Canning Sweet Corn
When I was doing research on the ice harvesting industry, I came across another industry that once flourished in Maine, that of the canning of sweet corn. Canned sweet corn from Maine was exported across the globe and was highly sought after. This industry lasted from the 1860s to the 1960s and brought prosperity to rural communities across Maine.
While in France in the late 1830s, sea captain, Isaac Winslow of Portland became interested in canning. He acquired the appropriate French canning patents and during his voyage home, he developed a plan for canning Maine sweet corn. By 1844, together with his brother, Nathan, Winslow had perfected the process. First the kernels are stripped from the cob with a curved knife, then placed in a tin can. The can is heated to kill bacteria and then hermetically sealed.
Maine’s weather and its favorable growing season produced the perfect sweet corn, picked in the milk stage rather than in the ripe stage (like grain corn). Using Winslow’s process, the crop quickly became a success. In 1861, 12,000,000 cans of corn were packed in Maine. With only a short time span for the harvest of sweet corn, the canning factories or “corn shops” needed to be located near the farms ensuring freshly picked corn. By the end of the 19th century, 75 corn shops could be found in rural Maine, including one in Belgrade.
John Crowell Taylor, a Belgrade native of Westport, Massachusetts returned to the family farm following his second marriage in 1882. In April of 1885, he and his son Edwin opened a corn shop, J.C. Taylor & Son in Belgrade. The cannery was located near the stream bridge in Belgrade Depot. With the railroad nearby for shipping and a contract for 30 acres of sweet corn, Taylor produced a superior product. Most of his inventory was shipped to Massachusetts. Later he would expand his business to include canned apples. Belgrade’s corn shop closed around 1900.
With increased competition from other parts of the country and the economic conditions of the Great Depression, Maine’s corn canning industry began a steady decline. Maine’s last remaining corn shop located in Farmington, now the site of a McDonald’s and an Irving station, closed in 1968.
Dianne Dowd is vice president of the Belgrade Historical Society.
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