Warren County
Local History by Dallas Bogan |
Contributor: |
Dallas Bogan on 6 September 2004 |
Source: |
The following is taken from Dallas Bogan's, The Pioneer Writings of Josiah Morrow." |
Return to Index to see a list of other articles by Dallas Bogan |
Some maple sugar is still made in the Miami Valley and more perhaps in Warren
than in any adjoining county; but a generation is growing up that has never
seen an old-time sugar-camp or a sugar-trough. Today where maple sugar and maple
syrup are made of a high grade and on an extensive scale as in Geauga county,
Ohio, improved methods are employed. Buckets with covers to keep out the rain
and dirt are used in place of troughs hollowed out of split logs. Metal spouts
instead of split pieces of elder are inserted in the auger holes in the trees,
galvanized storage tanks are used instead of barrels and improved evaporators
instead of pots for boiling.
The making of maple sugar was a most important industry in early Ohio and it
furnished many settlers with the only kind of sugar they could obtain and it
is certainly known that Indians in Ohio made maple sugar thirty years before
the first settlement at Marietta.
Some of the finest sugar orchards to be found any- where were in Wayne township
on both sides of the Little Miami, much of this township being sugar tree land.
The Indians had visited this region for the purpose of making sugar long before
the country was settled by the whites, and they continued to visit it for the
same purpose after the white settlements were made. George T. O'Neall records
that the red men made these visits as late as 1804 or 1805, and that he had
often heard his father, William O'Neall say that when a boy he used to run races
and wrestle with the Indian boys when they were on their annual visits.
When the first entries of Virginia military land warrants were made on the east
side of the river in this township there was found an "old sugar camp."
This was 1787, long before the arrival of the white settler and the old camp
must have been used by the Indians. Whether any old sugar camps of the Indians
were found by the early surveyors on the west side of the river, I am unable
to say.
The Indians probably learned the art of making maple sugar from the whites,
and there is no reason to believe that they ever made it by boiling until after
they obtained pots and kettles from the white man. The first account we have
of red men making sugar is that given by Col. James Smith, a prisoner with a
tribe in Ohio. He records that in 1756 the Indians had two large brass kettles,
holding about fifteen gallons each and some smaller vessels in which they boiled
the sap. These vessels were of course obtained from the whites. It is possible
to reduce the sap to sugar without boiling, either by freezing or by natural
evaporation, but is not known that the Indians ever practiced either method.
One of the largest and finest of the sugar orchards in Wayne township, if
not in the whole valley of the Little Miami was on the farm of Thomas Smith
at the mouth of Caesar's creek. The widowed mother of Thomas Smith with her
sons and daughters made their home at this place in December, 1800, when there
were only a few acres of cleared land but the family from the start were able
to supply themselves plentifully with sugar and maple syrup. The trees were
probably at first tapped with a giblet and wild turkey quills used to convey
the sap into the wooden troughs. Afterward a half inch auger was used for tapping
and spiles or spouts made of elder were used instead of turkey quills. The sap
was at first boiled down in kettles and pots hung over two logs between which
the fire was built. In later years, the kettles were placed in furnaces for
boiling the sap.
Hon. John Quincy Smith, of Clinton County, was the son of Thomas Smith and in
an unpublished manuscript has left his recollections of sugar making as it was
carried on in his boyhood. So generally was the business engaged in by the farmers
of the region at that period that about the middle of February the larger boys
would be called from school to assist in the work, and in the early spring the
only scholars left in school were girls and smaller boys.
His father had a great many sugar trees, sometimes more than a thousand would
be tapped. They were bored with a small auger about three and half feet from
the ground and an elder spike about ten inches long driven tightly into the
hole. At first only wooden troughs were used to catch the sap. These were made
by cutting down blue ash trees, sawing the trunks into lengths of about two
feet which were split in the middle, and hollowed out with an ax so as to make
a trough holding two or three gallons. A first rate ax man could make forty
or fifty of these troughs in a day. After 1830 earthen crocks, costing 6 or
8 cents and holding about two gallons each were used. They were cleaner and
better than troughs, but if a sudden freeze came when they were full of water,
a great many would burst, and nearly every year a new supply of crocks would
be purchased to make up the loss from breakage.
The furnace was built for about a dozen kettles holding ten or fifteen gallons
each. The sugar water was hauled to the furnace in a hogshead standing on end
and placed on a two horse sled. At the furnace it would be emptied into other
hogsheads, or into a large trough dug out of a big log, or into a wooden cistern
made of wide poplar planks.
Sometimes during a very heavy rain it would be impossible to prevent a great
waste of sugar water. The vessels would all be running over, and in order to
save as much as possible, it was necessary to boil all night. John Q. relates
that when he was about thirteen he and his brother Joseph spent several nights
pushing the fires and filling the kettles when there was a heavy rain. They
had a shanty just in front of the furnace in which was a pile of straw and some
bed covers. They slept turn about, one watching the fires while the other slept.
John Q. had borrowed a copy of Pope's translation of the Iliad which he read
thru by the light of the furnace fires, and Joseph read Scott's novels.
Making sugar was always a hard and laborious job. The ground was always wet
and muddy, and the work had to be done often in rain and snow. The boy remembers
to have worked at the sugar camp hauling when the snow was deep and it was raining
so hard that for hours he had not a dry thread on him. But the work during a
"strong run" was regarded as very profitable.
The father made sugar not only for use at home, but for the market, some seasons
selling several barrels of it. It brought a good price, sometimes as much as
15 or 16 cents a pound. He usually made two or three trips each year to Cincinnati
with a wagonload of produce for market consisting mainly of maple sugar, bacon,
lard, and sometimes sweet potatoes. He would sleep at night in his wag- on at
the Fifth street market, where the Fountain now is. The journey to the city
and the return would each take a day and a half, and he would get away from
home four days on each trip to market.
At so great a distance from the ocean, the early settler of Ohio found salt
made from sea water and sugar imported from the West Indies so high that he
could not purchase them. An inferior kind of salt could be made in a few places
from the water of salt springs and salt wells; in most places a delicious and
wholesome sugar could be made from the sap of the maple tree. Unlike the trees
of his fruit orchard, his sugar trees were already grown. Five pounds of sugar
could be made from one tree in one season, and it was believed that repeated
tappings improved the quality of the sap. No costly machinery or apparatus was
necessary. The only implements required for the manufacture of sugar for home
use was an ax and a kettle. It required no more knowledge or skill to make maple
sugar than to make soap or cider. It was said that one man sold 600 pounds,
all made by his own hands in one season. Thousands of families in Ohio made
sugar and syrup for their own use and thus saved a large expenditure of money.
In the third edition of Gilbert Imlay's "Topographical Description of the
Western Territory of North America," printed at London in 1797, twenty-five
pages are devoted to the maple tree and the sugar made from it, so great was
the importance attached to this tree in the rise and growth of the new American
Empire. The eminent Dr. Benjamin Rush was one of the first to write on the benefits
to be derived from this invaluable tree at a time when the West India islands
had a monopoly of the sugar and molasses industry which was carried on under
slave labor. Dr. Rush looked on the tree with affection and even veneration
and hoped that in some way it might be protected from destruction by the settlers,
or transplanted and cultivated in sugar orchards. He stated that Thomas Jefferson
used no sugar in his family except maple sugar and he had lately planted an
orchard of maple trees on his farm.
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This page created 6 September 2004 and last updated
28 September, 2008
© 2004 Arne H Trelvik
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