| 1. | Julius Willie CHAPIN was born on 19 Apr 1848 in Eden Township, Ingham, MI (son of Almon Morris CHAPIN and Jane PEASE); died on 20 Jul 1914 in Eden Township, Ingham, MI; was buried in Maple Grove Cemetery, Mason, Ingham, MI. Other Events and Attributes:
- Census: 16 Jun 1900, Vevay Township, Ingham, MI
- Obituary: 20 Jun 1914
Notes:
Note:
From Pioneer History of Ingham County.
The Chapin farm became well known throughout the country because of the fact that J.W. Chapin, son of Almon M. Chapin, developed on it the largest sugar bush in the state of Michigan.
It is a far cry from the charmingly primitive "sugar bush" of fiction to the business-like proposition of modern farm life, but it is safe to say that not even the most advanced agriculturist elsewhere has a trolley line and telephone connection from his residence to his sugar bush, as has J.W. Chapin of Eden (1912). Eden is a little hamlet four miles south of Mason, and the Chapin estate of 360 acres, which has been in the family for many years, is the largest farm for many miles around. The Lansing-Jackson branch of the Michigan United Railway runs through the farm, passing close to the house and also the sugar bush one-half mile away. A private telephone line runs from the sugar house to the residence and a switch here gives connections with all the neighboring towns. The Jackson-Saginaw branch of the Michigan Central Railroad is only a few rods away on the opposite side of the house from the M.U.R.
Mr. Chapin now taps 2,200 trees every season, producing from 6,000 to 9,000 pounds of syrup and sugar each year. This is shipped to private parties all over the country, most of whom have standing orders for their year's supply. As proof of the quality of his products Mr. Chapin shows medals won by his exhibit at the St. Louis Exposition and a diploma received at the Pan-American. The sugar orchard comprises 80 acres of a 140 acre wood lot, and besides the service they have given the Chapin family for seventy years there is proof that they yielded their sweetness for the benefit of the Indians long before the advent of the white men. The remains of bark troughs and wooden spiles, with the added evidence of the scars to be found on the mammoth maple trees, go to show that the red man had knowledge of this valuable asset and made use of it.
It is said that the Indians made pilgrimages to this part of the county every spring, where they camped through the maple sugar season and "milked" the numerous sugar bushes in this vicinity. The crude methods they employed in manufacturing the sugar, which was said to be black and full of leaves and twigs, were of course the best they knew, and it makes one wonder what their sensations would have been could they have taken a peep into Mr. Chapin's modern and model sap house and watched the work done there. Let us see how this plant was conducted in 1913. The work began early in the winter when the men commenced to fill the huge shed at the sugar camp with wood ready to feed the furnaces. Then the first warm day that promised spring began the work of tapping the trees. Iron spouts were driven into holes previously bored in the trees about three feet from the ground. On these were hung tin sap pails, with wooden covers so adjusted as to exclude everything but the pure, limpid sap. The larger trees carry two or three pails. Two teams are kept busy gathering sap, each drawing a steel tank holding several barrels of the fluid, and three men work with each outfit. The tanks are mounted on runners, as they are more practical for use in snow and mud than wheels. Deep snow often makes the work of gathering sap very difficult.
The sugar house contains two 20 foot evaporators, with 25-foot smokestacks, and to attend to the fires and watch the boiling sap keeps one man busy.
The teams bring the sap to an elevation beside the sugar camp, where it is emptied through a hose into big 50 foot barrel tanks. From this supply a constant stream flows into the shallow pans of the evaporator. These pans are about 2 x 5 feet in size, and are connected with each other by tubing at the ends, so that the boiling sap is kept constantly circulating. After making the circuit of the first evaporator it is piped to the other.
The furnace man's chief anxiety is to boil down the sap as soon as possible after it is brought in as the making of the finest quality of syrup demands that the sap be gathered once a day or oftener, and used immediately. Openings in the roof of the sugar house allow clouds of steam from the boiling pans to escape. When the syrup reaches the proper consistency it is strained and allowed to settle. For sugar the syrup is boiled again then molded into five pound cakes.
The output depends on the length of the season, whic is never two years like. Extremely cold weather changing rapidly to warm spring weather oftentimes starts the buds on the trees and makes a very short season. Work in the sugar bush does not stop when the sap ceases to run, as then the thousands of pails must be overhauled and scalded, then packed away to await the next season's run.
Five years later sees this all changed. In 1914 Mr. Chapin was working with a hay fork in his barn when the machine fell and struck him, and death followed instantaneously. Mr. Chapin, in addition to conducting this sugar bush mentioned, worked about 200 acres of farm land in a superior manner, and was considered an authority on all matters of an agricultural nature. After his death Mrs. Chapin and the son who remained home found the farm land all they could attend to, and when the fuel shortage struck the county in 1918 the City of Lansing bought the wood lot, which included the sugar bush, to supply its municipal wood yard, and this wonderful landmark containing trees centuries old went up in smoke. This was a blow to the maple sugar industry in Ingham county, which was augmented by the sale of several other good-sized, well-known sugar orchards in this vicinity which went for the same purpose among them the one of the Fuller farm, which was also known to the Indians, and had yielded annual sugar crops for a long time as the one on the Chapin farm.
Mrs. Chapin's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Asher Lyon, came to Vevay in the early days from Geneva, N.Y. Mr. Lyon died some years ago in Gratiot county, where he had lived for some years, but Mrs. Lyon and their eleven children are still living and recently held a family reunion at the Chapin home in Eden, beneath the original forest trees that surround the old homestead.
Since the death of Mr. Chapin in 1914 Mrs. Chapin has conducted the large farm very successfully, and last spring was elected justice of the peace for Vevay, on the Republican ticket, over her oldest son who ran against her. Like his father, J.W. Chapin was active in the work of the Ingham County Agricultural Society, the Farmers' Club and the County Pioneer and Historical Society; in the latter societies Mrs. Chapin has held offices several times.
Besides his widow, Mr. Chapin was survived by six children Almon M., named for his grandfather, owns a farm adjoining the old homestead; Alice, who graduated from the State Normal College at Ypsilanti and the University of Pennsylvania, later taking post graduate courses at Columbia and Harvard Universities. She has taught for a number of years, a part of the time being in charge of the physically deficient children in the Detroit schools and those of Minneapolis, Minn. She is now superintendent of an extensive Settlement House in Minneapolis which is supported by the wealthy people of that city.
Julius, a graduate of M.A.C., for some years county agricultural agent in various parts of the state, but now engaged in business for himself in Traverse City, Mich. Ethel, for many years a teacher in St. Johns, now taking a course in a Nurses Training School in Chicago University. Warren, employed in Detroit. Martha, a graduate of Ypsilanti Normal and Olivet College, now teaching.
The Chapin family was one of the first in this section to establish a state game refuge on their land, which is kept up in strict accordance with the law.
Census:
1900 census at Vevay, Ingham, MI shows: Julius Chapin, b. Apr 1848, 52, married 18 years, b. MI, parents b. MA/MA, farmer; Carrie L., b. Dec 1861, 38, 6 children born / 6 living, b. NY, parents b. NJ/NY; children b. MI: Almon M., b. Sep 1883, 16; Alice, b. Apr 1885, 15; Ethel, b. Nov 1886, 13; Julius, b. Oct 1888, 11; Warren, b. Jan 1891, 9; Martha, b. Aug 1899, x/12 (illegible).
Died:
Julius was killed when a hay fork fell, piercing his neck and heart.
Buried:
Find A Grave e-Memorial
Julius married Carrie LYON on 6 Apr 1882 in Stanton, Montcalm, MI. Carrie (daughter of Asher LYON and Martha FENTON) was born on 21 Dec 1861 in NY; died on 11 Jan 1937 in Eden, Ingham, MI; was buried in Maple Grove Cemetery, Mason, Ingham, MI. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]
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1848 - 1914 (66 years)
