One of my ongoing research projects, and the subject of my next book, looks at the history of Abbot Augustus Low’s Horse Shoe Forestry Company maple sugaring operation in New York’s Adirondack wilderness. Low was a very wealthy New Yorker who at the end of the nineteenth century established an extensive maple operation and associated townsite, mills, dams, and private great camp, all connected by his own personal railroad in the wilderness of the Adirondacks.
Hand painted label for Horse Shoe Forestry Company’s maple sugar featuring the Maple Valley sugar house. From the collections of the Adirondack Experience.
As a part of this research I have been conducting extensive field investigations searching for and mapping the physical remains associated with Low’s maple operations. While there is much to tell, and will be told when my book is finished, here is a small taste of what has been found and how.
Many folks with an interest in Adirondack history and maple sugaring history are familiar with an album from 1901 of hand-colored, unlabeled, photographs taken by George Baldwin titled Adirondack Sugar Bushes – Horseshoe – St. Lawrence Co., N.Y. These photographs and album were commissioned by Low and the Horse Shoe Forestry Company. There is only one known version of this album which is kept in the collections of the Adirondack Experience, a museum dedicated to Adirondack history in Blue Mountain Lake, NY. What is not as well known, is that there is another set of the same images in non-colorized form that were submitted for copyright purposes and are now held in the Library of Congress (LOC) in Washington, D.C. As a part of the copyright process, the images were published in the 1901 Copyright Office of the Library of Congress – Catalogue of Titles Entries of Books and Other Items, each with corresponding numbers and titles. What is helpful is that the set of images that are now found in the LOC, which I examined in the fall of 2018, all have their original numbers printed on them so one can see what were the actual titles assigned to these images in 1901 by A. A. Low.
Through a variety of historical and archival references and reports, we know the Horse Shoe Forestry Company built three large buildings for processing maple sap, each containing five enormous Champion Evaporators made by the G.H. Grimm Company. While these were referred to as sugar houses, they were more like maple syrup factories or plants, operating on a scale not before seen in the maple industry. All three of the large plants are featured in images in the colorized album, but I will focus on one of these plants for this particular part of the Horse Shoe story.
Black and white image of “Maple Valley” sugar house taken by George Baldwin and submitted to Library of Congress as part of Horse Shoe Forestry Company copyright registration. From collections of Library of Congress.
This particular image, LOC copyright number 1690, was titled “Maple Valley Sugar House.” For those familiar with the various images and maple sugaring buildings that once stood at Horse Shoe, that title might cause some confusion. There is another, better-known, syrup plant, also called the Maple Valley Sugar House, show in the figure below. The LOC title for the better-known sugar house is also labeled “Maple Valley Sugar House,” and has been assigned LOC number 1689. For the sake of clarity, I will call these Maple Valley 1 (image 1689) and Maple Valley 2 (image 1690).
Colorized image of Horse Shoe Forestry Company’s Maple Valley 1 sugar house (LOC copyright image 1689) taken by George Baldwin. From the Collections of the Adirondack Experience.
Maple Valley 1 was the showcase sugar house in Low’s maple operation, and the archaeological remains of it are still fairly well preserved, if one knows where to look. Other researchers in the past, such as railroad historian Michael Kudish, have identified and published the location of Maple Valley 1. However, the true location of Maple Valley 2 has been unknown. One of the goals of my fieldwork in this Horse Shoe Forestry Company maple history project has been to identify all the locations of the buildings associated with the maple sugaring operation.
To that end, archival research in the collections at the Adirondack Experience (AE) led to the surprise discovery of another set of previously unknown images taken by photographer George Baldwin as a part of the same sugarbush series of the popular colorized album. These images, which had not been previously digitized and widely shared, brought to light a number of new and interesting details.
Black and white image showing Horse Shoe Forestry Company’s Maple Valley 2 sugar house in distance (AE image P015527) taken by George Baldwin. From the Collections of the Adirondack Experience.
In an attempt to shed light on the location of the Maple Valley 2 sugar house, the following image was especially important. In the image we see a boy tending to a sap collection pail on a hillside. But if one zooms in to what is in the background through the trees, we can clearly see the Maple Valley 2 Sugar House. Wowza! You can also see in the image the many elevated sap pipelines running through the trees downslope carrying sap from the sugarbush to the sugar house. These pipelines are very evident in the LOC image 1690. What is particularly notable in the full image of the boy on the hillside is the contour of the landscape in the immediate foreground as well as the land contours to the left of the image across the drainage and the flatter and much more open space surrounding the sugar house in the background.
Close up detail of AE image P015527 showing the Maple Valley 2 sugar house in the background through the trees. From the Collections of the Adirondack Experience.
Finding a place in the landscape that fit location was key to identifying where this image was taken and where the Maple Valley 2 sugar house once stood. In thinking this through and studying the landscape settings that had potential, an initial question was where exactly to start. Conventional wisdom has been that there were three branches to Low’s railroad each with their own names, Wake Robin Railroad, Maple Valley Railroad, and Grasse River Railroad, and we known there were three large sugar houses. Logic would have it that one branch of each railroad went to each of the large sugar houses. But was that true and what was the evidence to support or counter that notion? Well, the evidence from the LOC labels were that the three large sugar houses were named Wake Robin, Maple Valley 1, and Maple Valley 2. That would suggest that one of the large sugar houses was not associated with the Grasse River railroad branch. So, instead of looking in the vicinity of the Grasse River drainage, maybe one should start looking for a location for Maple Valley 2 in a place that was connected to the Maple Valley locale.
After studying topographic maps of the area, air photos from the 1940s to the present, and historic maps that show roads and railroad grades that connect to Maple Valley, I settled on a few possibilities and put them to the test. Could I find the spot where that photo was taken of the boy at the tree with the Maple Valley 2 plant in the background? After a bit of tromping up and down a few drainages, valleys, and hillsides, I think I found the spot!
Modern photo from May 2019 taken from same location as AE image P015527.
To the left is a modern view taken in early May 2019 that attempts to represent the same location and vantage point as Baldwin’s 1901 hillside photo (AE image P015527). As a stand-in for the boy in the original image is Adirondack trail expert and local history buff Bill Hill, who accompanied me in the field that day. If you are not familiar with Bill’s work you should check out his blog and new book Hiking the Trail to Yesterday for great information on enjoying historical places in the Adirondacks on foot or with paddle.
Side-by-side photographs comparing the 1901 image by Baldwin (AE image P015527) with recent photo taken from same location and vantage point.
And here is the original and the recent, image side-by-side in a repeat photography format. I like what I see, with the angle of the slope, the contours on the far side of the drainage, and the flat valley below, which is now much more grown up with mature spruce and maple.
If this gets us to the right location for the Maple Valley 2 sugar house, which I think it does, then we are left with the next question. What remains of the Maple Valley 2 sugar house, if any, are left on the flat ground in the valley below? And that part of the story I will leave to be told in the book.
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.
Citadelle, the maple syrup producers cooperative headquartered in Plessisville, Quebec with over 2000 members, has posted an excellent history exhibition on the organization’s website. Titled A Cooperative History: A Struggle for Survival of the Maple Industry, the story is presented in a more or less chronological fashion beginning in the 1920s and their collective efforts to secure a fair and reliable price for maple sugar and syrup.
The narrative chosen to tell the early years of their history is an interesting, almost Robin Hood-like perspective. Capitalist American maple sugar tycoon, George Cary, is presented as the evil villain who is vanquished by Cyrille Vaillancourt, the heroic representative from the government and champion of the small maple farmer. While there are certainly truths to the storyline that Cary was a barrier to the Quebec producers getting the prices they thought they deserved, the reality of those relationships and the industry in that era are not so simple. As someone who has conducted extensive research on George Cary and the Cary Company, and even published a book about him, I must say that role and relationship of Cary to Vaillancourt, the Quebec producers, and the industry as a whole, was a bit more complicated than the Citadelle presentation. But altruistic hero defeats the capitalist villain is always a much more interesting story.
The well-written and descriptive narrative text is available in both English and French and is illustrated with dozens of wonderful historic photographs. The story is broken into six sections, each with their own subsections – The beginnings of the Cooperative, Making a place in the Industry, The Quality Policy; The Catholic Heritage; Plessisville, World’s Maple Capital; and Producers of Pure Innovation.
Regardless of my feelings on the chosen tone of the narrative, the Citadelle history exhibition is a fantastic online addition to maple syrup history. With its presentation in both English and French, Citadelle should be applauded for sharing their history in such an accessible and informative format.
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.
I am happy to announce and share the publication of my latest maple syrup history article titled, Cary Maple: Silent Film from the Sugarbush. This article recently appeared in the March 2019 edition (no. 12, issue 204) of Vermont’s Northland Journal. Published by Scott Wheeler out of Newport, Vermont, Vermont’s Northland Journal is a great regional magazine that features stories on the history and culture of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. With maple sugaring having a prominent place in the identity and memories of many Vermonters at this time of year, the Northland Journal regularly reserves the month of March to feature stories and local profiles of maple sugaring. As a nice little bonus, the article was honored with the cover image as well. You can read a PDF version of the article at this link or by clicking on the cover image at left.
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.
The Dominion & Grimm Company is one of the longest continually operating maple syrup evaporator and equipment companies in Canada. The company began when in October of 1892 it was announced that G.H. Grimm Manufacturing Company, incorporated out of Ohio, had opened a branch in Montreal Canada located at 63 to 67 King Street with W.A. Morrison as the initial factory manager. A year before the company also expanded into Vermont, opening a factory in Rutland.
Advertisement from 1892 for G.H. Grimm Mfg. Co. selling the Champion Evaporator from Montreal, Quebec.
As a branch of the American based Grimm company, the Montreal based Grimm facility manufactured the same Champion Evaporators as were being made in the original Grimm factory in Hudson, Ohio and in the new factory in Rutland. With the expansion to Vermont and Quebec, company founder Gustav H. Grimm focused their operations in Rutland and Montreal and sold the Ohio portion of the company in 1895.
Portrait of John H. Grimm, president of the Grimm Manufacturing Company, LTD.
In 1900, another company split was made and G.H. Grimm’s cousin, John H. Grimm bought the controlling interest in the G.H. Grimm Manufacturing Co. branch in Montreal. John H. Grimm then personally relocated to Montreal from Rutland to lead his new venture. Earlier in the year, John H. Grimm was listed in the 1900 census as a foreman in Grimm’s Rutland factory. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, John H. Grimm brought his two younger brothers Charles E. Grimm and Henry E. Grimm on board to help run the company in Montreal.
1909 advertisement for the Grimm Manufacturing Co. listing their Wellington Street address in Montreal.
There were now two Grimm companies on either side of the border, more or less selling the same maple sugaring equipment and supplies designed by Gustav H. Grimm. However, the Rutland Company now referred to itself as simply G. H. Grimm Co. with no use of the word manufacturing; whereas the Montreal company was known as Grimm Manufacturing Co., LTD., having dropped the G.H. initials.
Directories for Montreal show G.H. Grimm at 63 to 67 King Street in the 1890s. By 1901 the company had moved to 84 Wellington St and by 1908 was at 58 Wellington. It remained at that address on the corner of Wellington St and Queen Street until it was purchased and consolidated with the Dominion Evaporator Company.
In October of 1910, the Grimm brothers formally incorporated the Grimm Manufacturing Company, Limited under the laws of Canada with an initial capital stock of $150,000. The stockholders included J. H. Grimm, Charles E. Grimm, Henry E. Grimm, Wendell E. Grimm, and Charles E. Moore, all from Montreal at that time.
Color advertising postcard for Grimm Mfg. Co. illustrating their Wellington Street building. The appearance of the corner has changed little and looks much the same today.
John H. Grimm became a tireless advocate for better labelling laws and fighting against unscrupulous adulteration of maple syrup. His efforts were instrumental in the Province of Quebec passing a strict purity in labelling law that went into effect in 1915. As a prominent leader in the industry in Quebec as one of the largest manufacturing firms, he also strongly promoted cleanliness as a key to producing a better quality maple sugar and syrup. Grimm also was instrumental in forming an early co-op and producer’s association out of Waterloo, known as the Maple Tree Producers Association, LTD. This association and co-op formed to collectively market their maple syrup and work together to improve their quality and promote a label with assured purity. In time, Grimm bought out all of the members of this association and installed his own canning and bottling works at their Wellington Street facility.
To encourage maple producers and promote his ideals of improvement in the methods of manufacturing syrup and sugar, Grimm put up $500 in prize money for a syrup and sugar contest in 1913. Over 500 samples of Canadian syrup and over 200 samples of sugar competed for the prizes. A recent article that covers some of the history of Canada’s early maple co-ops provides additional detail on this aspect of John H. Grimm’s role in moving the Canadian maple industry forward.
John H. Grimm died in August 1941 at Grimmaple Lodge, his summer home near Mount Loyal, Quebec at the age of 77, a few months after the death of his wife. With his death, his brother Charles E. Grimm assumed the role of company president. Charles E. Grimm died only a few years later June 1943 in Montreal.
Ten years later, the Grimm family heirs and remaining shareholders of the Grimm Manufacturing Company sold the company to Sylva LeBrun of Montreal in 1952. LeBrun had started the Dominion Evaporator Company in Montreal in 1940 after selling off his interests in his earlier company, LeBrun – Lussier out of Waterloo, Quebec. The story of the LeBrun – Lussier company is covered in an earlier post in this series. In December 1953 it was announced that LeBrun had formed a new company called Dominion & Grimm, Inc. headquartered on Delorimier Street in Montreal.
Dominion Evaporator Company advertisement from 1944.
In combining the Grimm Manufacturing Company with the Dominion Evaporator Company, LeBrun brought together many years of experience and customer satisfaction. Together as one, Dominion & Grimm was able to offer a wide selection of maple sugaring supplies ranging from his own evaporator and arch designs, to those of the Champion evaporators and well-known Grimm cans, covers, spiles, and tanks.
Advertisement from December 1952 for Dominion Evaporators alerting sugarmakers to request their 1953 catalog.
Sylva LeBrun patented his own sap spout design in 1955 (CA510618), which became a mainstay in Canadian sugarbushes. Dominion & Grimm was known for carrying a wide array of spout styles. Hale Mattoon’s excellent book from 2017 titled Maple Spouts Spiles Taps & Tools contains a nice series of illustrations of the assortment of LeBrun designs and D & G inventory.
At some point, possibly after the formation of Dominion & Grimm, the company added home and commercial canning and sterilizing equipment as well as animal feed troughs and other assorted farm supplies to the products they sold.
Patent drawing for Sylva LeBrun’s 1955 sap spout design (CA510618).
Deteriorating health forced Sylva LeBrun into a kind of semi-retirement in the mid-1950s before he passed away in July 1958. In 1962, Dominion & Grimm, Inc. was sold to the Boileau family. A few years later, in 1966, the company relocated from Delorimier Street to a more modern and larger factory location in an industrial park in the Montreal neighborhood of Ville d’Anjou, where it remains to this day.
Dominion & Grimm , Inc. advertisement from 1955 promoting their sale of one gallon lithographed cans in four colors.
With the passing of Mr. Boileau in 1984, his daughter sold the company to long time manager Marcel Pepin and the company has remained in his hands to this day. Additional manufacturing sites have been established in Victoriaville and Thetford Mines, Quebec as well as warehouse and sales facilities in St. Albans, Vermont. In recent years the company has diversified beyond only equipment for the maple syrup industry to begin manufacturing biogas production equipment and the company now employs as many as 130 people.
Dominion & Grimm, Inc. catalog cover from 1961 with an image of their Delorimier Street facility.
Cook’s Patent Evaporator is often described as one of the earliest, if not “the” earliest evaporators to replace the simple flat pan in making maple sugar. Designed by Daniel McFarland Cook, most often identified as D.M. Cook, his sugar evaporator was put to use in evaporating both cane sugar juice and maple sap. Cook began experimenting with his design in the mid-1850s with his first patent (US20631) received in June 1858.
As early as 1859, newspaper accounts began to spread the word of the improved speed and quality of maple sugar Cook’s Patent Evaporator could produce and by the 1860s manufacturers were placing advertisements for its purchase.
First version of Cook’s Portable Patent Evaporator
Born in 1820 in Mansfield, Ohio, the farm of Cook’s youth included a 1,000 tree sugarbush. With this exposure to the process and methods of making maple sugar in the early part of the 1800s, Cook felt there was a better way. At heart, Cook was a thinker and a tinkerer and it was no surprise that he put his mind to improving and speeding up the oftentimes slow process of boiling maple sap to syrup and sugar. Where Cook improved on the flat pan was in his introduction of a series of continuously winding channels that would push or pull the higher density and warmer sap along through the maze to a point where it could be drawn off as syrup. Cook’s evaporator was faster and used less wood and through the natural process of sap moving through the maze-like channels, the syrup could be drawn off at a density that made it immediately ready for “stirring off” or “sugaring off” into granulated sugar.
Drawing of Cook’s 1858 patent for an evaporating pan (US20361).
His earliest design sat on a portable arch that featured rockers on each side that facilitated making subtle shifts in the flow and level of sap and syrup in the pan. His later improved design that earned him a patent in 1863 saw the evaporator resting on a more permanent brick arch.
As an engineer and inventor, Cook personally never manufactured the Cook’s Evaporator for sale himself, but rather sold the manufacturing and sales rights to a variety of individuals around the country. Cooks Sugar Evaporator was first available only through a number of Ohio firms like Hedges, Free & Co. of Cincinnati; Blymeyer, Bates & Day Co. of Mansfield; and H.W. Wetmore from Akron. Ohio. A few years later, firms all across the maple, sorghum, and cane processing states were making and selling Cook’s evaporator.
Advertisement from 1860 for Cook’s Improved Portable Sugar Evaporator for sorghum and maple sugar.
In 1863, he improved on his earlier patent design by adding a series of drop flues to the bottom of the back pan. Interestingly, these flues ran transverse to the length of the arch, rather than parallel to the arch and in alignment with the flow of heat and gases from the fire box to the back of the arch and up the stack at the rear. The idea was an excellent design improvement although the execution was not as well refined.
Patent drawing for Cook’s 1863 evaporating pan design with drop flues (US37736).
By November 1863, one advertisement from C.C. Post, the first Cook’s Evaporator salesman in Vermont, said there were already 6000 of Cook’s evaporators in use and by 1868 over 20,000 sold. Cook’s innovations in evaporator design set the ball in motion for many more improvements by other inventors and maple producers in the coming years and by the 1880s the Cook’s Sugar Evaporator was already becoming obsolete.
1868 advertisement for Cook’s sugar evaporator sold by C.C. Post out of Hinesburgh, Vermont.
Soon after, other evaporator designs came on the market, such as Cory’s Evaporator discussed in the history of the Vermont Farm Machine Company history. It is especially interesting to note that the engraving image used to illustrate advertisements for Cory’s Evaporator and Cook’s Evaporator by different newspapers in the early 1860s are exactly the same image. Recall however, that the Cory’s Evaporator was not patented until 1861, whereas Cook’s was patented in 1858. Compare the drawing below to the drawing for Cory’s in the Vermont Farm Machine Company history.
Close up of the drawing illustrating Cook’s evaporator in advertisements from the 1860s.
It is probably true that Cook’s Evaporator was his most successful invention as far as the impact it made, but it was by no means his most interesting. “Crazy Cook” as he was sometimes called around his home of Mansfield also worked to invent a “flying machine” and a “perpetual electrical generator and engine.” As he told a reporter from Cincinnati in 1886, this machine could run off its own current and power any machine in the world at no cost to run it.
Image of Daniel McFarland Cook.
As for the flying machine, Cook built a prototype in 1859 that looked something like a 10-foot tall metal bullet or diving bell with portholes, but that invention never really “got off the ground” so to speak. Miraculously that original model was found to still exist and has been preserved in Mansfield, Ohio.
Unfortunately for Cook, he was never able to turn his genius into long term success and later lost his farm and died a relatively poor man in 1897 at the age of 74.
