The Towle Maple Products Company St. Johnsbury Ball Jar

A Short Lived Glass Jar but Uniquely Popular Among Bottle Collectors in the Modern Era

Matthew M. Thomas

Example of Towle’s St. Johnsbury jar with intact Log Cabin Syrup paper label. From the collection of Scott Benjamine.

Among Ball jar collectors, the Towle’s St. Johnsbury Sure Seal jars are a widely sought-after series. These round jars and glass lids with a snap-down, Lightning style wire closure were manufactured in a unique 22-ounce size in the Ball Sure Seal shape exclusively for the Towle Maple Products Company and were not available or sold to the home canner. Often referred to in the Ball jar collector community as packer jars, product jars, or customer jars, these jars were originally filled with various brands of the Towle Company’s blended syrups for retail sale in shops and grocery stores, most notably the signature brand of Log Cabin Syrup.

Example of Towle’s St. Johnsbury jar with intact Great Mountain Brand Syrup paper label. From the collection of John Patterson.

There are at least nine variations of the jars that can be divided into groups based on glass color, closure style, and embossing text. For example, most of the jars are Ball Blue in color and show the tell-tale circular scar from being made on the Owens automatic bottle making machine.

There is also a version that is clear in color, in the same dimensions and 22-ounce volume, but has the basal markings of having been manufactured on the Ball Bingham automatic bottle making machine. Other important distinguishing features are variations in the presence and absence and specific wording of the text embossed on the body of the jars.

Front and back faces of clear glass version of Towle’s St. Johnsbury jar with Lightning style beaded neck closure (RB 320-9).
Example of Towle’s St. Johnsbury jar with intact Crown or Canada Brand Syrup paper label. From the collection of Linda White.

Although the jars found in most collections today do not have paper labels, originally all the Towle’s St. Johnsbury jars had paper labels on their front face, either the well-known Log Cabin Syrup brand label or one of a few other brands used by the Towle Company. Towle’s St. Johnsbury jars with intact paper labels from known collections include Log Cabin Syrup, Great Mountain Brand Syrup, and the Crown of Canada Brand Syrup. The Towle’s St. Johnsbury jars can be tightly dated to between the middle of 1910 and the end of 1914, based on the known dates of operation of the Towle Company plant in St. Johnsbury, Vermont which is discussed below.

Example of the Ball and SURE SEAL embossed text on back face of the Towle’s St. Johnsbury Ball jars.

All the jars in the Ball Blue glass color variation feature the Ball name embossed on the back face in script with un underline, a looping double LL, a dropped “a” which are known to date between 1910 and 1923 on Ball made jars. This detail corresponds to the historical record that the Towle Company operated in St. Johnsbury from 1910 to 1914. Under the scripted “Ball” name in capitalized sans serif typeface are the words “SURE SEAL.”

Image of the cover of Red Book No. 12, the definitive collector’s guide for Ball jars.

The Towle’s St. Johnsbury jar is so notable and popular among Ball jar collectors that it has been recognized and described in Red Book 12: The Collectors Guide to Old Fruit Jars. The most recent edition of the Red Book, published in 2018, lists nine variations of this jar (RB 320-4 through RB 320-12). I have created a table based on the Red Book variations to assist in differentiating and recognizing the sometimes subtle differences in these variations.

 

Table illustrating details and features of the nine variations of Towle Maple Products St. Johnsbury jars based on Red Book No. 12.

Company History

The Towle Maple Products Company got its beginning in 1888 in St. Paul, Minnesota as Towle & McCormick’s, selling Log Cabin Syrup in a rectangular metal can. After a year in operation, McCormick left the company and Patrick J. Towle became the sole owner.

In the company’s early years, it packed its Log Cabin brand blended maple and cane sugar syrup in tall rectangular cans as well as in quart and pint sized wide-bodied and narrow-necked bottles, all originally exhibiting paper labels. In 1897 the company introduced its signature cabin shaped metal can, designed by Log Cabin Syrup salesman, James W. Fuller (US design patent 26,936).

Towle Maple Products Company plant in St. Paul, Minnesota that suffered a devastating fire in 1909. Photo from the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society.

By the turn of the century, the Log Cabin Syrup brand had become the most popular and best-selling blended table syrup in the country. However, being at the top of the industry did not protect it from the risk or disaster of fire, sadly a common occurrence in large factories at the time. On December 15th, 1909, the three-story brick factory of the Towle Maple Products Company, located on the west side flats of St. Paul, Minnesota suffered a devastating fire. Built in 1901 and opened in 1902, this plant was the Towle Company’s only location for the blending, bottling, and canning of syrups. Although the company quickly went to work to repair the damaged building, they were left in a difficult position and needed to find a way to continue their production and distribution.

Circa 1910, hand colored postcard of businesses in the Bay Street area of St. Johnsbury, Vermont with close-up of Towle’s building (former Cary Company) painted “Towle Maple Products Co.” on front and “Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup” on side.

To their great fortune, in March of 1910, George C. Cary, one of their colleagues and a sometimes syrup supplier, offered to sell to P.J. Towle the Cary Maple Sugar Company processing plant on Bay Street in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Cary was in the midst of expanding and reorganizing his growing maple sugar processing empire and this sale allowed him to get rid of an aging facility and provide capital to help further his company’s growth.

The Towle Company took advantage of this significant interruption in production and sales to makes changes in their product labeling and marketing. It was during this period of rebuilding and reorganization that the St. Johnsbury Ball jar was born and put into use. The location was a boon for the Towle Company in locating their bottling activities closer to the source of the maple syrup they were purchasing for their blends. In addition, being in New England added greater creditability to their syrups by allowing them to legitimately include the state of Vermont on their labels and advertisements.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from 1912 showing the Towle Maple Products Company location on Bay Street in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

Fulling embedding themselves in St. Johnsbury, in April 1910 the Towle Company filed papers of incorporation in the State of Vermont and got to work remodeling the former Cary building situated adjacent to the shared tracks of the Boston & Maine Railroad and the St. Johnsbury & Lake Champlain Railroad. Inside this wooden barn-like building, giant steam-heated copper kettles of 150- and 250-gallon capacity were used to boil and blend maple syrup and cane sugar before being filtered and stored in 550-gallon tanks for packaging in glass and metal.

The Towle Company was able to rebuild and reopen their damaged St. Paul plant later in 1910, permitting the company to bottle syrup in both Minnesota and Vermont. Advertisements from this era list San Francisco as a third location for the company, but the west coast branch was only a warehouse and distribution site with no actual syrup manufacturing or bottling activity taking place.

During their operations in St. Johnsbury, in September 1912 the Towle Company suffered the unexpected death of company founder and family patriarch P.J. Towle. Since the company was privately owned and managed by P.J. Towle, his sons, and son-in-law; presidency of the company then shifted to his oldest son, William J. Towle.

Image of the Pillsbury-Baldwin Building in St. Johnsbury, Vermont which was occupied by the Towle Maple Products Company from 1913 to 1914.

With production running from seven in the morning to midnight, six days a week, the Towle Company rapidly outgrew the Bay Street plant in St. Johnsbury, and in March 1913 moved a half mile to the south into a much newer two-story fire-proof plant built of concrete block. Erected two years before, this plant was vacated by the failed Pillsbury-Baldwin bathroom fixture company. The Towle company continued operations in the former Pillsbury-Baldwin plant for another year and a half before announcing their decision to end operations in St. Johnsbury on December 31, 1914 and move all production activities back to St. Paul. After years of abandonment and neglect, the Pillsbury-Baldwin building formerly occupied by the Towle Company was demolished by the city of St. Johnsbury in September 2019. Likewise, Towle’s first St. Johnsbury location, former Cary Company plant on Bay Street was demolished in 1927 to make room for expansion by the neighboring Ide’s grist mill and grain elevator.

Example of a Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup advertisement noting St. Johnsbury along with St. Paul, and San Francisco as the location of refineries and offices of the Towle Maple Products Company. Saturday Evening Post, October 15, 1910.

With the closing of the St. Johnsbury plant, the Towle Company was forced to reword their labels and advertising and only list their St. Paul, Minnesota plant. It was at this time that the company also decided to discontinue bottling syrup in glass. From 1915 to 1931, Log Cabin Syrup was exclusively packaged in metal cabin shaped tins of pint, quart, or half gallon in size. In the 1910-1914 time period that the Ball jars were made and in use, Towle Company continued to package syrup in metal cabin-shaped tins as well as in eight-sided narrow neck bottles, and round narrow neck bottles, some with screw on caps and others with crown seal caps. Surprisingly, in my years of researching the history and packaging of the Towle Company, I have yet to find a newspaper or magazine advertisement mentioning or illustrating the sale of Towle brand syrups in a Ball Sure Seal jar.

Jar Details and Features

Looking closer at the details of these jars, we see that they were made with one of two different Lightning style closures. They exhibit either a Lightning style closure with lugs, sometimes called experimental dimples or bosses, and a heavy wire lever bail that inserted into the round glass dimples or bosses on the neck (RB 32-5, 320-7, 320-8, 320-9, 320-10, 320-11).  The other Lightning style closure has a beaded neck seal with a thinner twisted wire used to anchor the heavy wire bail below the encircling glass bead or ridge (RB 320-4, 320-6, 320-12).

The two styles of Lightning closures found on Towle’s St. Johnsbury Ball jars. On the left, the beaded neck version with the heavy wire bail anchored by a thinner wire below an encircling glass ridge. On the right, the heavy wire bail anchored in circular glass bosses or dimples.
Example of jar with back face embossed text of PACKED IN and BY THE TOWLE and front face text of ST JOHNSBURY VT and MAPLE PRODUCTS CO.

The embossed text on the upper face of the jars is most recognizable to today’s collectors, since the original paper labels are almost always absent (RB 320-5, 320-6, 320-9, 320-10). There are two variations in the embossed text on the upper body of the jar faces. It is worth noting that this variation in the order and placement of embossed text on the upper face is not recognized in the Red Book at this time. In variation A, the upper line of text on the back side reads, “PACKED IN” and bottom line of text, “BY THE TOWLE” (above Ball SURE SEAL). The upper line of text on the front side of this variation reads, “ST JOHNSBURY VT” and the bottom line of text, “MAPLE PRODUCTS CO.” The side with the Ball SURE SEAL text is called the back here because the opposite side without the Ball text is where the paper label originally would have been pasted.

Example of jar with back face embossed text of PACKED IN and ST JOHNSBURY VT and front face text of BY THE TOWLE and MAPLE PRODUCTS CO.

In variation B, the upper line of text on the back side reads, “PACKED IN” and lower line of text, “ST JOHNSBURY VT” (above Ball SURE SEAL). The upper line of text on the front side reads, “BY THE TOWLE” and the lower line of text, “MAPLE PRODUCTS CO”. There is also a rare mistake jar variation (RB 320-10) where the letter “S” was left out of the word Johnsbury, instead written as JOHNBURY.

 

Example of variation with blank upper portion of the front and back faces with the complete Ball name and dimple style closure attachment (RB 320-7 or 320-11).

There are also variations with no embossed text on the upper face where a blank slug plate was used in manufacturing the jars (RB 320-4, 320-7, 320-8, 320-11, 320-12). Although such jars lack embossed text to associate them with the Towle Company and St. Johnsbury, we know from the paper label example for Great Mountain Brand Syrup that such jars with the blank upper face were in fact used by the Towle Maple Products Company. It is doubtful that any other company was given an opportunity to use these unique 22-ounce Sure Seal Ball jars, even those lacking embossed text referring to Towle or St. Johnsbury. Certainly, no examples of such use of this jar by any company other than Towle Maple Products have been found.

All the blue glass versions of these jars contain the words “Ball” and “SURE SEAL” in two lines embossed on the lower portion of one face.

Example where the top of the LL on Ball has been cut off by the blank slug plate (RB 320-8 and 320-12).

This version of the Ball logo is in script form with an underscore and no loop connecting the last “L” of “Ball” with the underscore. In some cases, the top portion of the “LL” in the word “Ball” has been cut off in the manufacturing process (RB 320-8, 320-12). The single clear version of these jars is completely lacking in any of the “Ball” or “SURE SEAL” brand embossing (RB 320-9)

 

Image of the patent date embossed on the base of the Towle’s St. Johnsbury jars.

About half of the varieties (320-4, 320-5, 320-6, 320-7, 320-8) of these jars are embossed on base with the text “Pat’d July 14, 1908” which refers to the U.S. patent number 893,008, awarded to Anthony F. McDonnell for the glass cap combined with a Lightning style wire closure design. All these Towle’s St. Johnsbury jars are 7.25 inches tall, not including the lid and have a diameter at the base of 3.25 inches.

Side-by-side comparison of true or correct Towle’s St. Johnsbury jar glass lid on left and similar, but incorrect Ball jar Lightning glass lid on right.

Also unique to these jars is a very specific, and hard to find glass lid. According to experts in the Ball jar collecting community, the “correct” glass lid for these jars is in the same Ball Blue color as the jar but unlike other similarly shaped and sized lids, the proper lid has a shallower depression in the center and a less steep central ramp.

Profile drawing illustrating the differences in form and depth of trough in correct (on left) and incorrect Ball Lightning lid (on right).

The correct lid also never has any embossed text showing a patent date, which is sometimes present on the similar, but incorrect Sure Seal Lightning style lids. The clear glass lid for RB 320-9 is identical to the correct Ball Blue colored lid, only differing in color.

Examples of other contemporary clear glass product jars with beaded neck Lightning style closures and glass lids, presumably manufactured by the Ball Company. Rigney & Co. Packers of Maple Products on left and Golden Tree Brand Syrup on the right.

There are a number of clear glass jars of a similar shape and size and specialty packer jars with the Lightning style glass lid and wire closures that were almost certainly made by Ball. These jars have similar embossed wording and were even used for packing blended maple flavored syrups, such as Golden Tree Syrup from the New England Syrup Company and Park Brand syrup from Rigney & Co. Packers of Maple Products out of Brooklyn, NY. However, these jars are of slightly different dimension and volume than the Towle’s St. Johnsbury Ball jars and technically classified as a separate group by Ball jar experts.

As one can see, for the serious collector of Ball jars or Log Cabin Syrup antiques and memorabilia, there are many nuances and details to consider and recognize when seeking to build a complete collection of these jars. Of course the holy grail of Towle’s St. Johnsbury Ball jars are those with an intact paper label. With luck, more such jars will be found and shared.

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Special thanks to John Patterson, Linda White, Marty Troxell, Scott Benjamine, and Joe Coulson for there assistance with advice and permission to share images of jars from their private collections.

History Chapter in New Edition of Maple Syrup Producers Manual

Matthew M. Thomas

Recently the revised and updated 3rd edition of the North American Maple Syrup Producers Manual was released as a FREE digital download in PDF format. The newest edition was many years in the making since the 2nd edition came out in 2006.

With this latest edition, I am happy to share that I was asked to contribute as a co-author by revising and expanding the previous chapter titled History of Maple Syrup and Sugar Production, written by Dr. Melvin Koelling.

To get access to the complete download of the manual, send a blank email to mapleproducersmanual@gmail.com and you will receive a link to view and download the 434-page manual.

On-demand print versions of the complete manual will be available for sale in the next few months. If you are interested in a PDF copy of the history chapter I helped write, you can read and download a PDF of only the history chapter here or by clicking on the image of the article.

Bringing New Life to a Film on Minnesota Maple Syrup Making in the 1960s

Note: The following article, written by the creator of this website, appeared in the June 2022 edition of “Minnesota Maple News”, the newsletter of the Minnesota Maple Syrup Producers’ Association. You can view the film in the story at this link.

 

By Matthew Thomas

In 1961, the University of Minnesota Extension Service produced a 16 mm color film depicting both old and modern methods of maple syrup production. The film was produced to promote and expand the production of maple syrup in Minnesota. According to the film’s press release, the film “points to the untapped profits in Minnesota’s maples.”

Images from the film. Clockwise from upper left – title image, sugaring in the Mille Lacs Ojibwe community, roadside syrup stand, displaying a can of Minnesota maple syrup.

Titled “Working the Sugarbush: The Maple Sugar Story,” the film was created through the efforts of long time Minnesota Extension Forester Parker Anderson, who provided the script and technical direction, and University of Minnesota Extension visual education specialist Gerald R. McKay, who did the filming. Narration was provided by Bob Doyle, a well-known KUOM radio figure and Director of TV and Radio at the University of Minnesota.

Most of the scenes were taken around Mille Lacs Lake and in the east central part of Minnesota. The purpose of the film is to show opportunities for profit available to those who do a good job making maple syrup. The opening scenes mention how the state’s early Native American residents made maple syrup and show Chippewa Indians at Mille Lacs boiling sap in open air kettles. Later sequences show the selection and tapping of trees with brace and bit and then a backpack mounted power tapper, which was novel at that time. Additional scenes emphasize other cutting edge sap gathering technology for that era in the form of heavy plastic sap collection bags and the 3M Mapleflo brand plastic tubing system. Many different faces appear, ranging from foresters and extension agents to overall clad syrup makers feeding wood fire evaporators in steam filled sugarhouses.

The 22-minute film was one of 12 agriculture related films chosen by United States Department of Agriculture to be featured for the month of January in 1962 in the patio theater of the USDA building in Washington DC. The film was later distributed by state agricultural agents to be shown to groups and at various events around the state.

When it was discovered that the copy of this film was preserved in the archives of the Minnesota Historical Society and was still in good condition, a request was submitted for a digital copy to be made of the 16 mm film. After determining that the University of Minnesota Extension continued to hold copyright for the film, a request was granted for myself and the Minnesota Maple Syrup Producers Association (MMSPA) to have permission to share the digital film with the public on our respective websites. A high[1]resolution digital copy is being acquired from the Minnesota Historical Society. Those interested in viewing the film can look for a link to watch and download it which will be posted in the future on the Maple Syrup History website (www.maplesyruphistory.com). Additional arrangements are also being explored for the film to be available for viewing and download at the MMSPA website.

The Man and the Can: Patrick J. Towle and the St. Paul Origins of Log Cabin Syrup

Click on the image above for a link to a PDF of the article.

I am happy to be able to share my recent article on on the origins and early years of the Towle’s Log Cabin Syrup Company. Log Cabin Syrup was started in 1888 by Patrick J. Towle in St. Paul, Minnesota, so it was fitting that this article was published by the Ramsey County Historical Society, home to St. Paul. This article appears in the Spring 2022 edition of the Ramsey County History magazine.

Special attention in the story is given to the company founder, Patrick J. Towle, and his introduction and use of the unique cabin shaped metal can to package and market his syrup made from a blend of maple syrup and cane syrup. Additional topics of note addressed in the article are the realities behind the question of where the idea for the log cabin name and can shape came from, as well as the company’s early use of advertising and promotion in national publications, something that was uncommon for a syrup company in the early part of the 1900s.

The fate of the Log Cabin Syrup company brand was ultimately to be sold to the Postum Company, later to be named General Foods, but as the story shares, that was not the end of the blended syrup business for the Towle family in St. Paul.

Click this link to access a PDF copy of the article.

 

 

Sugar-Bush Antiques: Virginia Vidler’s Timeless Guide to Collecting Maple Sugaring Antiques

By Matthew M. Thomas

Image of the book “Sugar-Bush Antiques” with original artwork on the dust jacket by East Aurora, NY artist Rix Jennings.

For collectors of maple sugaring antiques, artifacts, and material culture, there is one book that stands out as a kind of beginners’ guide and check list to the many different items one might come across and chose to collect. That guide is the book Sugar-Bush Antiques by Virginia Vidler. The book was published in 1979 by A.S. Barnes and Co. a New York based textbook and encyclopedia publisher at the time.

Sugar-Bush Antiques was Vidler’s second guide book on antiques, following on the 1976 release of American Indian Antiques: Arts and Artifacts of the Northeast, also published by A.S. Barnes. She also later published a book in 1985 on collectibles and souvenirs related to Niagara Falls.

Virginia Vidler in her element searching for sugar-bush antiques at a New York sugarbush.

Although Virginia Vidler’s name is on her books as a sole author, in reality, all of her books were a joint project of Virginia and her husband Edward Vidler. As an amateur photographer, Ed Vidler’s main contribution was in providing the many black and white and color images of artifacts, antiques, sugarhouses, and sugaring accoutrement in this well-illustrated book. Vidler asked local East Aurora and Buffalo artist and illustrator Rixford “Rix” Upham Jennings to do the color painting to provide a unique and original cover design.

Image from the frontispiece of “Sugar-Bush Antiques.”

Virginia Vidler was interested in local New York and new England history and served as the historian for the Town of Aurora. Her interest in maple sugaring and sugar-bush antiques primarily came from her fascination and interest in researching and documenting history. Virginia and Ed Vidler’s son Don Vidler shared that they were not a family of maple sugar makers, although there was a great deal of sugaring in the countryside around them. According to son Don, it was common for the Vidlers to head out on the weekends for sugarhouse and antique hunting expeditions in western New York.

Image showing the well illustrated pages of “Sugar-Bush Antiques.”

More than simply a collection of photographs of old maple sugaring items, this book traces the history of the maple industry from Native Americans to early pioneers, and into the modern era. With a focus on the material remains of maple sugar and syrup making, there is a special emphasis on the changing technology of production and packaging as well as the change of materials from wood to metal as well as ceramic and glass. From the smallest and humblest wood or tin maple sugar mold to the large kettles, evaporators, or gathering tanks and onto the finest cut glass syrup pitchers, there is little that has been overlooked. Photographs, paintings and prints, and other printed ephemera like postcards and industry guidebooks and reports are also examined.

Additional example of pages from “Sugar-Bush Antiques” showing the many maple sugaring artifacts illustrated and described in the book.

According to Don Vidler, Virginia and Ed Vidler’s son, the Vidlers amassed a reasonably big collection of maple related antiques, some of which appeared in the photos in the book. Mrs. Vidler recognized that what is considered common place today, will someday be an antique and of interest to the collector. She was quoted in a 1985 newspaper article where she gave a bit of advice on her collecting strategy, noting “when you go to an auction at a farm in the sugar bush country, be sure to check out the items in the barns and behind the old sheds. That is where you will find the authentic sugar bush antiques that no one else seems to recognize.”

When the Vidlers were not running around the countryside visiting sugarbushes and sugarhouses, collecting antiques, or taking photographs, they spent most of their time running Vidler’s 5 and 10 in East Aurora, New York, a short distance from Buffalo. Vidler’s 5 and 10 was started by Ed Vidler’s father Robert Vidler in 1930 before brothers Ed and Bob Vidler took it over in the 1940s. Today, Vidler’s is known as the world’s largest 5 and 10 store. Virginia passed away in 1986 and Ed Vidler in 2019.

Sugar-Bush Antiques presents a good general overview of the wide range of tangible items that someone might consider collectible or of interest that represent or is related in some way to the business and activities of making, packaging, and selling maple sugar and maple syrup. Most sugar-bush antique collectors end up specializing in a few select areas or types of items like spouts, packaging tins, or sugar molds and develop a detailed knowledge of those items far beyond what one will find in this book; however, it is still enjoyable to sit down with a book like this and have a virtual museum tour at your fingertips. Fortunately, it is still possible to find used copies of the book through various online book sales websites.

Mountain Meadow Farms: Somerset County’s Modern Central Evaporator Plant

By Matthew M. Thomas

Mountain Meadow Farms was a gigantic maple syrup operation and game farm that operated in Somerset County, Pennsylvania in the 1960s and 1970s. Somerset County is known for its prominence and history as a maple syrup producing area in Pennsylvania. What made Mountain Meadow Farms unique, both in general and in Somerset County in particular, was that rather than being a small family sugaring operation that grew over time, Mountain Meadow Farms was created from scratch as a new operation on a scale not previously seen with the most modern technology and design available at the time.

1974 advertisement for Mountain Meadow Farms from The Republic out of Meyersdale, PA.

The Farms began in 1964 when Blaine “Bud” Walters and his wife Geneva purchased an existing game farm in the hills of Somerset County about two miles north of the village of New Baltimore, Pennsylvania. The Walters were the owners of the successful Walters Tire Service in the town of Somerset. Started in 1941, Walters Tire Service focused on manufacturing, retreading, and selling large size tires for road building equipment and servicing large trucks used in the Pennsylvania coal industry.

Mountain Meadow Farms had its own custom-designed lithographed metal syrup cans. A popular can among syrup can collectors.

According to one account, it was the Walters farm manger Gerald Grasser, who came up with the idea of making maple syrup. As the Walters’ son Jimmy Walters tells it, “Bud never did anything small. When they bought the farm it already had pheasants. There were two pens of pheasants when they bought it and they added turkeys and cattle. There were lots of maple trees so it made sense to tap those.” In addition to pheasants and turkeys, there were chuckers too. Cattle was usually around 300 head, but at one point with calves and heifers, it got up to close to 1000 head which required a lot of feed and work with Walters installing big Harvestore silos and automated feeding machines.

Mountain Meadow Farms sugarhouse in 1967. Photo from March 30, 1967 Bedford County Press article.

When Walters settled on the idea of starting a maple operation around 1963, over the next two years he promptly did everything he could to learn about the maple syrup business. For example, in 1965 he attended Maple Industry Conference in Philadelphia and when it became known just how large of an operation he was planning, he was put in touch with Adin Reynolds of Reynolds Sugar Bush, in Aniwa, Wisconsin, at that time the largest maple sugaring operation in the world. In addition to being able to offer Walters practical advice on setting up and running an operation of this size, the Reynolds Sugar Bush was an equipment dealer for the Vermont Evaporator Company and in the fall of 1965 made the sale to Walters of three 6 x 20’ oil fired evaporators along with all the requisite piping, tanks, and finishing equipment, as well as tapping supplies, plastic tubing and bags for collecting sap from around 20,000 trees. A brand new, 50 x 110 foot, state of the art sugar house was built at a cost of $75,000, complete with finishing area, candy making room, and sales area.

View of Mountain Meadow Farms sugarhouse sales room. Courtesy of Mark Ware and the Somerset County Historical Center.

In all likelihood, the Reynolds encouraged Walters to focus not only on tapping his many thousands of trees, but also to initiate a plan to get local farmers and families to gather and sell sap to him, similar to how the Reynolds operated their many Central Evaporator Plants in Wisconsin. The Walters made purchasing sap a big part of their operation right from the start. In the spring of 1966 in their first year of operation, they tapped 17,000 of their own trees and bought sap from 8,000 trees tapped by others in the vicinity. In the following years Walters increased his sap buying efforts bringing in sap from 25,000 trees paying 5 cents a gallon for delivered sap and 4 cents per gallon for sap that was picked up. As Jimmy Walters recalled, the farm had a mini fleet of tank trucks to pick up and haul sap along with four 10,000 gallon open tanks for sap storage. The farm was also able to enlist the efforts of a number of local 4-H clubs and scout groups to taps trees and gather maple sap, a valuable fundraiser for their organizations.

Mountain Meadow Farms new sugarhouse, circa 1966. Courtesy of Mark Ware and the Somerset County Historical Center.

The Walters were new to the maple business, but they quickly made it known that they manufactured a good product, taking home a number of awards for their maple candy and confections in the judging at the county maple festivals. Despite their newness to the maple industry, Bud Walters’ growing role as an industry leader was recognized and in 1969 he was elected to the Board of Directors of the Somerset County Maple Syrup Producers. In 1970 Bud Walters was crowned county Maple King based on the performance of Mountain Meadow Farms maple products at the festival. Rightly so, Bud acknowledged that that award was only possible because of his wife’s efforts and it really should go to her. However, there were certainly some maple producers from the area who were suspicious and resentful of his approach and rapid success.

Geneva Walters in 1970 displaying some of her marketing packages in the Mountain Meadow Farms sales room. From March 30, 1970 article in Somerset, PA’s Daily American.

The farm sold most of its products through direct sales and mail order sales and through accounts with a number of restaurants and a few retail locations in Pittsburgh. Mail order sales piggy backed on their sale of game birds with a special package of a smoked pheasant and a fresh pheasant and maple syrup. In addition to making syrup and candy, and encouraging the use of creative and attractive packaging, Geneva Walters was a strong proponent of expanding the range of products that could be made and marketed with maple syrup. Related to that, Jimmy Walters shared that his mother was so influential in introducing new maple products, such as a maple syrup based salad dressing, that the Somerset County maple festival was forced to add more categories for judging beyond the traditional syrup, sugar, and candy. Jimmy added that this was one of his parents most important contributions, expanding the range of maple products being made and opening folks’ eyes in the county to other ways to sell and make maple syrup.

View of the USDA Eastern Utilization Research Lab experimental reverse osmosis sap concentrator in use at Mountain Meadow Farms 1969 and 1970, Courtesy of Mark Ware and the Somerset County Historical Center.

As a large operation focused on efficiency and cutting-edge technology, it was chosen in 1969 as the test site of the USDA’s Eastern Utilization Research Lab experimental Reverse Osmosis (R.O.) system. C.O. Willits and his colleagues from USDA’s Philadelphia Lab had developed a portable R.O. unit for testing in real-world sugaring operations. The previous season it was tested at the Sipple sugarbush in Bainbridge, NY but it was decided that the amount of sap available from the Sipple sugarbush for running through the R.O. was insufficient to really measure the R.O.’s performance. Instead, the lab researchers needed a larger operation like Bud Walters’ to really test how well it processed sap. The USDA test R.O. was operated at Mountain Meadow Farms again the following season, contributing valuable information to the USDA labs development and improvement of reverse osmosis as a viable technology for the maple syrup industry.

View of the entrance to the Mountain Meadow Farms sugarhouse. Note the reverse osmosis unit inside. Courtesy of Mark Ware and the Somerset County Historical Center.

Making syrup from 40,000 to 45,000 taps in the 1960s and 1970s positioned Mountain Meadow Farms as arguably the second largest maple operation in the world, second only to the Reynolds Sugar Bush in Wisconsin.  By 1974 the farm was advertising itself to be “The Largest and Most Modern Central Evaporating Plant in the World!” and was clearly helping push and pull the maple industry to a new level of technological sophistication. But it did come with costs. According to Jimmy Walters, the farms had fairly high overhead with payroll to meet and little actual profit coming in. Many of the business ventures the Walters were involved with, including Mountain Meadow Farms were operating on loans and credit and at that time interest rates were relatively high at around 20-21%.  The last season of the Mountain Meadow Farms maple syrup making operation was the spring of 1977. When the costs of operation became too great Bud Walters decided to sell and attempted to keep the sugaring operation together and sell it as a package to an interested buyer. Unfortunately, at that time, the scale of the operation was simply too large for any potentially interested buyers.  In May 1978 the farming and sugaring equipment of the farm were sold at auction and the Mountain Meadow Farms ceased to operate. Bud and Geneva Walters passed the tire business to their son Jimmy in 1978 and enjoyed retirement. Bud passed away in 1990 and Geneva in 1995.

 

Special thanks to Mark Ware, Executive Director of the Somerset County Historical Center and to Jimmy Walters, son of Bud and Geneva Walters, for their assistance and sharing of personal memories and materials.

A Look at Early 19th Century Beginnings for Flat Pans and Sugarhouses

 

It is a common question in the history of the maple industry of when maple sugar makers began to replace kettles with flat pans and arches and began to build sugarhouses.  My latest maple history contribution to the March 2022 edition of the Maple Syrup Digest (Vol. 61, no. 1), attempts to address these questions in sharing a handful of well-dated and detailed written descriptions of flat pans and sugarhouses from the first half of the 19th century. In addition, one of the earliest examples of an illustration of a sugarhouse from 1847 is also presented.

You can read the article at this link or by clinking on the accompanying image.  The Maple Syrup Digest is the official publication of the North American Maple Syrup Council.

 

Research Update: The Iconic Quebec Round Syrup Can

By Matthew M. Thomas

In November 2021 I posted a story about discoveries I made that shed light on the origins of Quebec’s iconic round can for packaging maple syrup. As is sometimes the case, publishing a research report can spark interest and open up new doors to information and lines of inquiry.

Following up on that post I was able to learn a bit more about the origins of the Dominion & Grimm (D & G) design for syrup can labels, arguably the most famous and the truly iconic image of these 26 oz. / 540 ml cans.

Le Bulletin des Agriculteurs advertisement from December 1955 for the new one gallon, four-color lithographed rectangular syrup can from Dominion & Grimm.

As noted in the previously posted story, the earliest evidence I could find for the appearance or use of the D & G design was a  December 1955 advertisement announcing the introduction of a new four color lithographed can in the one gallon size. The earliest dated image I could find of the use of this D & G design on a round 26 ounce can was in a D & G Catalog from 1961.

Graphic image of D & G trademark design from United States Patent and Trademark Office registration.

Trying to get a bit more information on the early dates and the creator of the D & G design, I examined the trademark history of the image for both Canada (application number 1942475) and the United States (serial number 87833883). In both cases the trademark record indicates that the design first appeared sometime before 1962, but there were no more specific details about the first date of use. Helpful as an official record, but we already knew it was in use well before 1962.

Excerpt from 1961 Dominion & Grimm equipment catalog showing the D & G design on gallon. half gallon, quart, and 26 ounce round cans.

Shifting gears to see if I could find out the name of the artist who designed the D & G label, I contacted Dominion & Grimm and was pleased to be put in touch with Monsieur François Corriveau, Dominion & Grimm’s Marketing and Communications contact, who was very gracious in tackling my questions. Mr. Corriveau was able to tell me, “we have an old but undated framed poster of the artwork at the office with mentions at the bottom that says “Registered drawing” and “Design by Sylva Lebrun”.

Sylva LeBrun is the founder of Dominion Evaporators in Montreal in 1940. LeBrun later purchased the Grimm  in 1953 and combined them to form the Dominion & Grimm Company. So, it was Mr. LeBrun himself who is credited with the design for the D & G syrup cans.

Example of an early one gallon size D & G can, note the lack of volume or weight information. From the collections of Bev Campbell.

Mr. Corriveau further added, “that It seems that there is no traces of when the can with the famous design was introduced. Dominion evaporators was really big in canning equipment for food in the beginning of the 1950’s. (Sterilization and so forth). So we always assumed that the can came first (as soon as 1951) and the metal jugs arrived later in 1955. But we have no evidence that this is what really happened.”

Considering: 1) that Mr. LeBrun was credited with the design; 2) the earliest example we have of the design is a 1955 D & G advertisement; and 3) taking into account that Dominion & Grimm as a company did not exist until 1953, it seems likely that the D &G design was in existence, or at least in use, no earlier than 1953 and most likely was created by Sylva Lebrun around 1954.

Special thanks to Mr. François Corriveau and his colleagues at Dominion & Grimm for sharing their knowledge and company history and helping us all learn a little more about the history of this iconic syrup can.

 

 

Syrup Packing Company Histories: The J.M. Abraham Co.

The text for the following history was written by Mary Mortimer and Scott Abraham, the great-great grandson of J.M. Abraham. It first appeared as a post on the Facebook page of the Logan County History Center. It is reprinted here with their permission and the permission of the Logan County History Center in Bellefontaine, Ohio.

By Mary Mortimer and Scott Abraham

J.M. Abraham, circa 1920. Source: Logan County History Center.

James M. Abraham was born in Union County, Ohio in 1856. When James was eleven years old his family moved to Jefferson Township in Logan County. In 1883, he moved to Bellefontaine and ran a grocery business on Main St. for eighteen years. During this time Mr. Abraham became interested in the manufacturing of maple syrup. He purchased raw syrup from local farmers and processed it for sale in city markets.

J.M. Abraham’s grocery business was a great success. An article in the Bellefontaine Republican in April 1889 stated the following:

“One great secret of the success of Mr. Abraham is that he never misrepresents anything. His instructions to all customers is that “If the goods you have bought do not prove to be as represented, or if anything is wrong with them, return the same to me and your loss will be made good, or the money refunded to you”. This fact is well known to the people, and as they know that the word of this gentleman can be relied upon, they flock to his store by the hundreds.

The stock of goods carried embraces every article that comes under the head of groceries, with all the novelties in the line. A special feature is made of canned and bottled goods of which he carries an exceptionally large and fine assortment. He pays particular attention to foreign fruits, such as bananas, oranges and lemons. Vegetable and berries receive special attention during their season. He also handles stoneware and crockery in a wholesale way. He also stocks queensware and glassware which he will be closing out”.

Metal mold for maple sugar loaf from J.M. Abraham Co. Logan County History Center Collections.

In January of 1900, Abraham and F.N. Johnson organized the F.N. Johnson Grocery Co. with Mr. Abraham serving as Vice President and his son, Kenneth Abraham, secretary. They had an extensive grocery business and manufactured and marketed maple syrup.

1934 Pittsburgh Press advertisement for Abraham’s Ohio Chief Maple Syrup, only $1.79 for a full gallon can.

In December 1908, the J.M. Abraham Co was granted a charter at Columbus, Ohio. The incorporators were J.M. Abraham, Kenneth Abraham, Duncan Dow, Charles S. Hockett and Frank Dowell. The company was capitalized at $25,000. They were to engage in the wholesale grocery, maple syrup, and produce business. The new company was located in a brick building on Garfield Ave. owned by Mr. Abraham.

Excerpt from the 1914 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map for Bellefontaine, Ohio, showing in pink the J.M. Abraham Apple Butter Plant on Garfield Avenue.

In January 1909, Mr. Abraham sold his stock in the F.N. Johnson grocery Co. and began business as the J.M. Abraham Co. Mr. Abraham served as President and his son, Kenneth, was secretary and treasurer. The J.M. Abraham business was very successful and in 1912 a new larger building was erected at 405-407 Garfield Ave. The new larger building provided more storage capacity and modern steam equipment was installed for the manufacturing and storing of apple butter.

1947 Pittsburgh Press advertisement for Abraham’s Old Home blended cane and maple syrup.

Their Ohio Chief brand apple butter was very popular. Most of the apples they used for apple butter came from New York state. Their annual output was over 75,000 gallons. For many years the plant was known as “the old apple butter factory” and the aroma of cooked apples could be smelled in the air. Their maple syrup business also grew. At the time they produced the most maple syrup in Logan County. Raw syrup was shipped in from New York, Vermont, and northern Ohio to meet their demand. Abraham’s two main maple syrup brands were Ohio Chief and Snow Bound. They also manufactured a blend called Old Home. During the season they had numerous salesmen on the road selling thousands of gallons of maple syrup.

Examples of bottles of Abraham’s Sunrise cane syrup and Ohio Chief pure maple syrup. Source: Scott Abraham and the Logan County History Center.
Example of a half can can with paper label showing Abraham’s Old Chief Pure Sap Maple Syrup.

After James M. Abraham passed away in 1932 the Abraham family continued operations at the J.M. Abraham facility. In about 1939 they scaled down their business and just dealt with the processing and sale of maple syrup. In May 1964, the Abraham family sold the J.M. Abraham Co to the American Maple Products Corp. from Newport, Vermont. They purchased all the assets including the trademarks, labels, molds for maple sugar patties and equipment used to produce maple products. The Vermont firm was to continue carrying the Abraham name on their products. The sale did not include the two-story brick building on Garfield Ave.

Robert Abraham, grandson of J.M. Abraham, in the Abraham Company plant in 1962. Source: Scott Abraham and the Logan County History Center.

After the J.M. Abraham business was sold, Robert Abraham, grandson of J.M. Abraham, continued to get maple syrup from the buyer and deliver it to family, friends and former clients. In the mid-1970’s the former J.M. Abraham plant suffered a devastating fire, and the old brick portion of the building had to be removed. A newer metal-sided addition to the building didn’t receive too much damaged and was saved. Later another metal-sided addition was added where the original brick building once stood. The building was leased by Super Foods for many years and most recently used by Mobile Instrument Service & Repair.

Examples of some of the paper labels and brands used by the J.M. Abraham Company for packaging maple butter and maple products. Source: Scott Abraham and the Logan County History Center.

 

Evaporator Company Histories: The Eureka Evaporator and the I.X.L. Evaporator

By Matthew M. Thomas

The neighboring towns of Hubbard and Warren in Ohio were home to two related evaporator companies in the late 19th and early 20th century, Henry Hescock’s Eureka Evaporator and Milton Mathews’ I.X.L. Evaporator.

Eureka Evaporator

Envelope for Hescock’s Eureka Evaporator out of Hubbard, Ohio with a cancelation date of 1886.

The Eureka Evaporator, the earlier of the two, was invented and manufactured by Henry W. Hescock, out of Hubbard, Ohio. Following service in the Civil War at the age of sixteen, Hescock entered the dry goods business with his father-in-law, Edward Moore, in Hubbard, Ohio from 1866 to the late 1870s. Following the dry goods business, he started an evaporator manufacturing business, although it is not clear exactly when Hescock began to design and manufacture evaporators. One source says he opened his evaporator shop “shortly after the war” and another mentions upon his death in 1896 that he had been making evaporators for over twenty years. The earliest reference to him patenting one of his evaporator designs dates to 1877.

Example of a recovered Eureka Evaporator cast iron arch front (Photo courtesy of Jerry Russin, Jr.).

References describing the actual use of this evaporator as well as advertisements for the sale of the Eureka Evaporator appear as early as 1883. It is important to note that the Hescock Evaporator should not be confused with an entirely different fruit evaporator, also called the Eureka, that was manufactured in the late 1870s and early 1880s by Mr. D.R. Byrum and the Grand Isle Evaporator Company, out of Grand Isle, Vermont.

Drawing from Hescock’s 1877 evaporator patent design.

The first Hescock evaporator patent from 1877 (patent no. US195366) featured a series of individual flat pans joined by connecting siphons. Hescock’s second patented design, awarded in 1886 (patent no. US335583), featured the same siphons with the addition of corrugations to the bottom of the pans to increase the surface area exposed to the heat of the firebox. In 1893 he patented a third evaporator design (patent no. US50233) which featured a unique set of horizontal tubular flues through which the hot gases would flow as they exited the fire box and out through the stack or chimney. Hescock obtained this patent in 1893 but there is no indication that he put this design into production.

Image from Hescock’s 1893 evaporator patent design.

In addition to manufacturing evaporators, Hescock sold sheet metal sap pails, a barrel style sap tank, and a sap level regulator. Besides manufacturing maple sugaring equipment, Hescock co-owned the Loveless & Hescock foundry with his brother-in-law Warren Loveless. Hescock and his wife also owned numerous parcels of land in Hubbard with Hescock listed as the builder for at least fourteen houses in the town of Hubbard.

Based on a number of advertisements, envelopes and letterhead, and other references from that era, the Eureka Evaporator was actually fabricated at Milton Mathews’  Warren Evaporator Works in nearby Warren, Ohio as early as 1884.

Letterhead from 1884 showing Warren Evaporator Company as the Manufacturer of Hescock’s Eureka Evaporator (Image from Trumbull County Historical Society website).

It is possible that the Warren Evaporator Works simply had a license to manufacture and sell the Eureka Evaporator alongside their I.X.L. Evaporator and Hescock himself was simultaneously engaged in fabricating his Eureka Evaporator in Hubbard.  However, because Hubbard, Ohio and Warren, Ohio are only fifteen miles apart, it seems unlikely that both Hescock and Mathews were both building the Eureka Evaporator and more probably that Hescock was simply handling sales and marketing of his invention.

Seemingly at the height of his company, Hescock died November 10, 1896, at the age of 52.

 

I.X.L. Evaporator

Milton Mathews was the owner and operator of the Warren Evaporator Works, Warren Ohio, which, as noted above, was in operation as early 1884 where it was manufacturing the Eureka Evaporator. It is notable that letterhead from that time only includes text for “Warren Evaporator Works, Manufacturers of Hescock’s Eureka Evaporator and Sugar Camp Fixtures” and does not mention the I.X.L. Evaporator.

Cover of a 1911 sales catalog for the I.X.L. Evaporator. Click on image for full PDF of the catalog.

In December 1887 Milton Mathews, along with Henry Hill of Chester Crossroads, Ohio (later from Chardon, Ohio) applied for a patent for their design of an evaporator with a unique hinge or pivot along one side of the boiling pans. The patent was awarded in 1888 (patent no US382314) and was marketed as the I.X.L. Evaporator. It featured flat pans that hinged on a piece of pipe or tubing that served as an external connector between each pair of pans, like the u-shaped siphons used to connect other evaporator designs. The hinge was built on either the left or the right side of the pans and appeared like a bulge to the wall of the pans. Each pan also featured a drain hole on the high side that was plugged with a metal stopper with a long metal handle.

Drawing from Mathews and Hill’s 1888 evaporator patent design.

Milton Mathews was born in 1842 in Trumbull Co. Ohio and like Hescock, served in the Civil War in Ohio’s 19th Infantry from September 1861 to October 1862, before being discharged with a disability. Mathews’ partner on the patent, Henry Ezra Hill, is someone we know much less about. Born in 1849 in Geauga County, Ohio, Hill was said to have invented an evaporator in the Chardon area in the mid-1880s, but it is unclear if this was with Mathews or independently. Census data tells us Hill was a merchant and salesman in the 1890s and early 1900s, but it is not clear who he worked for or with, perhaps the Warren Evaporator Works. Hill appears to have retired by 1919 before passing away in Warren, Ohio in 1925.

Image of the early version of the I.X.L. Evaporator with a flat back pan and no preheater.

I.X.L. was a fairly common product name at the time, sort of like Acme and was not a specific acronym for anything. Rather it was a play on the words “I Excel” proclaiming the high quality and performance capabilities of the product. Early drawings and advertisements emphasized the ease with which the pans could be raised on their hinged connections and that it did not require an engineer to operate.

Image of the later I.X.L. Evaporator (1897 and later) featuring the preheater back pan with vertical tubular flues.

Interestingly, before 1897 the advertising images of the evaporators show a flat bottom to the back pan. Images after that date all show the vertical tubular flues on the raised back pan. I.X.L. Evaporator sales literature gave buyers a choice between a flat back pan or their unique “preheater” which featured an array of round tubular flues on the back pan that extended vertically into the arch.

Man standing alongside a left-sided I.X.L. Evaporator. Note the flared side to the pans and the pipelike hinge. (Photo from the collections of the Geauga County Historical Society).

Considering Hescock died in 1896 and it was at about that time that the I.X.L. Evaporator began to be made with the tubular vertical flues, it is very possible that Milton Mathews’ idea for the vertical tubular flues was sparked by seeing the horizontal tubular flues on the 1893 Hescock patent, a design of which he was most certainly aware.

Demonstrating the ease of use and lifting the hinged pans of an I.X.L. Evaporator. Note the circular vents on the doors on the front of the arch (source unknown).

Although it never appeared in the images of the I.X.L. advertisements and sales brochures, all the known examples and photographs of I.X.L. Evaporators show a round, sunburst pattern vent on each of the cast iron doors. I.X.L. Evaporators are also notable for the one-piece casting of the iron door frames on their arch front and their very squared, vertical wall design on their arches.

A series of images of a recently salvaged and soon to be restored I.X.L. Evaporator from Pennsylvania (Images courtesy of Laurence Frazier).

Mathews’ Warren Evaporator Works was located on the east side of Warren, Ohio on Woodland Avenue between a branch of the Mahoning River and the Ashtabula, Youngstown, and Pittsburgh Railroad. The Warren Evaporator Works continued to manufacture and sell I.X.L. Evaporators into the 19-teens. Around 1918 it appears that the plant was closed, and Milton Mathews retired from evaporator fabrication. Mathews died in Trumbull County a few years later in 1925.

1889 Sanborn Fire Insurance map for Warren, Ohio showing location of Warren Evaporator Works at the corner of Woodland Avenue and Railroad Street.