Sugar Houses in New England

On your ancestor's property there might have been a small outbuilding called a sugar house. Maple Syrup is produced in Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada. The trees are tapped for sap in March and early April. It was a skill learned from the Native Americans and taught to settlers in the 1600s.

If this small building had a chimney or large cupola to let out steam, it probably was used to house an evaporator for boiling maple sugar. Sometimes, this was an open lean-to. If it was a more buttoned up building, with windows and no chimney, it could have been used as for some other purpose, usually in New England a shoe shop or "Ten Footer" was on the property and used as a way of producing cash in the winter or off hours from farming. To see a post about shoe shops see my post from 9 April 2010 http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/04/making-shoes-in-derry-new-hampshire.html

Here are photos of Hank Peterson's sugar house in Londonderry, New Hampshire located on Peabody Row.

New Hampshire Maple Producers http://www.nhmapleproducers.com/

more photos were posted on Friday, 4 March 2011 at this link:

http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/03/march-brings-maple-season-to-new.html

Hank Peterson, maple producer of Londonderry, New Hampshire,

passed away on December 23, 2015.  Click here for his obituary:

http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2015/12/we-will-miss-you-hank-peterson-1932-2015.html

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Published under a Creative Commons License
Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Sugar Houses in New England", Nutfield Genealogy, posted March 5, 2011, (  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/03/sugar-houses-in-new-england.html: accessed [access date]).