By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian
We have all sorts of ways to sweeten our food these days – artificial sweeteners like Equal, Stevia, Sweet ‘N Low or Splenda come in individual color-coded packets. Honey and agave “in the raw” are some popular choices for the more natural health goers. Some recipes go so far as to suggest trading applesauce and other naturally sweet foods, like coconut milk, to keep a dessert delicious but healthier. And there’s one “alternative” that many of us might agree on: maple syrup.
Maple syrup has been an American commodity for centuries, and the month of March is prime time in Ohio to harvest it. Residents in Tiffin, Seneca County and the entire state of Ohio have trekked into wooded areas in search of the best maple trees for the job. But the methods have drastically changed over the years, which has quickened the time involved and also made the end product a little safer to consume.
The Native Americans who once lived in the Northeastern and Midwestern states were the first to utilize the sap that leaked from maple trees in the late winter and early spring. Early settlers speak of sighting these “sugaring camps” set up especially for harvesting maple syrup. In the History of Seneca County from the Close of the Revolutionary War to July 1880, Isaac Drummond wrote about his encounters with Native Americans during a festival held by the Indians. He recalled that maple sugar was addled to kettles of soup making it a “prominent ingredient.
The early colonists followed suit and built “sugarhouses,” which served as workshops in the summer time. Maple sap must be boiled down for several hours before it turns into the syrup we are familiar with when we buy it, so a makeshift shed could serve as a respite from the long cold hours spent outside.
Maple syrup is mostly taken from three types of maple—the sugar maple, black maple and red maple, although other types of maple are also suitable. In the Reminiscences of Early Days of Tiffin, the author recalls a wooded area known as Gibson’s Addition near Sycamore and Monroe Streets which had “a great many sugar maples” for maple syrup harvests (pages 50-51).
This photo called “Collecting Maple Sap” was created by the Ohio Federal Writer’s Project in the 1940s and was taken with permission from the Ohio Memory website.
Extracting maple syrup from trees requires specific conditions, particularly when it begins reaching temperatures above freezing into the low 40s during the day but yet still dropping below freezing at night. In Ohio this usually starts to occur in mind-to-late February and continues throughout the month of March. This somewhat varies from year to year, such as the case of the infamous “Year Without a Summer” when temperatures stayed cooler for well into the spring and summer months. Mrs. Sarah B. Wadsworth wrote an article submitted to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle but reprinted in a Tiffin Newspaper in 1884 where she explains, “as the season advanced, we had a good yield (of maple sugar), so we were supplied with that commodity.”
Throughout most of the 19th century, people simply drilled holes into the maple trees and placed a bucket underneath, as evidenced by the photo is this blog, taken from the Ohio Memory website (the Seneca County Digital Library is a contributor). A former Junior Home student, Reynold R. Elkins, Class of 1942, scripted his memory of one particular spring in the late 1930s when he and a group of other lads decided to harvest their own syrup. They secured 55-gallon drums to collect the sap, milk cans, a brace and bit, nails and plumbing supplies.
Plastic tubing and vacuum pumps have long since replaced the more rudimentary ways of laboring over maple syrup. Gary Gaudette, a board member of the International Maple Syrup Institute, explains that “prior to vacuum systems, the average sap yield was 10 gallons of sap per tap, which produced about 1 quart of maple syrup. Elkins from the Junior Home recalls being shocked the moment he discovered the “reduction ratio” for maple sap to maple syrup was 40:1.
What did Seneca County residents do with their maple syrup once it was ready to consume? The Seneca County Museum reprinted in its Spring 1993 newsletter an excerpt from the History of Seneca County published in 1880 by William Lang (several copies are available in the Local History Department at Tiffin-Seneca Public Library. The author makes the following inquiry: “Reader! Did you ever eat corn-pone with maple molasses?” Corn-pone is basically what we call cornbread. Residents often made a point to gather to enjoy maple syrup together (like in the case of the local Native Americans’ maple festivities). At one time, the Republic Methodist Church held “maple syrup suppers” in the spring. That sounds like a mighty fine potluck to me!
Works cited:
Collect Sap and Make Syrup. Tap My Trees. https://tapmytrees.com/collect-sap-make-syrup/
Coombs Family Farms. “The History of Maple Syrup: From Early North American Days to the Present.” Dec. 1, 2013. https://www.coombsfamilyfarms.com/blog/the-history-of-maple-syrup-from-early-north-american-days-to-the-present/
Elkins, Reynold. “The Maple Syrup Caper. Junior Home Homekid April 1990. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/47911/rec/1
History of Republic Ohio. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33590/rec/1
History of Seneca County from the Close of the Revolutionary War to July 1880. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17928/rec/1
Ohio Memory Project. https://www.ohiomemory.org/
The Pathfinder Directory. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/38656/rec/1
Pickert, Kate. “A Brief History of Maple Syrup.” April 16, 2009. https://time.com/3958051/history-of-maple-syrup/
Reminiscences of Early Days of Tiffin. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12932/rec/1
Seneca County Museum Newsletter Spring 1993. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/43113/rec/1
Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/search
Wikipedia. “Maple Syrup.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_syrup
For fun:
Massachusetts Maple Producers Association: this website extensively breaks down information on maple trees: https://www.massmaple.org/about-maple-syrup/make-maple-syrup/maple-tree-id/ including maps of the geographic breakdown of different maple trees suitable for extracting sap
To view some beautiful historic photos of the maple sugaring process, the Maple Valley Cooperative’s website is worth a visit: https://www.maplevalleysyrup.coop/the-history-of-maple-syrup/