Some of the History of Richard M. Bissell
There are several items about Richard Meredith Bissell in this section of the Bissell Family History website. They include:
-- Richard Bissell's obituary, in the form of an "appreciation" that appeared in the Lowell Sun newspaper shortly after Richard's death in 2002.
-- A reminiscence by Richard, as recorded by Meredith Bissell in March 2000, about driving a team of oxen as a boy in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, and particularly about the role they played when the season came for maple sugaring.
-- A description by Craig Parker of how the maple sugaring operation worked for the Bissell family in Goshen, Mass. when Richard was a boy (as told by Richard).
An Appreciation - "He Was Certainly a Pillar of Our Community"
The Lowell Sun Feb. 11, 2002
Richard's Reminiscence: "Steering Through the Sugar Bush"
This description of working with oxen to clear a path for collecting maple sap was told by Richard Bissell, as recorded by Meredith Bissell, in March 2000.
"In my younger days I had a pair of steers. (Steers are young animals, born bulls then castrated to increase their growth and direct their interest and strength in directions other than those intended by the gods of bovine creatures!) When they get older and heavier they are recognized as oxen generally seen yoked in pairs and working at plodding tasks.
While young and energetic they take on character. One roan of my team must have believed in rest breaks even before steers joined unions. When for example we would stop for a moment to rest or do something that did not require his forward motion, Dan would lie down and take a rest. When directed to get moving, Dan would cooperate getting rapidly to his feet ready to go. The yoked partner was energetic enough so that he, It, didn't bother to take these breaks. It was a high spirited critter!
While they were young, there were some tasks that the steers might be called upon to assist on the farm.
Some years, before it was quite time to tap the maple trees in the sugar bush and when the winter's snow was particularly deep, but when the late winter promised to take us into "sugaring season," Dad [Herbert Bissell] would say, "Why don't you take the steers and break through the wood's trails." This was to make easier the work for the horse team dragging the collection tank sled days later.
When breaking trail with horses in deep snow, there was a chance that the horse team would struggle, move too aggressively, and accidentally "calk" their partner or themselves. By breaking trail beforehand some of the risk to the horses was avoided as was a good deal of the effort for the team when later pulling an increasingly heavier sled tank of sap.
In other seasons as time might be available between the routine chores of tending the milch herd, Dad used the steers to make trips into the wood lot to pick up loads of four foot length firewood.
Nearly 80 years later those working pets are still remembered with affection at the end of March, at the end of the sugaring season, in the year 2000."
Maple Sugaring Season as remembered by Richard Bissell
A few words about Richard Bissell and maple syrup. The picture on the right is of the Bissell farm sugar shack in Goshen, Mass., presently owned by Grandpa Bissell's youngest brother Homer Bissell and his wife Audrey. It goes by the name of Goose Pond Sugar Shack, see www.goosepondsugarshack.com/about-us.html. Back in the 1940s when Grandpa Bissell was talking in the advertising column he wrote for his Red & White Grocery Store in West Groton, MA about going out to the Berkshires and getting maple sugar, he may very well have gotten it from one of his relatives along Bissell Road in Goshen. The sugar shack (a small building in the woods equipped solely for the purpose of producing maple syrup and maple sugar) that one of Grandpa's uncles had was located in a different spot than the one pictured above, but in the same part of Goshen in the woods along Bissell Road.
According to Grandpa Bissell, the sugar shack was built on a hillside in among the sugar maple trees. A horse or ox-drawn sled would go through the snow in the woods, amongst the trees, and collect maple sap from the buckets hanging on spigots put into the trees (like the ones in this picture to the left) to catch the sap in the late winter / early spring. The buckets were then poured by hand into a large wooden barrel sitting on the sled, perhaps four feet or more around and as many feet deep. When that barrel was full, the horses would be driven so that the sled would pull up on the uphill side of the sugar shack. Then a stopper would be released at the bottom of the barrel and the sap would flow down a chute and into a very large wooden storage barrel or vat in the sugar shack below, a barrel perhaps 10 feet or more in diameter. From there it would be flowed down into large copper pans and boiled over a wood fire until the sap was sufficiently evaporated, reduced to what we know as maple syrup.
Growing up on a farm in the Berkshires, Grandpa Bissell learned early on how to manage farm work animals like horses and oxen. He told a story about the maple sugaring operations that when he was a boy of about 11 years of age, he once had the job of driving a sled pulled by a pair of oxen, by himself, from a cooper's shop (a cooper is a barrel maker) to the sugar shack on Bissell Road. On the sled he was hauling a new large wooden storage vat for the sugar house. The vat was on the order of 10 feet in diameter, perhaps four or five feet high. As he got to the bottom of a hill where there was a tricky turn, a driver of horses pulling a load coming the other way had let his team go too fast down the hill and his load was on the verge of going out of control.
Fortunately, Grandpa was a skilled young driver and quickly maneuvered his oxen team and their large load over to the side of the road and just out of the way of the other driver. He safetly delivered the maple sugar vat to the sugar house on Bissell Road.
This picture of a maple sugar house in Vermont shows a couple of things likely similar to the one where Grandpa Bissell grew up. One is that it looks to be located down hill from where the maple sap is first unloaded from the sled. Another is the large supply of firewood, and a fire going, because a wood fire would have to be maintained for a long time to evaporate the maple tree sap down to when it becomes maple syrup. The other picture shows some typical old time sugar house evaporating pans (and maybe a typical old time sugar house operator!).
