It was in about 1856, a few short years after "The Great Compromisor,"
Henry Clay, wrote the Compromise of 1850, that a mother and her fifteen-year-old
daughter Priscilla sat in the doorway of their home — a log cabin in La Salle
county, Illinois. Their clothing and home showed that they had seen better
times.
"You see, daughter — I was born in Magnolia, of wealthy parentage
— "
"Oh, tell me an interesting experience in your girlhood. Father and
the boys will not be back for at least an hour yet."
"I must have a
minute to think, first."
As the mother sat there thinking, the sun shone
its slanting rays on her auburn hair and slightly lighted her face. The girl
marveled how perfectly adorable her mother really was.
"I know," she
said at last, breaking the momentary silence. "I shall tell you a story that
shall teach and still be interesting."
The girl nodded in silent assent.
"I was about fourteen when my father, who ran a sugar camp, decided to
visit the camp. I was one of a family of seven. Father decided to take but one
of us, so he had us draw numbers. I drew the lucky number and visited for the
first time a maple sugar camp.
"We took our first ox cart and drove,
averaging fifteen miles a day, making the journey in one day. We arrived at
sunset, so we, being unable to see anything then, retired early.
"The
next morning the foreman showed me around while father talked business.
"The gang go every day to gather sap. The three-gallon pails are sometimes
filled overnight. They tap the maple sugar trees, put a piece of elderberrywood,
with the pith taken out in the cut part. The end that is put in the tree is
tapered almost to a point. They then hang their three-gallon pails on the stick
and collect the sap every day during the season which begins in April, when the
sap is rising (if the weather is not too cold), and lasts until about the middle
of May. The average yield per tree for a year is about five pounds.
"Although they have camps wherever the trees are, there are not many camps in
this state or any of the neighboring states. This industry and the maple syrup
industry thrive and camps are most frequent in southern Canada and the eastern
part of the United States. Each day when they collect the sap they carry it to
camp and put it in huge kettles, where they boil it down, fill the kettles up,
boil it down until it is sugar.
"Father had many grand and priceless old
trees in his tract of land. His tract, the gang, and camp, was one of the
largest and best known for miles around.
"While going through parts of
father's land with father (for he had finished his business and joined us), I
helped gather the sap in the pails and we found many pails running over. The
foreman tapped some more trees, for it was early in the season, and made a stick
of elderberry wood for each tree. He sent Henry (one of the gang) to call the
wagon to bring pails, and placed the pails on the sticks.
"When noon
came we went back to the cabin and had a rude but plentiful dinner, made by
smiling Mrs. Dugan, the foreman's wife, and served by the two daughters. It
consisted of potatoes, flapjacks and maple syrup, corn bread and coffee — my
treat, as it was the first time I had tasted coffee. But our coffee never was
harmful. It was merely made of ground grain.
"It was after dinner that
father told me that the maple trees in our very own yard at home, the one's that
we children climbed, swung and played on every day produced the sap that maple
sugar can be made out of but that it wasn't as good, or nice flavored as the
maple sugar trees are. I found this hard to believe at first, but I finally
reasoned it out that they were both maple trees and that they must be related,
therefore, naturally, one would find sweet sap in both. But enough; here comes
father."
One place where maple sugar probably is still made is at Mr.
William Haws' timber, as they used to make it.
Extracted 08 Nov 2018 by Norma Hass from Stories of Pioneer Days in La Salle County, Illinois, by Grammar Grade Pupils, published in 1932, page 101.
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Kendall |
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