 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the April 2022 edition of our third Sunday lecture series at the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. I am Angie Grove, the executive director of the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum, and I am honored to announce that today we have with us Mary Donchez, who will be speaking to us about Thomas Jefferson and the American maple sugar industry. This talk is pre-recorded and it will premiere on Sunday, April 17th at 2pm. Normally, after the premiere, we host a live question and answer period with our guest lecturer via Zoom. However, due to this month's program falling on Easter Sunday, we will not be hosting a live Q&A after this lecture. We would still love to hear from our viewers, however, and we invite you to send questions and feedback to the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum via email to EthanAllenHomestead.com. We are also more than happy to forward your questions to our guest lecturer as well. 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You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thank you for your support. Now it is my pleasure to introduce to you this month's guest lecturer, Mary Donchez. Mary is a resident of Newton, Massachusetts, whose first post-retirement project was to earn a master's degree from Harvard University's Extension School. This talk is based on her thesis for that degree. Her undergraduate degree in history is from Boston College. She spent her professional life working as an editor at WB Saunders, McMillan, and Little Brown Publishing Companies before retiring from Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in 2011. Where she worked as a project coordinator and for patient disease management programs and as editor for the physician newsletter. Today we are lucky enough to have Mary with us for today's program. Welcome, Mary. I got interested in the subject of maple sugaring in New England a few years ago, when I had to come up with a topic for my master's thesis. And the next couple of slides show some of the sources I quoted in my thesis on which this topic is based, and I'll mention others as I go along. I had read an article in what was then called the Colonial Williamsburg Journal entitled, Does Vermont owe its maple sugar industry to Thomas Jefferson and the anti-slavery movement. I was intrigued because I thought, Thomas Jefferson, what on earth does he have to do with maple sugaring, which seems like such a quintessentially New England product. In fact, harvesting maple sap to make sugar coalesced with his view of the new country as a nation primarily of small farmers engaged with the land, living in bucolic harmony with it, as they produce provisions to feed themselves and sell to their neighbors and friends. Although he promoted it vigorously among his friends and acquaintances, and he tried for years to produce maple sugar at Monticello. He ultimately concluded that, while Jefferson was a founding father of his country, he was not the founder of Vermont's maple sugar industry. Nevertheless, the story of how his advocacy influenced and affected maple sugaring in New England takes us down an interesting by way in American history. He passed a light on Jefferson's famously conflicted views on race and slavery. On the one hand, his desire to ease the burden on slaves, producing cane sugar in the West Indies, and on the other, his reliance on slave labor to maintain his lifestyle at Monticello, and his refusal to free any of his slaves during his lifetime. This is a trip to Vermont that Jefferson took with James Madison in May and June of 1791, which was a major impetus for his advocacy of maple sugar. Then I'll talk about his reasons for promoting maple sugar, the influence Benjamin rush out on him, the great maple sugar bubble of the late 1780s and early 1790s, and the people who were involved in that. In fact, maple sugar production was quiescent for a few decades, largely because extracting the sap was so difficult, given the primitive equipment. Also, the only way to convey a maple sweetener to market was by converting the sap to sugar by boiling it down into syrup, then continuing to boil the syrup until it crystallized into sugar, which was poured into molds where it hardened. This was revived in the mid 19th century around the time of the Civil War, and I'll discuss the reasons for that. I'll touch on maple sugary in the 20th century then circle back to Jefferson, and talk about the reasons this lifelong slave owner championed maple sugar as a substitute for cane, and just what his relationship is to the American maple sugar industry. And James Madison took a trip together in May and June of 1791, heading north from New York into New England. Needing relief from migraines caused by stress and overwork. Jefferson, who at the time was living in Philadelphia, and serving as George Washington Secretary of State needed some R&R. He was also as a lifelong farmer and gardener interested in observing flora and fauna new to him as a southerner. Their route took them up the Hudson River to Poughkeepsie, then on to Albany on horseback. Passing through Saratoga, they sailed on Lake George and attempted to get into Vermont via Lake Champlain. Turned back by bad weather, they headed into Vermont by land, staying overnight in Bennington, which was their northern most stop. They reached Bennington on June 4th and were guests of Moses Robinson the next day. Robinson had just completed a term as governor and was about to become one of Vermont's first two senators. During their two days in Bennington, Jefferson spoke with other distinguished citizens about his hopes for a maple sugar industry, including Anthony Haswell, editor of the Vermont Gazette, who reported on Jefferson's visit, writing quote, It is reported on good authority that accurate calculations have been made by which it has ascertained beyond a doubt that there are maple trees in the inhabited part of the United States, more than sufficient with careful attention to produce sugar adequate to the consumption of its inhabitants. It is likewise said that refineries are being established by some wealthy foreigners resident in the union, by whom agents will be established in different parts who will loan out kettles on reasonable terms to persons unable to purchase. With these agents will likewise be lodged to purchase all the raw sugar in their power. This scheme prosecuted to effect cannot fail to be extensively beneficial to community. But in the meantime, attention to our sugar orchards is essentially necessary to secure the independence of our country. This quotation raises a couple of themes that factor into Jefferson's advocacy of maple sugar. The maple trees established by wealthy foreigners and not just foreigners as we will see, and the idea that maple sugar will help cement the fledgling nations independence. On their way back to New York City via Connecticut and Long Island, Jefferson placed an order with a nursery on Long Island for sugar maples to plan at Monticello. And later that summer with Joseph Bay, whom he had met in Bennington. Jefferson asked about maple seeds they had promised to send him and noted that sugar maple trees are drawing more and more attention. Of course maple sugaring goes back a long way in this country. Before Europeans came indigenous peoples were gashing maple trees with axes and gathering the sap into wooden buckets for use as a sweetener and a drink. And that method continued to be used well into the 19th century. British officials in Massachusetts referred to extracting sugar from maple trees as early as 1664. Early histories of the state of Vermont, it was admitted to the Union on February 18, 1791 touted the value of the maple tree for its beauty, its lumber and its sugar. And the farmers in Vermont produced some of the first maple sugar for the market in 1764. Several almanacs from the last decade of the 18th and into the early 19th centuries, included entries on sugar making in March. For example, now for maple sugar neglect not in attending to it if you have trees. Remember, you have expense in buying. In 1891, when Jefferson and Madison took their trip to Vermont, the vast majority of Americans were sweetening their tea and their baked goods with white cane sugar produced by slaves in the West Indies and imported from Great Britain. Jefferson believed that the US would be able to produce enough maple sugar for its own needs and have enough leftover to export. This optimism came from his association with Benjamin Rush, the Philadelphia physician politician and social reformer. Russian Jefferson had met in Philadelphia in May of 1775 during the Second Continental Congress. By the time they reconnected in 1790, when Jefferson was serving as Secretary of State in Philadelphia. Rush was a committed abolitionist. He was already fastened on the substitution of cane sugar of maple for cane sugar as a way to reduce dependence on the output of slaves, and thus help bring an end to slavery. In 1789, he helped found the Society for promoting the manufacturer of sugar from the sugar maple tree, which began promoting the cause the same year. He already published a pamphlet in 1790 entitled remarks on the manufacturing of maple sugar with directions for its further improvement. And Jefferson purchased 50 pounds of maple sugar in Philadelphia the same year. So it seems likely he and Rush discussed the topic when they reconnected in Philadelphia that year. In 1791, just before his trip to Vermont, Jefferson wrote a letter to George Washington, touting the benefits of maple sugar, and referring to the efforts of Russia's associate William Cooper to bring 3000 pounds of maple sugar to market this season, and who gives the most flattering calculations of what can be done in that way. Meanwhile, Rush set to work on a pamphlet entitled an account of the sugar maple tree of the United States. In the form of a letter to Thomas Jefferson. It was read before the American Philosophical Society on August 191791. The two men were destined not to meet again after the 1790s, but they remained friends and maintained a lifelong correspondence until Russia's death in April of 1813. In the remaining years, Jefferson continued to try to grow maple trees at Monticello used maple sugar when he could get it and proselytized among his friends and correspondence about the benefits of maple sugar overcame. Rush also continued his efforts, in particular through his association with William Cooper and others were involved in what came to be known as the maple sugar bubble. The maple sugar bubble of the 1790s resulted from a collaboration between abolitionists and land speculators at the intersection of piety and profit. Men like Jefferson Rush and Henry drinker hope to do their part to eradicate slavery, while men like William Cooper and representatives of the Holland Land Company hope to make a profit by bringing maple sugar out of the forest to commercial markets. The bubble began in the late 1780s when Cooper in collaboration with drinker began efforts to produce maple sugar on a large scale on his lands in upstate New York, and bring it to the Philadelphia market. White cane sugar, which was grown and refined by slaves in the Caribbean islands, controlled by the British was one of Britain's major exports and was well on its way to becoming a necessity, even among the working class. It was part of one of the triangle trades linking England to Africa and the New World, centering around the commodities of textiles, sugar, rum, and slaves. As I've noted previously, some people had been talking about maple sugar earlier in the century. It was mentioned in the London annual register in 1765, for example. Tunch Cox, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Alexander Hamilton, published a view of the United States of America, a series of papers on various subjects written between 1787 and 1794, in which he referred to the distaste of Pennsylvanians for profiting from the labor of slaves. He went so far as to estimate the capacity of sugar maple forests and the demand that could be supplied from them, claiming that based on an average of five pounds of sugar per tree, and 40 trees per acre, 52,605 acres could produce 8,416,828 pounds of sugar. This would meet the demand he envisioned based on information he'd received from the Philadelphia customs house. It was just such enthusiasm and optimistic estimates, coupled with the earnest desire not to profit from the labor of slaves that brought men like drinker and Cooper, Russian Jefferson together in the maple sugar bubble. I've touched on Jefferson and Russia's background and motivation with regard to maple sugar, but what of drinker and Cooper. Drinker was a Philadelphia merchant and one of the three major players in the bubble, along with Cooper and the Holland land company, both of which I'll discuss later. He was a partner in a trading firm, owner of an ironworks, a financier, provider of credit, and a land speculator. He was guided by the principles of his Quaker religion, which included pacifism, T totalism, and opposition to slavery. He was not averse to mingling business and virtue, and if he could do well for himself and his family by doing good, so much the better. Benjamin Rush enlisted drinker support for his society for promoting the manufacture of sugar from the sugar maple tree. By that time, drinker had already met William Cooper and had enlisted his help in selling and settling his frontier lands. He sold kettles from his ironworks for boiling sap to make maple sugar, and he extended credit to Cooper to buy kettles. So the settlers on Cooper's lands in Otsego, New York, could harvest sap in the winter of 1789 to 1790. Note that as I mentioned earlier maple sugar not syrup was the only available maple sweetener. There was no way as yet to store and hence ship syrup. The sap had to be boiled into syrup and boiled some more until it crystallized into sugar. Drinker enlisted other wealthy Philadelphians into a subscription, whereby they donated money upfront for expenses, with the expectation that they would receive a profit when the sugar came to market in the summer of 1790. The season was disappointing and Cooper was able to ship only about 2000-20,000 pounds of sugar to Philadelphia, about a fifth of what he had promised. Another disappointing season followed, though there was enough quality sugar for Cooper to send an associate Philadelphia with a sample that Benjamin Rush had him present to Jefferson. Rush also sent some to President Washington, who accepted graciously and even planted a few trees at Mount Vernon. Nevertheless, the handwriting was on the wall and although Cooper had his settlers produce sugar for the Philadelphia market for one more season, he bought no more kettles, broke up his own sugar works, and informed Drinker in May 1792 that he would quit the trade in the fall. Drinker, though disappointed, was motivated by more than profit and he persevered. He set up a maple sugaring operation at his settlement in Stockport, Pennsylvania, on the Delaware River just south of the New York border. Neither the 1790 nor the 1791 season was particularly profitable, but his expectations were still high when he breakfasted with Jefferson on May 13, 1791, and learned that he and Madison were about to set off on their trip through maple sugar country. In 1792, Drinker established another settlement, Union Farm, about seven miles from Stockport. Formerly named the society for promoting the manufacture of sugar from the sugar maple tree and furthering the interests of agriculture in Pennsylvania, it functioned the same way as Drinker's Enterprise with Cooper. Wealthy Philadelphians subscribed for stock at 50 pounds per share, putting in their money up front to fund the startup with the expectation of getting their money back and more the next summer when the sugar came to market. The first sugaring season in 1793 was disappointing, as was that of 1794. To get a profitable amount of maple sugar to market required first of all that the weather cooperate, which it did not. In addition, the logistics of getting the containers of sugar out of the wilderness in winter and early spring to urban markets without spoilage were daunting, given that horse drawn wagons were the only means of transport. On November 9, 1795, the managers recommended to the shareholders that it was inexpedient further to prosecute the plan. The shareholders consented, and although he continued and after him as heirs to pay real estate taxes on Union Farm until it was finally sold in 1833, Henry Drinker was done with maple sugar. That's while partner William Cooper. If drinkers motivation was at least as much about abolitionism as capitalism, what kept Cooper tapping maple trees in the forests of up seago for as long as he did. Judge William Cooper was born near Philadelphia, the third son of a Quaker farmer. He received only a rudimentary education, but he married well to the daughter of a wealthy New Jersey landowner. Cooper began his land speculation career in Pennsylvania but eventually bought attractive land in central New York, stretching west from Lake Otsego, where Cooperstown sits today. In May 1786 he put up for sale 40,000 acres, all of which were bought in the first 16 days. From that relatively modest beginning he quickly developed a reputation as an expert in the sale and settlement of frontier land. In addition to managing his own lands, he served as an agent for wealthy speculators who owned property in New York but lived elsewhere. And it was thus that he came into contact with Henry Drinker and Benjamin Rush. In 1791 he was named presiding judge of common pleas in Otsego, and he served two terms in Congress. Cooper had motivations beyond profit or concern for the settlers on his own lands. Having come into his prime in the post-revolution era, he was bent on establishing his wealth and position, which meant gaining acceptance from the social elite. His connections with Drinker and Rush were important to him. So when he had the chance to parlay the contacts he had made with these men as land agent into business arrangements, he jumped at it. Like Thomas Jefferson, Cooper saw maple sugar as a commodity that could be produced with relatively little labor and even less cash outlay. If he could develop a market for maple sugar, he could promote Otsego commerce, help his settlers pay their land debts, and bring himself to the attention of some of America's most illustrious gentlemen. Based on his calculations of five pounds of maple sugar per tree per season and 50 trees per acre, Cooper asserted in a 1792 letter to the New York Agricultural Society that a full supply of that article of life that is maple sugar may be manufactured within the boundaries of this state. At this point in his maple sugaring endeavors, Cooper may well have been attempting to get state sponsorship, because it was apparent that individual efforts like his Otsego and drinkers at Stockport and Union Farm were not going to be successful. The statistics that he was promulgating, while they might have been technically accurate, were predicated upon actually being able to extract that amount of sugar from each tree, bring it to an urban market from the wilderness in perfect condition, a task he was unable to fulfill. Eventually Cooper cut his losses and his ties with drinker, and withdrew from the maple sugaring business. Interest in maple sugaring for both economic and altruistic reasons was not confined to America. In 1792, the Holland Land Company, probably the wealthy foreigners Thomas Jefferson referred to in his conversations with the gentleman he spoke with in Vermont, purchased 3.3 million acres of land in Western New York State. Eventually the company owned more than 5 million acres in New York and Pennsylvania. The company was formed in 1789 with the merger of several Dutch banking and brokerage firms. In 1791 discussions were underway about setting up a maple sugaring enterprise on some of the lands that would eventually buy. It is impossible to know what the company's main motivation was. Certainly it was not only American idealist who cherished the idea that if maple sugar supplanted cane sugar slave labor might decrease. One of the firms that merged to form the Holland Land Company was already engaged in the sugaring business, and it seems likely that its motivation was largely materialistic. Agents from the company began their search for sugaring lands in August 1791, two months after Jefferson's visit to Vermont. They eventually covered about 2600 miles. In Pennsylvania, they moved on to New York, Vermont and Connecticut, then back through New York and on to Philadelphia where they had started. During their journey they visited Henry drinkers operation at Stockport, and that of William Cooper up Seago as well. They reported their findings to the company, which bought the land they recommended. In the end of February 1793, one of the agents Garrett boom was planning his maple sugar operation centered north of Utica, New York, and called old and Barnabelle. He started small experimenting on just 17 acres planning to expand to 10,000 acres, which he hoped would produce one and a half million pounds of sugar per season. Before that was ahead of his time, he found a woodworker to construct troughs to collect the maple sap with each tree in its trough connected through a system of subsidiary troughs to a reservoir at the bottom of a wooded slope of maple trees. At first the system seemed to be successful, but some and frost warped the troughs causing leakage. Boone tried other variations on the system, though apparently not the standard bucket collection method without success. He was not given another chance. On November 30 1794, the books of the sugar enterprise were closed, and the efforts of the Holland land company to produce maple sugar for a commercial market came to an end. In 1995 Henry drinker shut down Union Farm, and the same year Benjamin rush signed a proposal for the sale of the lands and property of his society for promoting the manufacturer of sugar from the sugar maple tree, which marked the end of his advocacy of maple sugar. The bubble burst partly because of unrealistic production estimates, but also because settlers were using their maple trees for more than producing sugar, which I'll discuss in a minute. Maple sugar was still being produced in Vermont and elsewhere, but according to an early 20th century history of Vermont. It was being done quote, under the greatest disadvantages without proper conveniences instruments or works solely by the exertion of private families in the woods and without any other conveniences than one or two iron kettles, the largest of which will not hold more than four or five This is a good description of why the maple sugar industry never got off the ground then the next major technological advance after wooden spouts and augers in 1810 did not come until 1858 with a patenting of the first evaporating pan which replaced the iron kettle. So after the flurry of interest in promoting maple sugar occasioned by the advocacy of Jefferson and rush and the determined efforts of the maple sugar bubble entrepreneurs attention waned. In 1829, the New England farmer and horticultural journal lamented that the making of maple sugar is highly important for the people of Vermont, and it is in our opinion, treated with too much neglect. Along with a collapse of the bubble and the general difficulty of extracting the maple sap and turning it into sugar in the middle of the snowy woods. Other forces were at work that kept maple sugaring from becoming a thriving commercial enterprise. In the late 18th and early 19th century settlers were moving on to uninhabited lands in record numbers, looking to domesticate the wilderness and make a living for themselves and their families. In Vermont alone the population increased from 85,425 in 1791 to 217,895 in 1810. Land had to be cleared for farming and there were more lucrative ways to make money from the land besides maple sugaring. Maple timber could yield 20 to 30 times as much money as maple sugar, because hundreds of board feet of lumber could be cut from a large tree that would produce just 45 pounds of sugar per season. Potash was another source of revenue from maple trees. Once the land was cleared the trees were burned, generating huge piles of potassium rich ashes, which could be used for fertilizer or sold to a merchant boiled them down to make potash. This became a major export commodity to Great Britain, which found various uses for it in its burgeoning manufacturing economy. Cutting and burning maple trees while it was hard work was simpler and less labor intensive and sugaring and could be done at any time of the year. But maple sugaring technology was about to make some advances. For more than 100 years the process of making maple sugar remain virtually unchanged, save for the substitution of augers for access to pierce the trees and wooden spouts to direct the flow of SAP. The SAP still poured into wooden buckets that were emptied into iron kettles over open fires. In 1862, in the first annual report of the United States Department of Agriculture, CT Alboard described the manufacture of maple sugar as in its infancy. This was beginning to change. Starting in the 1830s processes for refining sheet metal and the invention of the tin can led to advances in the production and storage of maple products. Eli Mosher of Flushing, Michigan patented the first metal SAP spout in 1860. Metal SAP pails and lids followed and tin cans meant that syrup could be stored and sold without having to be turned into sugar. As the century wore on the production of sugar waned in relation to the production of syrup, reflecting these improved storage methods, and the fact that the extra step of boiling the syrup down into sugar could be eliminated. But the most revolutionary change in the process of making maple sugar involved the substitution of flat pans called evaporators for the iron kettles. It is difficult to determine exactly when evaporators were first used. The earliest design was a shallow iron pan 30 inches wide, six inches deep and six to 20 feet long, supported by a firebox of stone or brick. The larger under surface of the pan allowed for quicker evaporation use of less fuel and higher quality sugar and syrup. For the most part after the 1870s maple sugar making technology remained static for another 100 years when tubing systems came into widespread use. For example in the 1870s sugar makers were still debating the merits of metal versus wooden buckets, as well as pans versus evaporators. Nevertheless, maple sugar production increased steadily to a peak of 40 million 120,205 pounds from 23 states in 1860. There was another factor at play in the upswing of maple sugar production, besides improvements in technology, and it harkened back to Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Rush's interest in promoting the commodity as a substitute for slave produced cane sugar. Vermont was anti slavery from its very beginning as a territory. By 1837 it boasted 89 anti slavery societies and a total of more than 5000 members. In the farmers calendar section of various almanacs readers were urged to pay attention to maple sugaring in March. Maple sugar will now call your attention said one. This is a more wholesome and pleasant sweetening, and every true American will prefer it to that which is see seasoned with the tears sweat and blood of the miserable slaves. Eastern Johnson, a 19th century American painter noted for his portraits and paintings of scenes of daily life in the South and cranberry harvesting, did a series of maple sugar paintings in the 1860s and early 1870s. Johnson was a union supporter, and through these paintings he drew attention to maple sugar produced by free people in their own communities, Jefferson ideal, as an alternative to sugar produced by slaves. These abolitionist sentiments coupled with the burgeoning technical advances pushed maple sugar production to its absolute peak in 1860. And sometime between then in 1870, when the next agricultural census was taken, Vermont overtook New York as the nation's top producer of maple sugar, a position it holds to this day. Along the way, as the latter part of the 19th century unfolded, the manufacturer of maple sugar began to emerge from the woods and farms and take a place in the nation's marketplace. By the 1890s with slavery no longer an issue and railroads bringing cheap refined white sugar to an increasingly urban market. Maple sugar was in decline, while federal census showed that production of maple syrup increased from just under 1.6 million gallons in 1860 to more than 2 million gallons in 1900. In the late 19th century trade associations, such as the Vermont maple sugar makers Association, one of the oldest non governmental agricultural trade organizations in the United States were founded, seeking to improve quality increased production and better market products. Although maple products, particularly sugar, were evolving in the direction of a luxury or niche market. The State Board of Agriculture became a champion of commercial production of maple syrup in the tobacco industry, where it was used as a flavoring. George Carey, who eventually became America's largest buyer and seller of maple products benefited from this. In 1886, he was a buyer for a wholesale grocery company in Maine, when he stopped in North Craftsbury, Vermont. A local merchant agreed to buy some of his groceries, if Carey would take 1500 pounds of maple sugar off his hands at four and a half cents a pound, which he did. Luckily, he encountered a tobacco salesman from Virginia, whose company was using West Indian sugar at five cents a pound to flavor its chewing tobacco. Carey persuaded him to try the maple sugar, and soon railroad carloads of maple sugar were traveling south to the tobacco companies. On the strength of his profits, Carey established the Carey maple sugar company in 1902, which sold maple sugar syrup and grapes throughout the country and abroad before filing for bankruptcy in 1931. The primary market for maple sugar and syrup was not the individual consumer, but rather large processing corporations that use them as flavoring. Farmers who were not organized and were otherwise occupied with making a living from the land tended to sell the product they did not keep for home use to neighbors and friends, or to the local grocery store for a low price or in exchange for cane sugar. The stores then resold it to mixers, who used it to flavor a body of glucose or cane sugar six to 10 times as great, making a product that was marketed as pure maple syrup. The Packers preferred a dark inferior sugar because it would go farther in the mixtures, and by one estimate, 7 eighths of the product sold by the turn of the century was suspect, being only partially maple syrup or even made entirely of other substances. The US Department of Agriculture was so concerned about this that it included a discussion of adulteration of maple products in its 1905 Bureau of Forestry Bulletin on the maple sugar industry. Although it's report that year did note that given the present state of knowledge, it would be hard to determine whether other sugars had been added to maple sugar. In the case of syrup, the Bureau of Forestry hazarded the guess that the greater quantity of maple syrup on the market is adulterated, but without further definition cannot be to be adulterated legally, unless some statute is enacted, establishing a standard by which these products can be judged. As far back as the 1890s, Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont had expressed an interest in a pure food and drug bill in terms of both consumer safety and the economic protection it would afford producers by preventing adulteration. In 1903 he became more personally involved when he attempted to determine if syrup produced by the towel maple syrup company of Burlington, Vermont was one actually maple syrup, as opposed to brown colored cane sugar syrup, and two made in Vermont. It turned out that the poorest grade of Vermont maple syrup was shipped to the towel company of St. Paul, Minnesota, where it was blended and Burlington, Vermont put on the label. Although Proctor was sure that what he had tasted was not maple syrup, adulteration could not be proved. In 1906, partly as a result of concern about the dilution of this iconic product of the American forests, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act. The price of cane sugar continued to drop. In 1818, maple sugar was half the price of cane, and by 1880 they were equal. By 1885 cane sugar was cheaper for the first time. Maple sugaring still made sense for farmers with woodland on their property and families to help them harvest the sap. But as the price of cane sugar dropped, beet sugar became available, and America continued to urbanize maple sugar lost its economic advantage. Still, while cane sugar may have displaced maple sugar as a basic food item, the demand for maple syrup and sugar as luxuries and flavoring materials not only kept the industry alive, but called for an increasing supply. That supply continued to be furnished by small farmers and householders, not big businesses or cooperatives. Maple syrup and sugar were nonetheless considered legitimate agricultural products to be reported on by state and national agricultural commissions. Crockett's 1921 history of Vermont lists no maple sugar or syrup, manufacturers, factories or establishments. And by the 1930s, the making of these products was a sideline. Nevertheless, it was an important sideline in Vermont, where 35% of farmers tapped their trees compared to 15% in New Hampshire and 13% in New York. In no other state did more than 5% of farmers tap their maple trees. Although big business never made serious inroads into the maple industry, private enterprise was still at work. In 1916, W. C. Bauer invented a metal sap gathering tube, which eventually proved impractical because of freezing and leakage. Other tubing systems were tried in the first half of the 20th century, including gutter spouting and iron water pipes. Various problems rendered these impractical, such as leakage from ice and falling limbs and damage from deer. And iron pipes heated up too much during the day and could cause sap to begin to ferment by the time it reached the sugar house. In 1959, Nelson Griggs of Vermont patented the first plastic, plastic sap gathering pipeline system. The advances in the plastics industry beginning in the late 1950s enabled the development of a collection system consisting of vinyl tubing that connected hundreds of trees using gravity to drain the sap downhill to a centralized tank that led directly to the sugar house. Maple sugar and syrup also became more and more closely tied to Vermont's economy and self image. In 1970, Vermont had overtaken New York as the nation's largest producer of maple products. According to a news release from the National Agricultural Statistics Service under the ages of the US Department of Agriculture in June 2021. The 2021 Vermont maple syrup production totaled 1.54 million gallons. Which was down 21% from the previous year, largely due to weather and an average season of only 28 days as compared to 38 days the previous year, Vermont remains the top producing nation state in the nation. 200 years after Thomas Jefferson tried to gain support for maple sugaring in Vermont. Maple products have established a niche as a luxury homegrown natural food item tied to Vermont's image as a bucolic Sylvan paradise was beautiful leaves draw visitors in the fall, and whose maple sugar and syrup products draw interest all year round. Not exactly what Jefferson had in mind, perhaps, but he never gave up on maple sugar. What kept him promoting it, writing about it and growing maple trees at Monticello for as long as he did. I'll finish up with a look at Jefferson's quixotic championing of maple sugar and the vexing question of why a lifelong slave owner continue to promote this anti slavery cause. The last sugar maple tree at Monticello died in July 1992. It was probably from a planting done in 1798, and it had reached a diameter of five feet. It's endurance and longevity reflect Jefferson's persistence and championing maple sugar as a replacement for cane in an effort not to profit from the slaves who labor to produce cane sugar for a commercial market. Meanwhile slaves continue to labor at Monticello throughout Jefferson's life and beyond to feed his family and support his lifestyle. What were the roots of this dichotomy. How did Jefferson justify holding on to his own slaves, while trying to undermine an industry that depended completely on slave labor. Jefferson's early writings resolutions for the Virginia assembly the Declaration of Independence and his soul book notes on the state of Virginia, take a consistent and emphatic position against slavery. The relationship role in getting the questions of slavery and emancipation on to the agenda of the Virginia assembly. Massachusetts freed its slaves on the strength of the Declaration of Independence, weaving Jefferson's language into the state Constitution of 1780, thus giving it the force of law. Despite his theorizing about the inherent inferiority of black people in notes on the state of Virginia. Jefferson was a slave who followed slavery, and the burdens and struggles it imposed on slave and master alike. Nevertheless, once revolutionary fervor waned. So did Jefferson's once fervent attempts to eradicate slavery from the American nation. Many Jefferson biographers date this waning from the time of this day in France, 1785 to 1789 as US representative and later successor to Benjamin Franklin as minister. The author of a book on slavery in the age of revolution says that Jefferson while in France began experimenting with the locutions which for the rest of his life would characterize his response to slavery. These locations were by turns contradictory apologetic paradoxical, and most of all aimed at procrastinating emancipation would come, it must come, but not right now. Joseph Ellis theorizes that there were three reasons for this change and the timing of it. First, his book notes on the state of Virginia made him a controversial figure among his own planter class in Virginia. Second toward the end of his time in France as he prepared to go back to Monticello, he began to focus on how much his financial status depended on his slaves. Finally, he realized he had no workable answer to the question of what would happen to slaves after they were freed. He did not believe in a society where blacks and whites could live freely in proximity to one another, and various efforts over the years to investigate relocation abroad for free blacks came to nothing. Annette Gordon read and Peter Onoff in their book most blessed of the patriarchs, add another reason. Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings. She had gone to France as Jefferson's daughters, Polly's companion, and her brother James was also there. They were treated as paid servants along with the rest of the staff, and if they stayed in France, they could be free. The situation was all more delicate because Sally had become what their son Madison later term Jefferson's concubine, while they were in France, and she did not want to return to Monticello and be re enslaved. Jefferson had to think seriously about slavery, their relative positions, and what he wanted for his domestic life going forward. He promised Sally that she would live a life of privilege at Monticello, and that their children would be freed when they grew to adulthood. So when Jefferson returned home he essentially live with a two tier system of slavery at Monticello. The Jeffersonian world depended on forced labor for its existence, and it was not the world of yeoman farmers but of landowners with large estates laboring under heavy debts. Nevertheless, Jefferson's ideal was rural and agrarian. Not for him the hustle and bustle of the industrial north with its busy seaports and its centers of banking and commerce. He saw his new country as a nation primarily of small farmers engaged with the land, living in harmony with it, as they produce provisions to feed themselves and sell to their neighbors and friends. In Jefferson's eyes slavery was a blight on that landscape, and his primary goal in advocating emancipation was not to free black people, but to free white people from the moral evil of being slaveholders. Jefferson had another motive for championing maple sugar besides undermining slavery and promoting an agrarian ideal, and that was to reduce America's dependence on Great Britain. Cain sugar produced in the British West Indies from the 1640s on had quickly become a major commercial commodity for Great Britain. The growth potential was significant, particularly in Great Britain's erstwhile colonies. Jefferson was an advocate of economic independence from Great Britain, and he saw the development of the market for maple sugar as a way to promote that independence. Like all advocates of maple sugar, Jefferson touted its ability to improve America's balance of payments, as well as its moral utility. As biographer do mom alone Jefferson's preference for agriculture was based on moral and political grounds, more than economic ones, and his championing of maple sugar with its anti slavery and anti Great Britain connotations provides us with a striking example of this. Jefferson's persistent championing of maple sugar reflects his view of himself as anti slavery, and it reflects as well the way in which he demonstrated the stance quietly, obliquely and without public fanfare. He planted maple trees, bought and used maple sugar, and he proselytized among his friends, but none of these efforts required him to lay either his political capital or his national reputation on the line. So to sum up, despite suggestions in popular literature, for example in 1996 article in American Heritage magazine, the article in the colonial Williamsburg Journal, on which this talk is based. And the 2010 book founding foodies by Dave DeWitt, that Thomas Jefferson was a founding father not only it was country, but of the maple sugar industry as well. A deeper search reveals a more complex picture. For one thing there were numerous other factors contributing to the promotion and development of maple sugar and maple syrup production in the United States, such as the so called maple sugar bubble fueled by land speculators abolitionist fervor particularly among Benjamin Rush and his friends in Philadelphia, and economic necessity among farmers struggling to rest a living from the rocky forested lands of New England. It is also difficult to draw a line from Jefferson to the steadily increasing amounts of maple sugar and syrup produced, because no production records were kept before 1840. When the US Census Bureau began to keep them. There are no before statistics that might let us measure the impact of Jefferson's promotion of the homegrown sweetener. Therefore, while Jefferson continued to advocate the use of maple sugar at home and abroad, well past the turn of the 19th century, his influence was just one of many. Sugaring did not lend itself to nor require a major industrial presence, nor would personal intervention alone, even from so preeminent a person and as Thomas Jefferson had been sufficient to advance the industry. Not until the technology to produce and store maple syrup began to develop in the mid 19th century, coupled with renewed awareness of the terrible human cost of producing cane sugar that came with a civil war and America's attempts to deal with its own slave issue that maple sugar and syrup through the attention of widespread commercial markets. So if Thomas Jefferson is not the father of America's maple sugar industry, what was his contribution. His was a sustained and eminent voice in the effort to make maple sugar the dominant sweetener in the United States. Although his initial interest was aroused by the Pennsylvania and Benjamin Rush, who died in 1813 after 20 years of silence on the subject of maple sugar. His ties to Vermont, the state most closely associated with maple sugar, were close and meaningful. His visit to Bennington in 1791, and his subsequent correspondence with Joseph say stimulated his efforts to grow maple trees at Monticello, and to promote the use of maple sugar in a wider context. He met their say Vermont Governor wrote Moses Robinson and Vermont Gazette editor Anthony has well remained lifelong Republicans and Jefferson supporters. Given Jefferson sustained advocacy of maple sugar it is interesting that his biographers devote little or no time to it. Some biographers, for example, do mom alone and Gordon read and all enough mentioned Jefferson's journey to Vermont, but not its connection to maple sugar, despite numerous references to it in his letters. Rather, they dwell on how it's mended his friendship with Madison, or and whether there was any truth to the Hamiltonian rumor that it was a political trip meant to drum up Republican support in the north, which is still a subject of historical controversy. Still, Jefferson's involvement with maple sugar and gives us another window through which to look at Jefferson's attitude toward agriculture, the economic development of the new nation, and most importantly, slavery. Vermont continues to be the top maple syrup producing state in the country, and no one can drive the highways and back roads of Vermont without being afforded numerous opportunities to purchase maple syrup and other maple products. Probably very few people think of Thomas Jefferson when they stop the connection between a founding father from Virginia, and this most new England of products is a little known but I think fascinating by way in American history. In addition, the story of his advocacy of maple sugar as a substitute for cane adds to our picture of Jefferson the slave owner, who also penned the words, all men are created equal. Thank you. This is a summary for this fascinating lecture, which is very timely considering the sugaring season is just about drying to a close up here in northern Vermont. And we're all getting to enjoy the products of the maple sugaring industry right now. I remind everyone, due to this lecture series falling on Easter Sunday will we will not be hosting our normal live Q&A with the lecture after the premiere of this video. You are welcome to send questions and feedback to the Ethan Allen homestead museum at the email address on the screen, Ethan Allen homestead at gmail.com. We would be delighted to hear from our viewers about our program, and we're more than happy to forward your questions to our guest lecturer. I would also like to ask our viewers again to click the like button at the bottom of this video, as well as the red subscribe button to help our programming reach a larger audience. And consider visiting our website where you can find out more information about our historical nonprofit and museum, including how you can get involved as a volunteer or as a member. Thank you for your support. And finally, one last thank you to our guest lecturer, Mary. Thank you.