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Size: 3 3/4" x 2 3/4"
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Size: 3 3/4" x 2 3/4"
Vermont was fighting fake maple long before this label came off the press. In 1884 the state outlawed the adulteration of maple sugar, maple syrup and honey, because stores and restaurants had been stirring glucose, cane sugar, water and a little maple together and selling the result as the real thing. A newspaper of the time complained about "pure Vermont maple syrup" that had been made in Chicago.
Brier Rose went the other way. It was packed in St. Albans, the Franklin County city known, unofficially, as the maple capital of the world, and it put its recipe right on the front in plain capitals: MADE FROM CANE SUGAR & VERMONT MAPLE SYRUP. Two pink wild roses, a red chevron, a navy SYRUP badge, and no pretending. This one is unused. Its back is still blank, and it was never glued to a container. Labels like this were made to be stuck on and thrown out with the empty.
The two measures in the top corners are not a misprint. Syrup is heavier than water, so twelve fluid ounces of it weighs about a pound, and the label gave the shopper both figures.
Brier, also spelled briar, is the old country word for a thorny wild rose bush. The European dog rose is still sold as briar rose. Its cousin the sweetbrier, a small prickly rose with fragrant leaves and pink flowers, went wild in North America and now grows along roadsides and in pastures from Nova Scotia south and west. Vermont has a pink wild rose of its own, too. The Virginia rose, also called the pasture rose, is native there, grows in pastures and along roadsides, and opens five pale pink petals around yellow stamens from June into August. The flowers painted on this label are the wild kind, five open petals around a ring of yellow stamens, not a florist's many-petalled rose.
The name carries an older story too. "Little Briar Rose" is the title the Brothers Grimm gave their telling of Sleeping Beauty, tale number 50 in the first volume of their Children's and Household Tales, published in 1812. It is the story of the princess who sleeps for a hundred years while a hedge of thorns grows up around her castle. So a Vermont syrup named for a hedgerow rose shares its name with the most famous briar hedge in folklore.
The packer took its name from the Green Mountains, the range that runs down the length of Vermont. It worked out of St. Albans, and it sold more than one kind of syrup. An old piece of the company's advertising offers Green Mountain Pure Vermont Maple Syrup, packed by the same St. Albans firm: a straight maple syrup under its own name, sold alongside the Brier Rose blend. The University of Vermont Libraries also catalog a Brier Rose Brand Syrup piece under Green Mountain Packing in their digital collections.
Vermont's sugarmakers fought the fakes themselves as well as through the law. The Vermont Maple Sugar Makers' Association, founded in 1893, created its own distinct label for maple products sold by its members. Then in 1906 the federal Pure Food and Drug Act banned the making, sale or transport of adulterated or misbranded food across the country.
Blends did not disappear. They stayed legal as long as the label told the buyer what was inside, and they became big business. Patrick J. Towle founded Log Cabin Syrup in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1888 and built it into a leading blended syrup; his family sold it to General Foods in 1927. Vermont Maid began in 1919 as a brand of the Vermont Maple Syrup Company in Essex Junction, and it was made in Burlington from 1926 to 1965.
What an honest label had to say depended on the state the syrup was headed for. Blended-syrup labels of the 1930s and 1940s read "Made from Cane and Maple Sugar", or listed percentages such as 85% cane and 15% maple. One label copyrighted in 1942 broke its syrup down as 50% cane, 25% dextrose, maltose and dextrins, and 25% maple sugar. The Brier Rose ingredient line belongs to that same family of plain statements.
St. Albans had its own stake in the trade. In 1935 Québec Maple Products Ltd. formed a subsidiary in the city called American Maple Products Corporation. A company of that name later made Old Colony syrup in Newport, Vermont, until it closed in 1994.
St. Albans was chartered by the colonial governor Benning Wentworth on August 17, 1763, and first settled during the Revolution by Jesse Welden. The town organized itself on July 28, 1788, at a meeting held in Jesse Welden's own house, which feels about right for the man who settled the place first. His neighbors chose Silas Hathaway as moderator, Jonathan Hoit as town clerk and Daniel Meigs as constable, and they made Welden one of the three selectmen. The village of St. Albans was incorporated in 1859, and on November 17, 1896 it was incorporated as the City of St. Albans, which was organized on March 2, 1897. It sits in the northwest corner of Vermont, about 15 miles south of the Canadian border. That border has shaped a good deal of what happened here.
The farms. Before the trains, there was the land. The town runs right down to St. Albans Bay on Lake Champlain, and its early farmers found a rich, dark loam that was good for crops and for raising cattle, horses and sheep. Butter and cheese were made here in great quantities. In the 1890s the Franklin County Creamery Association in St. Albans was rated the largest butter factory in the world, making 25,000 pounds of butter a day.
The Rail City. St. Albans became home to a major depot, operations center and repair shop of the Vermont and Canada Railroad, and more than 200 trains a day passed through at the height of the railroad era. The Central Vermont Railway, founded by the Smith family, grew into the city's largest employer, with lines stretching from New York City to Canada. Its headquarters complex of shops, freight stations, offices and a roundhouse kept expanding until 1923, when it covered 51 acres. It is still the largest group of railroad buildings in Vermont, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. A packer in a town like that could put its syrup on a train bound almost anywhere. The Central Vermont ran north across the border to Montreal and south along Lake Champlain, through the Green Mountains and down the Connecticut River valley to New London, Connecticut, and a junction at White River Junction tied it to Boston.
The raid. On October 19, 1864, a band of Confederate soldiers who had come down from Canada under Lieutenant Bennett H. Young robbed the First National, St. Albans and Franklin County banks. They got away with about $88,000 and escaped back north across the Missisquoi River. A Canadian court ruled that, as soldiers acting under military orders, they could not be extradited from neutral Canada, and freed them. Canada returned the money it had recovered to St. Albans. It was the northernmost land action of the American Civil War.
Maple. Vermont leads the nation in maple syrup, and St. Albans throws the party. The Vermont Maple Festival has been held in its downtown since 1967, over the last weekend in April, with maple tastings, food demonstrations, live entertainment, a parade and artisan vendors. The festival counts 2027 as its 60th anniversary.
No. It was a blend, and the label says so on its face: cane sugar with Vermont maple syrup. The same company sold a separate pure maple syrup under the Green Mountain name.
It is a 1930s to 1940s label. There is no printed date and no printer's line on it. Its plainly worded ingredient statement is the kind blended-syrup packers were putting on their labels in those decades.
No. The back is blank paper and it was never applied to a container. It is new old stock.
3 3/4 x 2 3/4 inches.
No. Both spellings are old and both are correct; dictionaries treat brier and briar as one word. The label chose brier.
St. Albans is the shire town, or county seat, of Franklin County, and the only city in the county. It is roughly fifteen miles below the border with Quebec.
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