died in Rutland on December 24, 1914 at the age of 64 from general paralysis. For a number of years following the death of G.H. Grimm, the company operated under the name of the G.H. Grimm Estate with his daughter Nella Grimm taking over management of company at age 36. After Grimm’s death the company continued to provide evaporators and equipment to the maple industry although at times it was forced to protect their interests in G.H. Grimm’s patent designs that made the company’s products popular. For example, see the 1918 case challenging the use of Grimm designs by three former Grimm employees that left the company to form the Vermont Evaporator Company.

Grimm’s evaporator patent drawing from 1908 with updated features (US884272).

Nella Grimm married John Crary Fox in 1923 in New York City. At time of her marriage Nella was described as executive head of the company but was living in Philadelphia and New York. Following his marriage to Nella Grimm, John C. Fox joined her in managing the company until his unexpected death from a heart attack in 1932.

The next 20 years are largely unremarkable for the company as it continued to maintain its market share as one of the five main evaporator manufacturers in the US and Canada. In 1951 Nella Grimm Fox decided to retire from management of the company and sold G.H. Grimm to Robert F. Moore of Rutland and Louis Veale of Montpelier. A few years later, Veale became ill and died in 1958, leaving the company in the hands of Robert F. Moore and his family with each of Moore’s sons working for the company before following separate career paths outside of the company.

Drawing for Grimm’s 1910 patent for a sap preheater (US962830).

Many of the details of the story of the Grimm Company after the sale of the company in 1951 have been told in a nice article by Robert F. Moore that appeared in 1987 in the Rutland Historical Society Quarterly. Here are some highlights of the next 40 or so years.

In 1964 The G.H. Grimm Company buys the Lightning Evaporator Company. (See the history of the Lightning Company in another post in this series.) In 1984, the Moore family sells G.H. Grimm to a group of Rutland businessmen known as the Grimm group. In 1985 the Lamb Naturalflow maple sap tubing company out of St. Bernhards Bay, New York became a subsidiary partner of the G.H. Grimm Company. And finally, in 1989 the Leader Evaporator Company of St. Albans, Vermont, purchased the G.H. Grimm Company and Lamb Naturalflow to become the largest maple equipment company in the world. Leader continued to manufacture the Grimm evaporators for a number of years before new designs and changing technology and health and safety requirements related to the use of lead solder led to their discontinuation. Leader operated the G.H. Grimm plant in Rutland for another 15 years before deciding to moving the majority of their operations to St. Albans in 2005; however, they still use the Pine Street facility in Rutland for a portion of their manufacturing.

Evaporator Company Histories: Vermont Farm Machine Company – Williams Improved Evaporator

June 1866 advertisement from the Hartford Courant promoting sale of Cory’s Sugar Evaporators by the Hartford Sorghum Machine Co.

The Vermont Farm Machine Company began life in Hartford, Connecticut as the Hartford Sorghum Machine Company where under license they manufactured the Cory’s Sugar Evaporator, sometimes spelled Corey.

Patented by Christopher Cory (US33238) in September 1861, this metal pan featured a bottom formed into crimped ridges, an early version of shallow flues, that increases the surface and heating area of the sap, leading to more rapid boiling. These evaporator pans came in lengths ranging from 6 feet to 15 feet and were placed on a permanent brick arch.

The Hartford Sorghum Machine Company was formally incorporated in May 1866 under the leadership of James B. Williams of Glastonbury, CT. As President, Williams came to the company not as a metal worker or sugar maker but as a successful businessman and maker of soaps. Williams was also an active investor in a variety of manufacturing businesses in the Glastonbury area.

Portrait of James B. Williams, one the founders and first president of the Hartford Sorghum Machine Co.

Initially marketed as an evaporator for making sugar from sorghum, by the end of 1868 the Hartford Sorghum Machine Company was also advertising the Cory Patent Evaporator for boiling maple sap and making maple sugar. In 1868, they also were promoting the use and sale of the Guild Sap Regulator, patented by J.H. Guild in 1867.

Patent drawing of J.H. Guild’s water cut-off, sold as a regulator for sap levels in evaporators by the Hartford Sorghum Machine Co.

In July 1868, it was announced that the Hartford Sorghum Machine Company was setting up a Branch Office and Manufactory in Bellows Falls, Vermont. With J.B. Williams as president and F.G. Butler of Bellows Falls as secretary, the company would begin building a manufacturing plant for production of evaporators for maple sugar makers. The company hoped to have produced and sold 1000 of the evaporators by November of that year. The Cory’s evaporator was proved to be popular and maple sugarmakers that adopted the Cory’s Evaporator reported doubling their production over traditional flat pans.

James B. Williams and the company were not afraid to adopt the ideas of other evaporators and continued to work to improve their design. In early 1869, the company reported that its evaporator combined the features of Corey’s, Cook’s, and Harris’ patent evaporators, all of which they had licenses to manufacture. By June 1869, James B. Williams had obtained a patent on his own evaporator design (US 91890) along with a patent on a machine (US91889) specifically designed for forming the crimped metal corrugations featured in his evaporator design.

In 1871, a group of men led by James B. Williams and Francis G. Butler of Bellows Falls, purchased the Bellows Falls interests of the Hartford Sorghum Machine Company and began doing business as the Vermont Farm Machine Company. Also in March 1871, F.G. Butler obtained a patent on his own evaporator design (US112539) that featured a series of dampers in the fire box of the arch that permitted greater control of heat on the finishing pan, in this case, located at the rear of the evaporator. Although Butler was the patentee, this patent was assigned to himself and to James B. Williams. Butler had another patent associated with evaporator design in 1871 (US116803) but it does not appear to have been assigned to the company or put into use in their evaporators.

Later that same year, 1871, they began referring to their evaporator for boiling map sap as simply the “Improved Evaporator.” On February 15, 1873 the Vermont Farm Machine Co. of Bellows Falls was formally incorporated in the state of Vermont for the manufacture of mowing machines, horse rakes, maple sugar evaporators and other agricultural implements with a capital stock of $25,000 with F.G. Butler as president and J.B. Williams as a member of the board of directors. J.B. Williams continued his successful soap business in Connecticut which lasted into the 1950s.

Early 1870s advertisement for the “Improved Sugar Evaporator” offered by The Vermont Farm Machine Co. of Bellows Falls.

As the “farm machine company” name implies, the company was beginning to diversify its manufacturing line beyond evaporators to include cream separators and other farm implements and in 1877 brought on Nathan G. Williams to take over and re-organize the Bellows Falls operations. There is no known relation between Nathan G Williams and J.B. Williams. Prior to joining the firm in Bellows Falls, Nathan G. William, who was originally from Pomfret, Connecticut, had been in the mercantile business in Missouri, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois since 1873. Through the 1880s, the company continued to expand its sales to the maple industry and began to offer a portable iron arch to go under the regularly featured Improved Evaporator.

In November 1890, Lorin R. Tabor of Westford, Vermont applied for two patents for improvements to sap evaporators. Tabor was awarded patents in 1891 (US457097) and 1892 (US471229) which were both assigned to the Vermont Farm Machine Co. Most notable of his patents was a design where one could reverse the sap flow in the evaporator pan to combat the build-up of niter or what was at that time called malic acid or malate of lime.

1891 patent drawing for L.R. Tabor’s idea for a process of evaporating syrup that offers alternating draw off valves to permit the reversal of the flow of sap through the evaporator partitions.

It was in the fall of 1890 that the Vermont Farm Machine Co. began marketing their new Williams Bellows Falls Evaporator, combining features of the Tabor patents along with the earlier Williams, Cory, Cook, and Butler patents. This evaporator was a single contiguous pan, so there was no need for siphons to connect separately. It is interesting to note that drawings of the Williams Bellows Falls Evaporator, from as early as 1890, display a covered evaporator pan and the use of a steam hood, an innovation that would not become popular or widely adopted in the industry for another 50 years.

Advertisement from the Vermont Watchman in 1891 showing the newly introduced Williams Bellows Falls Evaporator with a full length steam hood.

The Vermont Farm Machine Co. became fully engaged with the maple industry in the 1890s offering a full lineup of maple sugaring equipment ranging from evaporators and pans to sap spouts, pails, gathering and storage tanks, to sugar molds and syrup cans catalogs with an eye-catching pink cover. The Vermont Farm Machine Co. advertisements were also memorable for having high quality detailed drawings with cut-away profiles showing the interior and exterior of their evaporators and sugar houses.

Early 1900s example of the distinctive pink cover common to many of the Vermont Farm Machine Co. catalogs for evaporators and sugaring supplies at this time.

Famous sugarmaker, George H. Soule even lent his name and endorsement to the Williams Evaporator in print in July 1897, when as a prominent farmer and sugarmaker in Franklin County, his use of the evaporator earned him the award of first premium for syrup at the Vermont Sugarmakers meeting earlier that year. Soule further aided the Vermont Farm Machine Co. in improving their evaporator design when his first evaporator patent (US635876) was assigned to the company in 1899. A few years later, Soule would be patenting another evaporator and himself becoming a successful businessman and manufacturer of evaporators and sugaring equipment. A history of the Soule company will appear in a later blog post.

1897 advertisement from the St. Johnsbury Caledonia featuring a testimonial from future evaporator inventor and manufacturer George H. Soule or Fairfield, Vermont.

While evaporators were an important component of their business, the overwhelming focus of production for the company in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries was making dairy equipment, most notably the Cooley Creamers. With his arrival in 1877, Nathan G. Williams initially served as the company treasurer, but moved into greater leadership roles as manager and then president. Williams was popular and well-respected in Windham County and throughout Vermont, so much so that he was elected to serve two terms as the Judge Advocate General for the state of Vermont, first in 1904 and again in 1906.

Early 1900s real photo postcard of the extensive facilities of the Vermont Farm Machine Co.

Continued success through the 1890s and early 20^th century resulted in expansion of their production facilities in Bellows Falls. By 1907 it was reported that the company had over 720 employees compared to the twelve workers in 1877, and by 1910 operations covered over three and a half acres with multiple four and five-story brick buildings alongside the railroad on “the island” in the Connecticut River.

With the onset of the first World War, the federal government redirected supplies of steel and manufacturing parts to support the war effort. With that, manufacturing and sales of maple sugaring equipment and other farm machinery slowed in 1916 and 1917. Also during World War I, the Vermont Farm Machine Company was contracted to manufacture shrapnel and high explosive shells for the Russian and United States governments. Complications from cancellations and delays in getting paid by the government for these contracts severely hurt the company and it never really recovered financially.

Catalog cover for 1920-1921 indicating the recent inclusion of the Monarch Evaporator with the Williams Bellows Falls Evaporator in the maple sugaring offerings of the Vermont Farm Machine Company. Note that the word Company has been replaced with Corporation, which was indicative of the restructuring that the company was going through during its period in receivership.

In 1919 the Vermont Farm Machine Co. purchased the Monarch line of evaporators and maple sugaring tools from True and Blanchard in Newport, Vermont. The Monarch production facilities were moved from their home in Newport to Bellows Falls and the additional designs and brands expanded the Vermont Farm Machine Co. catalog of offerings to maple producers. For more information on the True & Blanchard story, see an earlier blog post.

Following the end of the war, the company found it much more difficult to obtain materials and skilled labor than before. Creditors became concerned with the company’s request for additional loans and the ability of the company to pay its existing debts. As a result, in May of 1920 a group of creditors took the company into receivership and took control of its affairs. In July 1920, Nathan G. Williams resigned his position as president, treasurer and manager of the Vermont Farm Machine Co. after leading the company for 40 years, although for a short time he was still engaged as one of two court appointed receivers. Disagreements and questionable management decisions by the appointed receivers left what remained of the company in shambles. Production slowed, sales agents left in droves, and by the beginning of 1921 production at the factory had ceased. In 1925, Williams moved from Bellows Falls to Hartford, CT where he resided until his death at age 87 in 1931.

1952 photo of fire in Bellows Falls that destroyed the former Vermont Farm Machine Co. factory buildings.

The closing of the factory was the end to the Vermont Farm Machine Company’s manufacturing of maple sugaring evaporators and equipment and there is no indication that their designs, patents, and brands for maple sugaring equipment were sold or passed on to any other maple equipment companies. The company was never reorganized, and the company’s property and factory were sold to a series of different owners over the following years. A massive fire on November 14, 1952 destroyed the former Vermont Farm Machine Company buildings which at the time were being used by a plastics company, a milk company and a poultry company.

Note: special thanks to Hale Mattoon for sharing his knowledge and research collections related to patent history and the Vermont Farm Machine Co.

Evaporator Company Histories: True & Blanchard – Monarch Evaporator

The beginnings of the True & Blanchard Company date back to 1844 when William W. True, at the young age of 22 opened a tin shop in Newport, Vermont. In time the small shop took on a wider range of business and services. With the addition of E.C. Blanchard in 1886 and the purchase of the stock and storefront of another existing hardware merchant in Newport, True & Blanchard Co. became a full-service hardware store. In 1894 the firm added another partner in the arrival of J.R. Akin.

As a hardware concern, True & Blanchard carried and sold a variety of maple sugaring tools and equipment and as early as 1890 were advertising as agents for the sale of the Bellows Falls patent evaporator.

1891 advertisement from the North Troy Palladium newspaper showing True & Blanchard as sales agents for other evaporators including the Bellows Falls Pattern Evaporator

In 1893 they began to manufacture their own evaporator and arch under the label Monarch Evaporator designed by W.W. True. The Monarch name was adopted as their brand name for maple sugaring equipment.

1897 advertisement from the North Troy Palladium.

Under the Monarch name they also designed and sold their own hauling tank, storage tank, sap pails and pail covers, and carried the Eureka sap spout. In later years they expanded their evaporator line beyond the Monarch Evaporator to include the Imperial Evaporator and the Royal boiling rig.

Page from a True & Blanchard sale pamphlet ca. 1915, note the Imperial Evaporator, Royal Boiling Rig and Sugaring Off Outfit and the Monarch style Sugaring Off Outfit.

Although E.C. Blanchard left the business in 1906, the company kept “Blanchard” in the official company name. The True & Blanchard company continued to expand over the years, building new and larger facilities in Newport, both for maple sugaring equipment and other company ventures. In 1909 demand for Monarch sugaring tools had grown to such a degree that the company needed more room for production of sugaring equipment and acquired an existing two-story building alongside the Canadian Pacific railroad in Newport. The building was referred to as the Monarch Sugar Tools Factory. Other changes in the company included selling-off the jewelry sales portion of the company and erecting a new brick fire-proof garage in 1913.

Early 1900s True & Blanchard Co. catalog for maple sugarmakers’ supplies.

W.W. True patented (US1096328 / CA156779) his own evaporator design in 1914 which featured a tapered flue pan that tilted on a hinge at the mid-point when the flue pan met the front pan. This design became known as their Imperial Evaporator.

W.W. True 1914 patent for hinged flue pan and evaporator, US1096328.

In August 1914 the leadership of True & Blanchard Co. formally incorporated the Monarch Evaporator Company in the state of Vermont as an independent subsidiary of the True & Blanchard Co. with W.W. True as president and J.R. Akin as vice president.

The True & Blanchard Company was doing so well in the hardware business through the teens that they chose to focus their efforts on the hardware and retail side of things and divest itself of its ancillary businesses like the maple sugaring supplies. As a result, in the spring of 1919 W.W. True and J.R. Akin sold the Monarch Evaporator Company to the Vermont Farm Machine Company of Bellows Falls, VT.

With this sale, the production equipment for the manufacture of the Monarch Evaporator, as well as the other maple sugaring supplies were moved to Bellows Falls. Everett Hunt, True & Blanchard’s production manager for the Monarch sugaring tools in Newport also moved with the production line to Bellows Falls.

Page from 1920 Vermont Farm Machine Company catalog describing the Monarch Evaporator in their product line.

The Vermont Farm Machine Company continued to manufacture and offer the Monarch Evaporator during the remainder of its years of operation before the business failed and ceased operation in 1926. The Monarch name and line of evaporators died with the closing of the doors at the Vermont Farm Machine Company. The history of the Vermont Farm Machine Company will be covered in a future post.

Evaporator Company Histories: Small Brothers – Lightning Evaporator Company

By Matthew M. Thomas

Revised – March 2024

The story of the Lightning Evaporator is a history of a company that started in Québec, before expanding into the U.S. to become two separate companies. The Lightning Evaporator’s unique feature of raised flues began with the invention and patent (CA12270) by David Henry Ingalls of Dunham, Québec in 1881.

Patent drawing for David H. Ingalls Lightning Evaporator 1881 patent (C12270).

Even before he patented the design for the Lightning, Ingalls was awarded an earlier patent in 1878 (CA9528) for an evaporator with slightly raised flues, more like corrugations in the bottom of the pan. His 1881 design, which carried the title of “Lightning” evaporator was known as the first raised flue evaporator and was specifically invented for boiling maple sap and making maple syrup and maple sugar. It is not clear that Ingalls ever manufactured his invention for sale to sugar makers. What we do know is that he sold the Lightning Evaporator’s patent rights to the Small Brothers of Dunham, Québec.

The Small Brothers were originally Reid Paige Small and George S. Small , both born in Dunham, Quebec in 1865 and 1861, respectively. The actual date that the Small Brothers began to the manufacture the Lightning Evaporator is not known with certainty. One source says they began production in 1889 while another says 1890. For example, labels on Small Brothers Lightning Evaporators made in the 1980s include the phrase, “famous since 1890.” Around 1893, George S. Small sold his piece of the company to his brother Stephen “Steve” J. Small, and Steve and Reid Small carried the company forward.

The Small family’s Maplewood Farm Sugarhouse.

George S. Small in turn created a maple confectionary company called the Canada Maple Exchange, first operating in Dunham, Québec out of the Small family farm and sugarbush known as Maplewood Farm, before later moving to Montréal. G.S. Small sold his interest in the Canada Maple Exchange in 1910, but continued working for the company before going on his own with Smalls, LTD, in 1918. G.S. Small stayed in the maple products business until around 1927.

Small Brothers’ factory in the old Seely Hotel in Dunham, image from cover of Small Brothers 1896 catalog.

In 1893 the Small Brothers moved their evaporator production into the old Seeley Hotel, a fine three-story brick building on the main street of Dunham, Québec dating to 1865. Also known locally in Dunham as the Relais de la Diligence, the old hotel building now houses a microbrewery and restaurant and other spaces for a variety of shops and services.

The Small Brothers quickly established themselves as a viable competitor in the fast-growing world of maple syrup evaporator manufacture and sales. The Small Brothers also added their own ideas to the design and manufacture of maple syrup evaporators, including a patented (C60447) float system to maintain proper sap levels in their evaporator. Reid joined in the fun of designing and patenting (C92054) his own sap spout in 1905. Business was so good that in 1906 they opened a second production facility less than 20 miles away but across the border in Richford, Vermont.

Advertisement for the Lightning Evaporator from the Small Brothers Manufacturing Company out of Richford, Vermont that appeared in the Burlington Daily News on January 14, 1919.

Seven years later, in 1913, Reid P. Small and Stephen J. Small sold their Richford, VT operation of Small Brothers in Richford to Clarence. E. Whitcomb of Dunham, Quebec and Robert McElroy, an experienced tinsmith and plumber from Knowlton, Québec. Clarence E. Whitcomb happened to be related to the Small brothers as the uncle of Stephen J. Small’s wife Edith Augusta Whitcomb Small. In addition, Clarence E. Whitcomb and Robert McElroy were brothers-in-law, with Clarence E. Whitcomb married to Jane McElroy.

From that point forward, there were two separate, but connected Small Brothers companies that manufactured and sold the Lightning Evaporator, one in Dunham, Québec still under the control of R.P. and J.S. Small , and one in Richford, Vermont under the control of Whitcomb and McElroy. The Richford based company, despite not being owned by the actual Small Brothers, continued to use the Small Brothers Manufacturing Company name in their sales and marketing of the Lightning Evaporator.

In late 1926 Reid P. Small died of pneumonia and two years later his brother Stephen J. Small passed away as well. Soon after, in 1928 the Dunham, Québec Small Brothers Company was sold to Oscar Selby, a local general store owner from Dunham. The Selby family embraced their role as the new owners of the evaporator company and honored those that started it before them by preserving the name of of Small Brothers, Inc.

Drawing for C.E. Whitcomb’s sap spout patented (1154679) in the US in 1915 and in Canada in 1916.

It would appear from that period forward, with new ownership in Dunham, and with no further family ties to connect the companies straddling the border, the Richford, Vermont company ceased to use the name Small Brothers and began to exclusively refer to themselves as the Lightning Evaporator Company. The Lightning Evaporator Company manufactured and sold more than just evaporators. The company manufactured tanks and finishing pans as well and offered a full-range of maple sugaring supplies including their own patented spout. Like other equipment suppliers, Clarence Whitcomb invented an “air tight” spout that he patented in 1915.

Image of Whitcomb sap spout from Lightning Evaporator Company catalog, Richford, Vermont, date unknown.

In 1921 Clarence Whitcomb bought Robert McElroy’s interest in the the company, and Whitcomb’s his son-in-law G. Curtis Moynan became his business partner. Moynan, a long-time employee of the company had married Clarence E. Whitcomb’s daughter Fannie Elizabeth Whitcomb. In 1938, Clarence Whitcomb sold his share in the company to his son Carl Whitcomb, who then took his place as co-owner with G. Curtis Moynan. Clarence Whitcomb passed away in 1945.

Small Brothers MFG. Co. buildings in Richford, Vermont, circa 1920.

G. Curtis Moynan stepped away from the company 1953, selling his share to Carl Whitcomb, who became the sole owner. In 1964 Carl Whitcomb decided to sell their operations to the G.H. Grimm Company of Rutland, Vermont. With this purchase, Grimm continued to manufacture and sell the Lightning Evaporator but moved the Richford production line to Rutland, which included bringing production manager Harlan Mayhew from Richford, VT to Rutland to continue overseeing the production of the Lightning Evaporator. The Grimm Company was sold to the Leader Evaporator Company in 1989. Sadly, the Lightning Evaporator design with its unique raised flues is no longer manufactured by the Leader Company.

Lightning Evaporators logo used in 1980s by Small Brothers in Dunham, QE and Small Brothers USA after division of Small Brothers and Lightning Evaporator Company.

The Dunham branch of Small Brothers Manufacturing Company continued under the ownership of the Selby family, first Oscar, who passed away in 1961, then his son Rowland Selby who passed away in 1985, and lastly by his son Steve Selby. Small Brothers re-established a branch in the United States opening a facility in Swanton, Vermont in 1984 under the name Small Brothers USA. In 1995 it was announced that Small Brothers of Dunham (and Small Brothers USA) had been sold and combined with Waterloo Evaporators of Waterloo, Québec, becoming Waterloo/Small. A few years later in 2001, Waterloo/Small was itself purchased by the St. Ludger du Beauce, Québec firm Lapierre to become Lapierre-Waterloo-Small. With the consolidation with Lapierre, the Lightning Evaporator name and design was eliminated from their production line.

The Grimm – Horse Shoe Forestry Company Connection

A somewhat unique partnership between two giants in the maple industry occurred at the turn of the last century when the G.H. Grimm Company produced a specially designed sap pail cover for the Horse Shoe Forestry Company. The Horse Shoe Forestry Company was a new endeavour of Brooklyn millionaire Abbot Augustus Low. Low had purchases tens of thousands of acres of forest around Horse Shoe Lake in the Adirondacks with the intent of developing a large-scale modern and efficient maple syrup operation. Low also happened to be an experienced inventor with dozens of patents to his name, who, when faced with a problem or an opportunity, tried to make an improvement or come up with an entirely new design. In the case of maple sugaring, the lowly sap pail cover did not escape Low’s attention.

Baldwin image of sap pails with both red and yellow covers in use. Photo courtesy of the Adirondack Experience.

As one of the leading equipment manufacturers of the time, G. H. Grimm was the company chosen by A.A. Low and the Horse Shoe Forestry Company for purchase of many new evaporators, sap pails, spouts, and sap storage tanks. Numerous newspaper accounts from the late 1890s and early 1900s describe with awe the sheer size of the equipment orders placed with G.H. Grimm by the Horse Shoe Forestry Company. By the height of their operations, the Horse Shoe Company had built three large sugarhouses, factories really, to enclose as many as 15 of the very largest evaporators the Grimm Company made at the time.

Excerpt from an undated G.H. Grimm & Co. pamphlet promoting the “Horseshoe Cover” alongside the Grimm Spout No. 1. Collections of author.

Low and the Horse Shoe Company were such good customers for G.H. Grimm, the Grimm Company used their name as a selling point in their advertising. Noting in a 1907 ad to sell their sap spouts, that the Horse Shoe Company, touted as the world’s largest sugar maker, had purchased 50,000 of the Grimm spouts. No other sugarbush was even close to that large in scale and that number of spout begs the question were there also that many Horse Shoe-Grimm sap pail covers in use at Horse Shoe as well?

Although produced primarily for the the Horse Shoe Company, the Horse Shoe-Grimm sap pail cover was not for the Horse Shoe Company’s exclusive use. Grimm made the cover available for anyone to purchase and use. An undated G.H. Grimm promotional pamphlet informs readers that for twenty-five cents they will send you a a sample of a hookless No. 1 Grimm sap spout and Horse Shoe sap pail cover.

Baldwin image highlighting red sap pail cover. Photo courtesy of the Adirondack Experience.

A series of photographs taken by George A. Baldwin for the Horse Shoe Forestry Company in 1900 or 1901 includes examples of Low’s Horse Shoe – Grimm sap pail cover in action. One particular set of these images was hand colorized by Baldwin and depicts both the red and yellow sap pail covers in use in the Horse Shoe sugarbush.

Image of A.A. Low’s 1901 patent design for the Horse Shoe Forestry Company – G.H. Grimm sap pail cover.

A.A. Low applied for a patent on his sap cover invention on June 6, 1900, before being awarded patent number 668,313 on February 19, 1901. The cover itself was made

from two sheets of metal molded such that they formed a raised shape surrounded by a flat rim. The core in the center of the two raised sides was supposed to serve as an insulating air-pocket to help keep sap in the pail cool. The raised center also served to position the cover in the pail with the wide rim extending over the sides of the pail to keep debris and moisture from entering. It was necessary to use a hookless spout like the Grimm Spout No. 1 that would fit into the hole on the collection pail.

Detail of the logo embossed into the metal of the cover with the upturned horseshoe for the Horse Shoe Forestry Company along with the name G.H. Grimm & Co., Rutland, VT.

As a strong self-promoter and regular use of advertising and trademarks, the Horse Shoe – Grimm cover did not escape the hand of A.A. Low. Every Horse Shoe cover was embossed on both sides with the Horse Shoe Forestry Company name and logo as well as the G.H. Grimm and Co. name and location of Rutland, VT. Interestingly, the embossing also notes patent applied for, suggesting that the Grimm Company began producing the covers sometime in the second half of the year 1900.

Side view of the two colors and profile shape of the Horse Shoe -Grimm sap pail cover. This particular example is in the collections of the Adirondack Experience.

Ever thinking of improving efficiency in his sugarbush, Low had his sap pail covers painted red on one side and yellow on the other. The idea was that on each sap gathering run, the covers would be turned over after the pail was emptied. The two colors allowed the men gathering sap to see from a distance which pails had been collected and which had not. The G.H. Grimm promotional pamphlet noted that each cover is painted on both sides to prevent rusting, although it does not note the two color scheme.

The photos on the left from the collections of the Adirondack Experience are examples of the bright red and yellow colors used on each side of the Horse Shoe – Grimm sap pail covers. Note the hanging hole near the rim. This was not originally part of the A.A. Low design and was likely added at a later date by another maple syrup maker.

For those interested in the history of A.A. Low’s Horse Shoe Forestry Company maple syrup operation, check back in for additional posts on other aspects of the story including new, never before seen site maps and photos from the field. Eventually this research will be compiled and shared in the publication of my second book. For the time being, I am deep in the throes of field and archival research documenting and detailing the exact locations of Low’s maple syrup operations at Horse Shoe and recounting the broader history of use and development of Low’s estate.

And should anyone know the whereabouts of one of these Grimm-Horse Shoe Forestry Company sap pail covers that might be for sale, I would very much like to hear from you!

Maple King – My New Book is Ready!

I’m very excited to announce that a book I have been researching and writing for many years is finally finished and available for purchase from Amazon.com. The book is titled Maple King: The Making of a Maple Syrup Empire and traces the history of George C. Cary and his Cary Maple Sugar Company from its humble beginnings, through an amazing period of growth and industry domination, and on to its eventual collapse. The story also retells how the Cary Company absorbed the smaller Maple Grove Candies Company in the 1920s only to evolve and later split back into two companies in the 1950s. The Cary Company experienced a difficult future, while the Maple Grove Company continued to evolve into today’s Maple Grove Farms, proving to be a strong and lasting company and brand.

The book follows the the story of George Cary and the Cary Company across 186 pages in seven chapters with over 70 photo, postcard, and map illustrations. The extensive research that went into telling the Cary story is documented in hundreds of endnote references to help future historians and satisfy the curiosity of those looking for more information. One-part company history, one-part biography, one-part maple syrup history, and one -part Vermont and St. Johnsbury history, the story has a little bit of everything for a wide range of readers.

Here is the description of the book from the back cover:

Like many North American industries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the business of making maple sugar and syrup went through a period of maturation and modernization. Much of this change and new business model was influenced and controlled by one man and the company he created in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. George C. Cary and the Cary Maple Sugar Company grew in size and influence such that it controlled as much as 80 percent of the bulk maple sugar market, bestowing on Cary the title of Maple King and St. Johnsbury as the Maple Capital of the World. This book recounts the rise of the Cary Company and takes a closer look at who Cary was and the maple sugar and maple syrup empire that he created. As encompassing as the Cary Empire was, it overreached its limits and came tumbling to the ground with the stunning bankruptcy and death of its leader in 1931. However, Cary’s legacy did not die with him, and as told here, St. Johnsbury continued to have a significant place and role in the ever-evolving maple sugar and syrup industry.

This book is available for purchase from Amazon.com for $19.95. Get your copy today!

The Gooseneck Metal Pipeline: Wisconsin’s First Tubing System?

This article originally appeared in a 2004 edition of the Wisconsin Maple News.

Plastic tubing and vacuum pumping continue to grow in popularity in Wisconsin sugarbushes with a few more miles added every year. But long before the invention of plastic tubing in the late 1950s, early twentieth century Yankee farmers wanting to reduce the labor of gathering sap invented a metal gravity-fed pipeline system that carried sap directly from the tree to the sugarhouse. This metal pipeline system consisted of three sizes of tubing, each constructed from long narrow sheets of English tin folded and crimped at the top and slightly tapered at the end to be inserted tightly into another piece of tubing. The system also included spiles made from conical sheets of tin with a metal tube soldered to the bottom like a drop line. The spile was either inserted directly into openings on the top of pipeline or into connecting pieces that fit into the pipeline. This connection from the spile to the tubing was made by a shorter, tapered piece of tubing with a curve at the narrow end, similar in appearance to the neck of a goose. In fact, it was this piece that gave this system its common name of “gooseneck system”. The weight of the rigid metal pipeline was supported by heavy gauge wire strung through the woods, with a hook at one end of each piece of tubing to hang the tubing on the support wires.

The gooseneck system in use in a Vermont sugarbush circa 1930. Source: Vermont Maple Sugar and Syrup, Bulletin 38.

The gooseneck system was patented in 1916 near the village of Mayfield, New York along the southern margins of Adirondack State Park by William H. Brower, Jr. Brower, who was described by his grandson as a mechanic and tinkerer, developed the system with his neighbor and syrup maker, Edward L. Lent. Today, the workshop where it was invented still stands on land owned by the Lent family and is noted by a roadside historic marker. According to Lent family history, Brower and Lent later sold the patent to one of the larger Vermont maple syrup equipment makers. Amazingly, through four generations of syrup making, the Lent family has never stopped using the gooseneck system. At one time, the Lent family’s mountainside sugarbush was using as many as 2500 taps on the system and boiling on a 3 foot by 16 foot wood fired evaporator. In recent year the family has reduced their tapping to around 300 to 400 taps and downsized to a 2 foot by 10 foot evaporator. According to the Lent family, the metal pipeline will occasionally freeze during cold spells, but thaws out quickly on south and east facing hillside of the their sugarbush. At the end of the season, the network of support wire is left strung through the sugarbush but the tubing is taken down. The pipeline sections are washed and boiled in the evaporator in the last sap of the year then set upright to dry, coating them with a thin layer of sugary sap that prevents rust from developing in the off season.

The late Edward Lent, grandson of Edward L. Lent, tapping trees for gooseneck system in Lent family sugarbush in March 2002.

The gooseneck system was sporadically used during the 1920s and 1930s in the more hilly and mountainous sugarbushes of northeastern United States. Until recently, this technology was not known to have made it as far west as Wisconsin. However, in 2003, cultural resource management staff of the USDA Forest Service in Wisconsin discovered the long abandoned remains of a maple sugaring operation in the hills of southwestern Ashland County. The remains of this former sugarhouse and storage building included over one thousand, four-foot long sections of the tubing system, as well as the gooseneck connecting pieces, coils of suspension wire and other debris. Today the site appears as a series of building foundations in an overgrown clearing at the base of a maple covered ridge, a perfect location of the gravity fed pipeline system.

A fallen over stack of thousands of sections of metal pipeline at the remains of an abandoned sugarbush on the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, southern Ashland County, Wisconsin.

Based on the age of the other artifacts at the site, including three sizes of metal syrup tins, the use of this sugarbush roughly dates to between 1915 and 1930. The U.S. Forest Service acquired the land in 1934, shortly after it had been logged and most of the large mature maple trees removed. As the only known example of the use of the gooseneck system in Wisconsin, the Forest Service has recognized its historical importance and is protecting the site as part of planned forest management activities. In addition, research into the history of the site and use of the pipeline continues.

Matthew Thomas. “The Gooseneck Metal Pipeline: Wisconsin’s First Tubing System?” Wisconsin Maple News, 2004, volume 20, number 1, page 12.

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