TABLE OF CONTENTS
Coming next issue or down the road:•The Saltsburg Glass Works•Privy Digger’s Dream•What Do You Collect?•A Clinton Physician Dr. Carl Gruber•M. A. Rue of Cranbury, New Jersey•Early Pittsburgh Glasshouses•Keystone Coffee Jar•Soda City’s Only Two Earliest Colored Sodas: H. Deming & Co. and C.C. Habenicht•Probst & Hilbs German Bitters Little Rock, Ark.•”Holy Grail” dig in the Trustee Garden•Whites Prairie Flower•Caswell Hazard Druggists•Peter Bisso Soda Water Manufacturer in Corsicana, Texas•Steamboat Arabia Museum•Williams & Severance–Gold Rush Bottlers•The History of Bottles: Examined through One Retailer over Many Decades in Ten Steps•Chasing Dr. Parker•W. H. Bovee – Coffee and Spice Maker•ACL #18 Foreigners•Bottles Dug in 2024: Digging a Digger’s Collection•and so much more! On the Cover: Name Your Poison collage.
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To submit an article or send a letter to the editor, please contact:
Ferdinand Meyer V Peachridge Collections (AB&GC) P.O. 1825 Brookshire, Texas 77423 email: fmeyer@fmgdesign.com
For comments or concerns please contact:
Michael Seeliger, FOHBC President N8211 Smith Road Brooklyn, WI 53521 phone: 608.575.2922 email: mwseeliger@gmail.com
Fair use notice: Some material in Antique Bottle & Glass Collector has been submitted for publication in this magazine and/or was originally published by the authors and is copyrighted. We, as a non-profit organization, offer it here as an educational tool to increase further understanding and discussion of bottle collecting and related history. We believe this constitutes “fair use” of the copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this material for purposes of your own that go beyond “fair use,” you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s).
Antique Bottle & Glass Collector © (ISSN 10505598) is published bi-monthly (6 issues per year) by the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors, Inc. (a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational organization) at N8211 Smith Road, Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521-9789; phone: 608-575-2922; website: FOHBC.org, postage paid at Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521 and additional mailing offices, Pub.#005062.
Postmaster: Send address changes to Michael Seeliger, FOHBC President, N8211 Smith Road, Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521, phone: 608.575.2922, email: mwseeliger@gmail.com
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The names Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors Inc. (FOHBC), and Antique Bottle & Glass Collector ©, are registered ® names of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors Inc., and no use of either, other than as references, is permitted without expressed written consent from the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors Inc. Certain material contained in this publication is copyrighted by, and remains the sole property of, the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors Inc. while others remain property of the submitting authors. Detailed information concerning a particular article may be obtained from the Editor. Printed by Modern Litho, Jefferson City, Missouri.
FOHBC Board of Directors
The Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors is a non-profit organization for collectors of historical bottles, glass and related collectible items. Our primary goal is educational as it relates to the history and manufacture of historical bottles and related artifacts.
FOHBC Officers 2024–2026
President: Michael Seeliger, N8211 Smith Road, Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521, phone: 608.575.2922, email: mwseeliger@gmail.com
Vice-President: Position Open
Secretary: Alice Seeliger, N8211 Smith Road, Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521, phone: 608.575.1128, email: AliceSecretaryFOHBC@gmail.com
Treasurer: Kathie Craig, 1037 Hazelwood Avenue, Campbell, California 95008, phone: 408.591.6511, email: kathie.fohbc@gmail.com
Business Manager: Position Open
Membership Director: Position Open. (Interim) Michael Seeliger, N8211 Smith Road, Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521, phone: 608-575-2922, email: mwseeliger@gmail.com
Marketing Director: Craig Cassetta, 12 Marlin Court, Chico, California 95973, phone: 530.680.5226, email: ccassettafohbc@gmail.com
Special Projects Director: Doug Simms, 1317 Tullahoma Drive, Prattville, Alabama 36066, phone: 334.318.1965, dsimms@dnscs.com
Director-at-Large: Stephen R. Jackson, P.O. Box 3137, Suffolk, Virginia 23439, phone: 757.675.5642, email: sjackson@srjacksonlaw.com
Director-at-Large: John O’Neill, 1805 Ralston Avenue, Belmont, California 94002, phone: 650.619.8209, email: Joneill@risk-strategies.com
Director-at-Large: Richard Siri, PO Box 3818,
Santa Rosa, California 95402, phone: 707.542.6438, email: rtsiri@sbcglobal.net
Northeast Region Director: Charles Martin Jr., 5 John Hall Cartway, Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts 02675, phone: 781.248.8620, email: cemartinjr@comcast.net
Midwest Region Director: Henry Hecker, W298 S10655 Phantom Woods Road, Mukwonago, Wisconsin 53149, phone: 262.844.5751, email: phantomhah@gmail.com
Southern Region Director: Tom Lines, 1647 Olivia Way, Auburn, Alabama 36830, phone: 205.410.2191, email: Bluecrab1949@hotmail.com
Western Region Director: Eric McGuire, 1732 Inverness Drive, Petaluma, California 94954, phone: 707.481.9145, email: etmcguire@comcast.net
FOHBC Virtual Museum
Alan DeMaison, 1605 Clipper Cove, Painesville, Ohio 44077, phone: 440.358.1223, email: a.demaison@sbcglobal.net
Joe Gourd, 27W058 Fleming Drive, Winfield, Illinois 60190, phone: 630.653.7088, email: joegourd@aol.com
Ferdinand Meyer V, P.O. Box 1825, Brookshire, Texas 77423, phone: 713.222.7979 x115, email: fmeyer@fmgdesign.com
Miguel Ruiz, Houston, Texas, email: mruiz@fmgdesign.com
Richard Siri, PO Box 3818, Santa Rosa, California 95402, phone: 707.542.6438, email: rtsiri@sbcglobal.net
Antique Bottle & Glass Collector
Publication: Peachridge Collections, LLC, Ferdinand Meyer V and Elizabeth Meyer, P.O. Box 1825, Brookshire, Texas 77423, email: fmeyer@fmgdesign.com
Proofreader: Alice Seeliger
Featured Writers: Mike Dickman, Ralph Finch and Andy Rapoza
FOHBC ADDRESS CHANGE: Mail should no longer be addressed to the Post Office Box in Brookshire, Texas. Address all mail to:
FOHBC c/o Michael Seeliger N8211 Smith Road Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521-9789
President’s Message
Michael Seeliger President Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors
N8211 Smith Road, Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521
608.575.2922
mwseeliger@gmail.com
I finished my spring bottle show tour with the Mansfield Ohio Show. This is certainly one of the premier shows in our hobby. Nothing compares to Baltimore for size, but Mansfield comes pretty close with great show promoters, lots of great dealers, and a wonderful chance to share stories at the Friday evening dinner. It’s an abbreviated show that dealers and buyers appreciate with set up Friday afternoon and the show closing on Saturday at 2 pm.
Bill Mitchell and Bill Taylor tagged along with me and that gave us an opportunity to stop by Ted and Hazel Krist’s house to see their wonderful collection. As we sat in the chairs in front of their display cases, I couldn’t help but think about a comparison with collectors of other items. Some people display deer heads, guns, sports equipment, or any number of other items of interest, and they all elicit stories and life experiences from visitors.
As Bill, Bill, and I pointed to one fantastic bottle after another, Ted, often with prompting from Hazel, would relate how each particular bottle reflected a certain period in their lives. Their collection of bottles, advertising, crockery, and other items held the history of their travels, searches, discoveries and, ultimately, displaying of their treasures.
I know you can all relate! Our collections are a physical manifestation of our interests, our passions, our travels, and how we have moved through life while bringing the past with us. If we’re lucky, we also have people who are interested in hearing our stories. The attendance at our Webinars consistently shows that collectors want to see what others collect, how they discover their treasures, and how they are displayed.
Now that I have completed my latest bottle display case, my kids, grandkids, and friends take more time to sit in front of the rows of bottles, asking questions, pointing out differences and similarities, and choosing their favorites. My grandkids, especially, are learning more about what excites me and what means the most in my life (other than family and friends). It may be the green Warner’s Animal Cure that I sent to Jack Stecher and Bill Agee to get their opinions on whether it was authentic or a repro. Or the baseball cards I saved, still smelling of that awful tasting gum. Or the best arrowhead I’ve ever found.
counter with another fisherman 30 years later revealed the story that the Manhattans prepared by his wife and labeled and shipped as “asparagus” at the Seeliger Cannery, saved his life in WWII. Nobody misappropriated the “asparagus” along the way and his wife’s Manhattans were delivered to him on the front lines!
Speaking of labels, they are fascinated by those on the patent medicine bottles, claiming to cure all ills. And how about that Radam’s Microbe Killer that “Cures all Diseases.” From “pirate bottles” to historical flasks, I’m sharing a bit of history and Americana with the next generation. It is certainly adding to my enjoyment of caretaking these historical items and helping them gain some appreciation for the artistry, cleverness, and resourcefulness of previous generations.
To capture our stories, our FOHBC webinars continue monthly (for the most part), and I would encourage you to share your collections for others to enjoy. Let me know what you would like to share, and we will help you through the process. And, of course, the webinars are posted on FOHBC.org and reach a wide audience. They are a great learning tool for new collectors and bringing in new collectors is the way our hobby will continue on and grow.
Another way to share your interests is through articles and photos in this official Federation bi-monthly publication. Even if you don’t consider yourself a great writer, we can help you get your story out there. We need fresh stories to fill our pages and keep the magazine interesting and engaging.
RENO ‘25! If you haven’t made your reservations..., what are you waiting for! Team Reno, led by Richard Siri and Craig Cassetta, are ready to show you a really enjoyable time July 31 through August 3. Bottles, bottles, bottles, displays, banquet, tours, music events, car shows, the special Reno Red commemorative Drake’s, one-of-a-kind Drake’s for auction and raffle, and another specially crafted jug will all be at your fingertips. Finalize your plans at FOHBC.org now. And then let’s all meet at the FOHBC Reno 2025 National Antique Bottle & Glass Convention.
Last call for room reservations at the Silver Legacy. 1.800.455.4770 Discount code SRANT5.
The two Grocer Boy cans labeled “Tomatoes” packed at the Seeliger Farm Cannery in Madison, Wisconsin in the ‘40s always catch their eye. Then I proceed to tell them how my chance en-
Special Note: Unfortunately, due to increased mailing costs associated with mailing Antique Bottle & Glass Collector, we need to increase membership rates for First Class delivery subscribers as follows: First Class: $65; First Class w/associate: $70; First Class for 3 years: $175; First Class for 3 years w/associate $190. This will take effect on your next renewal. General membership rates remain the same.
Shards of Wisdom
“Heard it Through the Grapevine”
Attention Figural bottle collectors!
When a Charming Dachshund Becomes the Life of Your Bar: Why the Dachshund Decanter Is a Must-Have for Dog-Loving Drinkers. By Jack Rogers. May 20th, 2025, Las Vegas, Nevada. Discover how this lovable, limited-edition dachshund-shaped decanter adds personality, practicality, and tail-wagging charm to your bar setup.
I’ve always believed whiskey should be enjoyed with character—and a little bit of humor doesn’t hurt either. So, imagine my surprise when I came across a whiskey bottle shaped like a dachshund. Not a label with a dachshund on it, not a coaster, but the entire bottle itself—crafted in the unmistakable form of that long-bodied, proud little pup. I nearly laughed out loud. “Are you kidding me? This is genius.” It’s officially called the Migilife Whiskey Woof, but I just call it “Wally.” Because when something this adorable and full of personality moves into your bar, you name it. It even reminded me of my cousin’s dachshund, Lenny—a proud little guy, tail always wagging like he owned the house. This bottle has the same energy: bold, charming, and just a little bit ridiculous… in the best possible way. Why not add this little guy to my collection? It’s less of a whiskey bottle and more of a quirky little piece of art, with just the right touch of playful humor. Now, it proudly sits on my bar counter, holding my favorite bottle of bourbon. Look at it! The Whiskey Woof. Let’s face it—dachshunds already have iconic status. They’re brave, stubborn, and impossibly cute. So, turning one into a collectible whiskey bottle? Inspired. Perfect gift for whiskey lovers & dog devotees.
Legendary Bitters Collector, Carlyn Ring Passes Away
By Don Keating
I learned of Carlyn Ring’s passing this past January. She told me she was 23 in 1951 when her collecting began, which would place her age in the mid-90s at the time of her death. In 1974, the late Dr. Burton Spiller told me about a woman from New York who was coming to the Rochester (New York) Bottle Show and she had collected bitters bottles for years. At that time I had
a very modest bitters display at the show and was pleased to be introduced to Carlyn Ring. She told me if I ever came to Boston I should come to see her collection…noting that only five other people had seen it. So in the summer of 1974, I took off for Boston. At 23 years old, I had great enthusiasm and love for bitters bottles. I wanted to take this opportunity to actually see and handle bottles I’d only seen in Watson’s Bitters Books. I prepared a list of what I hoped to see, from A to Z. Her collection was displayed on the shelves of an old library room, in A to Z order! Just to be different, we started at Z and ended at A. Fifty-one summers have passed since that afternoon; but it is an experience I will never forget. The bottle I had most hoped to see was the ornate Steinfields French Cognac Bitters. Unfortunately, Carlyn did not have that one at the time. I had to wait for the Gardner sale of 1975 to see and purchase this bottle—which is my favorite, by the way. Carlyn was welcoming and kind to me, giving me time to enjoy her display. She was a unique person in the bottle world. I do believe I still have the letters she wrote to me welcoming me to her home. I will never forget her.
By Vern Huffstetler, Tim Adams and Joan Cabaniss
This project started when my dear friend, Tim Adams, said, “We should do another poison bottle book with fresh photos.” My love of photography and bottles drove me to say yes. We agreed I should start with photographing my collection, and Tim would get current auction pricing. During the photography and building of files, natural curiosity led me to learn more about the glasshouses that made these bottles and the companies that used them for their products.
Our next assignment was to photograph the legendary Joan Cabaniss collection. As always, Joan was extremely knowledgeable and helpful. After photographing all the bottles we needed, Joan also expressed an interest in putting more information in the book. She provided us with stacks of poison-related materials. These included past copies of APBCA (Antique Poison Bottle Collectors Association) newsletters, patent documents, old bottle magazine articles and correspondence with collectors on the topic. This reminded me my father also left me a stack of poison-related documentation. We also researched trade catalogs, company
American Poison Bottles “Foreword”
Shards of Wisdom
“Heard it Through the Grapevine”
histories, trade journals, newspapers and other information in the public domain to update The American Poison Bottle Workbook and Price Guide presented by the APBCA.
Our next assignment was to photograph the fantastic Wayne Hill collection which includes some of the truly rare examples. Wayne was also excited about including more information in the book which fueled my desire to go further. These three collections provided the bulk of the photographs used. However, several other generous collectors provided photos and helpful information to make this work as complete as possible.
It is important to recognize and attribute most of this to the work of others before this project began. Rudy Kuhn developed the poison bottle numbering system we continue to use and documented many poison bottles from around the world with line drawings, measurements and rarity. Also, most of the additional information came from the collectors that contributed to APBCA newsletter and bottle magazine articles. Many of them are no longer with us, but their legacy in our hobby lives on. The APBCA was founded in 1990 by Cap Hauser of Yorba Linda, California. It was disbanded in 2017 in lieu of a Facebook group. The club once had 397 members worldwide but no longer exists.
We have done our best to ensure everything is correct. However, we have learned from this project and hope to continue to learn. Others will certainly uncover more bottles and information. There must be more out there. Happy Hunting!
[Editor] To order a copy of American Poison Bottles please email Vern Huffstetler at Americanpoisonbottles@gmail.com or call 615.585.9827. The book is $75. Shipping costs are USPS ground at $10 or Priority at $20 inside the USA. A quote for international will be provided.
The joy of finding bottles underground As captured from a Facebook comment by Peter Savastio
An entrepreneur dreamt up a product to sell Americans; he worked with a glasshouse to design a bottle to hold his product; a mold maker created a mold from the design; a skilled glassmaker added the ingredients (including elements that would create the right color); a gritty experienced team of glassblowers created the bottle using the mold and batch of glass, with all of the tools and expertise to sever and grab the bottle from the blowpipe and fashion the top, then set it in the annealing oven to slowly cool; then shipped back to the entrepreneur for labeling, corking and filling; then shipped to businesses interested in selling the product; then purchased and consumed by a citizen who tossed it away into a dump or privy; then discovered by an appreciative bottle digger 100+ years in the future, where it ends up in the collection of the digger or other excited collector—the current caretaker in the long chain of people it took for the bottle to be where it is today.
Bill Baab Retiring
Bill Baab (FOHBC 2011 Hall of Fame) is “officially” retiring from his volunteer position as proofreader for AB&GC. We thank him for his many years of outstanding work and wish him the best in his twilight years.
A collector of antique bottles since 1969, Bill joined the Federation in 1996 and a few years later volunteered to become Southern Region editor when Mary Jane Ferguson was forced to resign because of illness. His goal was to improve the quality of FOHBC club newsletters by urging more historical research. His regional reports were designed to contain news of interest to all bottle collectors, leaving out items of interest only to member clubs. He updated the FOHBC Hall of Fame and Honor Roll lists. He also collected information to be used in sketches of the FOHBC presidents. His suggestion that errors of fact in stories published in Bottles and Extras be corrected in the following issue, thus raising the Federation’s credibility with members, was adopted. He also designed a stylebook for regional editors, following guidelines in The Associated Press Stylebook. Bill proofread all stories and President’s Messages carried in Bottles and Extras. He also proofread copy in Antique Bottle & Glass Collector, the National Fishing Lure Collectors Club Gazette, and Ralph Finch’s target ball newsletter On Target! In 2009, he inaugurated a series of state-by-state bottle collecting histories. He resigned as Southern Region editor in mid-2011. Bill was given President’s Awards from Ralph Van Brocklin (2004) and John Pastor (2006). Bill and his wife, Bea, self-published four books on Augusta bottles. He retired as an outdoor editor and sports writer from The Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) in 2000 after 36 years. He still edits the newspaper’s Friday fishing page each week.
FOHBC News
From & For Our Members
Note to Western Region Director
Hi Eric (McGuire), This is Mike Dickman of Santa Fe, NM, a member of the FOHBC for 25+ years. I think we’ve met at some of the many California shows I’ve attended over the years (49er in Auburn, Golden Gate, etc.) or at the Western FOHBC shows. I have always enjoyed reading your Western Region reports in AB&GC. I was curious about your statement in the May-June 2025 issue where you noted at the Golden Gate Bottle Club show and other recent shows that there was greater interest and demand “for bottles of a newer vintage.” I’m curious if you meant ACL soda bottles. As you probably know, I write “ACL Corner” for AB&GC. Although I still collect and love all of my classic antique glass bottles (figural bitters, blobtop sodas, colored pontiled medicines, poisons, etc.), I’ve gravitated towards ACL sodas during the past 4-5 years. There seems to be increasing interest in them from other collectors, too, so I was just wondering. Thanks! Sincerely,
Mike Dickman
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Another from Mike Dickman
Thanks Michael (Seeliger). I wonder if Ferd might post one of the entire ACL Corner articles on the Facebook site ACL Soda Bottle Collectors (6,600+ members), with information about joining the FOHBC? Ferd has done that previously, but with just one page attached, rather than a whole 4-page article. Just a thought. As I’ve said before, it’s hard to believe we don’t have many, many more members since it’s such a great organization and a great magazine.
Scotch Bitters Token
Good morning Ferd, I recently added this 25mm, round, brass bitters saloon token to my collection. It advertises Scotch Bitters put up by the Scotch Bitters Company, 599 San Pablo Ave., Oakland, California. Token reads, “Good For 10 cent Drink Of Scotch Bitters All Saloons.”
Joe Gourd
Winfield, Illinois
Editor: Will be added to BBs3 (Bitters Bottles Supplement 3)
Chestnut bottle {special consideration}
Hi Michael (Seeliger)...A little bit of background on our White family. Our middle son, Jared White, was born with a birth defect known as Spina Bifida. It is like a spinal cord injury in an adult accident victim. This birth defect has left Jared without the use of his legs ever since he was born. Jared is our hero! Never once in his life has he ever asked “why me?” He has done some wonderful things in his life like becoming an Eagle Boy Scout, a recent college graduate from a college that works with kids with physical and cognitive disabilities and Jared is New Jersey’s wheelchair racing champion in the Special Olympics.
Well to make a very long story short, Jared has developed a love for researching our family history. In particular, Jared has developed a love for his ancestors who lived in the 1790s to 1805 in Hawley, Massachusetts in a very small humble homestead. An archaeological dig was conducted on the site, and the University of Massachusetts found several early-lipped (1790-1805) New England Chestnut bottle sherds (with a base ring of four inches in diameter), along with other period artifacts. Jared, from his wheelchair, has taken it upon himself to create a small display in a local not-for-profit museum in the town in Massachusetts where the archaeological dig was done. Jared would like to show the public the artifacts of his ancestors that were uncovered during the dig. Talking with Jared, he would love to have, as part of his museum display, what an actual complete bottle would have looked like that his ancestors could have used, next to the sherds that were uncovered during the archaeological dig.
We are a family of modest means due to Jared’s extensive medical and home care bills. Jared’s two brothers, however, have taken up a modest family collection to help Jared with his dream of his museum display.
Michael, for this worthwhile purpose mentioned above, can you help us find a reasonably priced New England Chestnut bottle that has the characteristics of Jared’s archaeological sherds? We
know that this “hunt” might be difficult, but we thought that we would give it a try to see if you can help us find one. We know that you have developed a deep network over the years in this area. We will surely understand if your answer is no. This would be for a very good cause for a fine young man with many challenges in life, trying to do something very good for other people and the public in general.
Thank you Michael for considering our respectfully submitted request. Warmest and kind regards. We look forward with much enthusiasm to hearing back from you, either way. Jared’s birthday is June 14th and this would be an “over the moon” birthday present for him if we can make it work.
Frank and Sue White, Lebanon, New Jersey
[FOHBC] Thanks, Frank, I have sent an email out to several large collectors and auction houses. I will keep you informed on anything we uncover. We would love to have Jared get one of these on his birthday! We have also provided your son with a complimentary membership to the FOHBC.
Alice J. Seeliger
Secretary, Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors
[Mr. White] Hi Michael and Alice. Jared is in the hospital—you can call off the search. Thank you so very much for your kindness in helping us as a family! Thanks...Frank
[FOHBC] Hi Frank and Family, we will be praying for you and Jared. Please keep us informed on how he and you all are doing. A bottle has brought us all together, and, as often happens in the bottle-collecting world, you all are part of a special group of people who care for one another. We will be thinking of you all at this difficult time. Reconnect when you are able. Blessings... Alice, Michael, Rick, and the entire Federation family.
[Editor] Rick Ciralli was going to send Jared a beautiful bottle that matched their description from his own collection, as a gift. A wonderful gesture. The family asked him to hold off sending the bottle as the situation with Jared was serious, but Rick was going to email several photos so Jared could enjoy seeing it. Eventually, Rick mailed the family the bottle at his cost.
[Rick Ciralli] Alice, attached are a few pictures per your request. Frank and his wife got us a gift card to a favorite restaurant—he insisted. I am shipping the bottle today and will provide them tracking information. Here is a quick write-up on the bottle.
New England chestnut bottle. Freeblown without the use of any mold, 9-7/8” tall, applied lip neatly rendered. Brilliant olive green glass with great character. Open pontiled scar base with a 4” ring diameter. Exceptional size, form and finish. Circa 1783-1820. Probably blown in a Connecticut glasshouse, either Pitkin or Coventry. Ex-Rick Ciralli collection.
I was also inspired by Jared’s story and efforts to preserve what they found at his ancestors’ property in Hawley, MA. This is a true feel-good moment for all involved. We wish him and his family the best of luck.
Rick Ciralli
New England Chestnut Bottle
FOHBC Regional News
Please visit FOHBC.org for expanded coverage.
Northeast Region [Charlie Martin, Jr., Director]
The morning was bright and as crisp as a green apple. Spring was not quite evident in the early morning hours as my wife and I headed south from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to attend the 54th Annual Somers Antique Bottle Club’s Show and Sale in Somers, Connecticut. The day warmed to the mid-forties by the time we arrived. As we meandered around the rows of tables at the show, I was reminded of all the good times we’ve enjoyed over the years attending bottle shows. It made me appreciate how much I love this hobby. I was fortunate to pick up a few items to add to my collection, as well! The show was busy while we were there, and we were able to reconnect with old friends and make new acquaintances along the way. We brought complimentary AB&GC magazines and extra copies of the Houston 24 Expo souvenir programs to give to show attendees. By all measures, the day was a glorious success.
In the previous issue, I mentioned that Roy Topka from the National Bottle Museum in Ballston Spa, NY, provided an update on Museum improvements, and he also passed along information about Alex Prizgintas, President of the Woodbury Historical Society and town historian in Orange County, NY. Alex has been collecting milk bottles dating back to the 1870s for over ten years. He was eleven when Herman Galberd, his mentor, gave him his first milk bottle from the Arden Farms Dairy Company in Arden, NY. It was the spark that has evolved into his current role as historian and curator of 900 milk bottles and related milk items, including, but not limited to, milk cans, porch boxes, tools, trade cards, and period signage from dairy farms. In 2022, the Orange County Milk Bottle Museum held its first open house. Since then it has become a yearly tradition to do so every June. Alex comments, “The true value of this collection for me is knowing I am actively preserving an important part of Orange’s history and seeing the smiles of faces, new and old, that visit the museum.”
The annual Baltimore Antique Bottle Club show was held on March 30th. Shawn Peters, show director, shared the following information, “The vibe throughout the show this year continued to be that of old friends and family coming together for a large reunion. The show building is 40,000 sq ft, holds 335 tables, and comprises 210 dealers from 25 states and the District of Columbia and Canada. In addition to our dealers, we also enjoyed hosting the FOHBC team to help promote their organization and magazine. Before the show opened, we had over 150 people waiting in line to enter, and between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm, we hosted 902 attendees.” Also, Shawn wanted to let potential new dealers know that they can sign up for their table wait list. Check the Baltimore Antique Bottle Club website for the 2026 show date later this year.
Once again, I will call your attention to the beauty of the Fall season in the Northeast. If you have never experienced our trees’ autumnal colors, you are missing one of nature’s miracles. What makes it even more beautiful is that this is the “high season” for bottle shows in New England. Check out the antique bottle and glass shows, which start in September and run through November in the back of each issue of AB&GC and the “Show Listings” on FOHBC.org. Of special note to me will be my club’s 50th Annual Show and Sale. So pardon my pride while I plug the Merrimack Valley Antique Bottle Club Show on Sunday, September 14, 2025, at the Chelmsford Elks Lodge, 300 Littleton Road, Chelmsford, MA, from 9 am to 1 pm. Please let me know if you will attend any shows in New England this coming Fall. Yes, I would also like to know how you enjoyed nature’s display of her Fall colors here in the Northeast! Until next time, happy bottle hunting!
Western Region [Eric McGuire, Director]
One of the highlights of this Spring was the 49er Historical Bottle Club picnic held at the beautiful setting of the Kim & Judy Bakke residence in Orangevale, California. The weather couldn’t have been better, and it was a perfect time and place for “like feathers” to get together. Pictured
Whether it be from the Western Region or any and all the other regions that we have divided up our bottle collecting interests, I want to apprise you of what is happening at the National Museum of American History—AKA, The Smithsonian. Often referred to as the “Nation’s Attic.” For better or worse, its
Antique Bottle & Glass Collector
left to right: Rick Pisano, Kim Bakke, Eric McGuire, Dan Bell.
goal is, apparently, to collect at least one of everything. This also includes bottles. Relying primarily on donations, if they don’t already own it, they will gladly accept a copy. This includes every bottle ever made in America. Even for the most avid bottle collector this goal couldn’t be achieved simply for a lack of space. Search results for: Medicine bottles, page 1 | Collections Search Center, Smithsonian Institution. As for just one example, it currently has over 630 holdings for a category it calls, Patent Medicines; Drugs; Liquid. Search Collections | National Museum of American History. From a collector’s standpoint, I wouldn’t get too excited yet. I bring this to your attention simply because it is something that bottle collectors should be aware of as well as having a never-ending goal. The collection is poorly exhibited and there is virtually no information about each item. In my mind it seems a little crazy, however; it is actually happening. Welcome to the world of “mega collecting.” I can assure you that our own FOHBC Virtual Museum is far better than what the Smithsonian has to offer, even in its infancy.
You will probably receive this issue of AB&GC right before our highly anticipated Reno 2025 event at The Silver Legacy in Reno, Nevada. Displays can often be a memorable part of our events. Going through some of my old photos I happened upon this picture of a portion of Michael & Karen Peart’s 2016 display of “Benicia” glass at our Sacramento Convention. What a great memory, and I expect Reno 2025 will not disappoint. [Editor] See image of the Peart display in the Member Photos section on page 65.
Midwest Region [Henry Hecker, Director]
It’s summertime in the Midwest region, and that means the outdoor flea markets are in full swing. One in Wisconsin that deserves a shoutout is the Elkhorn Antique Flea Market held at the Walworth County fairgrounds four times per year. (Check out elkhornantiquefleamarket. com for more information.) This market has been around for decades, and despite a change in management a couple of years ago, the quality of antiques and collectibles has been consistently maintained. Walking the aisles always yields a nice selection of stoneware, bottles, and advertising. For this collector, the May 18th market yielded some nice finds at “picker” prices— two amber Globe jars, some Mason 1858 variations, a nice early Sanford bulk ink with a full label, and several scarce local sodas. Dealers represent the upper Midwest, and the market is worth the drive.
As always, the latest Ohio Swirl newsletter of the Ohio Bottle Club contained an interesting article. This one by Dr. Tom Sproat was on early fruit jar closures. In 1855, Robert Arthur patented a fruit jar design with a closure “made with a groove to surround its mouth, prepared with cement, and ready for hermet-
ic sealing.” Arthur’s patent initially covered metal cans, but he soon expanded the patent to yellowware and glass. Apparently, this development disrupted the wax-sealed glass fruit jar industry and spurred glass manufacturers to pursue new closure designs to avoid patent infringement. What puzzles me is why the glass fraternity did not claim “prior art” to negate Arthur’s claims. Maybe the patent laws were different then. [Editor: See examples in the FOHBC Virtual Museum] Also, the latest issue of Glass Chatter of the Midwest Fruit Jar & Bottle Club reported a recent meeting where members brought sets of jars. One set in particular was quite striking.
Minnesota’s North Star Historical Bottle Club meetings consistently yield some impressive “show and tell” bottles, and the latest was no exception. I did not even know that chickens could contract cholera, but this might all be owed to the effectiveness of “Hillemann’s American Chicken Cholera Cure.” This cobalt blue, embossed, and labeled medicine is off the charts in terms of interest, color, and humorous relief. [Editor] See images of this bottle in the Lost & Found section on page 61.
The Slug Plate newsletter of the Metropolitan Detroit Antique Bottle Club reports that a recent meeting once again followed an alphabetical theme, with members bringing bottles with the letter “Z.” Bottles with regular household names such as Zuber, Zynda, and Zaddock showed up. Additionally, Vincent Grossi of the Kalamazoo Antique Bottle Club reports that their recent show was a success, with 41 dealers, 73 tables, and 210 attendees.
While attending the recent Genesee Valley Bottle Collectors Association’s (GVBCA) Bottle & Antique Show in Rochester, NY, (I know, outside my region) with Michael Seeliger, an insulator display caught my eye. Insulator collecting seems to be experiencing a resurgence, and I have noticed a larger percentage of young collectors in the hobby than perhaps in the bottle world. This is a trend to tap into as we look to source articles for this magazine and expand FOHBC membership.
Southern Region [Tom Lines, Director]
Tom will catch up with readers next issue as he is awaiting an interview from one of his region’s members and collectors. He reminds us of the upcoming Cheaha Bottles, Antiques and Collectibles Show in Munford, Alabama, the 8th Annual Mississippi Gulf Coast Antique Bottle Show presented by the Olde Guys Digging Club of Biloxi, Mississippi, the 3rd Annual Pickens South Carolina Bottle Show & Sale, the 12th Annual Fayette, Alabama Bottle Collectible Bottles & Antiques Show & Sell, the Tennessee Bottle Collectors Nashville Area Antique Bottle & Advertising Show, and the Clemmons, North Carolina Antique Bottle Show. Please see show calendar for more info.
The Race is on to Reno 25 and the finish line is in sight!
The FOHBC has commissioned a limited edition (150++) commemorative Drake’s Plantation Bitters bottle in “Reno Red.” The Drake’s is from the same mold as the cobalt blue Drake’s produced for Houston 24. Two one-of-a-kind bottles will be entered into a Raffle during the Convention (reddish puce & Cobalt blue swirl) and the Auction (light purple grape) to be held during the Banquet on Friday evening.
Raffle tickets are available in advance at shows or by mail from Michael Seeliger for $5 each or 6 for $20 (Make check out to FOHBC-Raffle and send to N8211 Smith Rd, Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521, or catch him at an upcoming show.) Auction bids may be submitted in advance by calling Michael at 608.575.2922. You will need to guarantee your bid with a credit card. You do not need to be present to win the raffle or auction bottle. Contact Michael Seeliger, mwseeliger@gmail.com, with any questions. More info at FOHBC.org or page 16 this issue.
Antique Bottle & Glass Collector
Virtual Museum News
By Richard T. Siri, Santa Rosa, California
The FOHBC Virtual Museum “25 from 25 in 25” ($25 monthly from 25 members in 2025) Fundraising Campaign
$25 from 25 in 25
An important notice to FOHBC members.
Please don’t skip this note, as we are halfway through 2025 and we need your help. Think how often you’ve visited the Virtual Museum and how valuable this Museum is to the future of our hobby. We are asking if you will donate at any level Immediately to help us get out of the cash bind we’re presently in. We rely solely on donations and have never taken any FOHBC bank account or membership money. We’re looking for grassroots donations, and we have a special campaign called “25 from 25 in 25” ($25 monthly from 25 members in 2025). We also have a donor who has put up $5,000 if we can find a matching $5,000 donation—so please help us continue moving forward with the greatest project in the hobby world!
FOHBC VIRTUAL MUSEUM OF HISTORICAL BOTTLES AND GLASS
FOHBC Virtual Museum .org
For gift information: Alan DeMaison, FOHBC Virtual Museum Treasurer, 1605 Clipper Cove, Painesville, Ohio 44077, a.demaison@sbcglobal.net
The FOHBC Virtual Museum was established to display, inform, educate, and enhance the enjoyment of historical bottle and glass collecting by providing an online virtual museum experience for significant historical bottles and other items related to early glass.
Please help us fill our PHASE 4 “Wishart’s Pine Tree Tar Cordial” bottle.
4
Please help us with our Phase 4 fundraising capital campaign to continue development of the FOHBC Virtual Museum. The FOHBC and the Virtual Museum team thank our many donors who have helped us raise over $119,433 to date. We have $2,607 in available funds to continue development to build our galleries, exhibition hall, research library and gift shop. Donations are tax deductible. All donors are listed on our Virtual Museum Recognition Wall
With one salaried website technician averaging $1,200 a month, we need help. We are continually traveling to collections, so more costs are incurred. All other time is donated by the Virtual Museum team out of our love and passion for the hobby and the FOHBC. Thank you!
Donations to the Museum are always needed to ensure we continue. We are a 501(c)(3) educational organization, so your donation is tax deductible. Please confirm with your tax attorney.
CORNER #17
[Mike Dickman]
Local Pride Local Pride
[Fig. 1] Chey-Rock Healthful Beverages, Mobridge, South Dakota, 1948.
[Fig. 2 below right] Enterprise Beverages, Enterprise, Alabama, 1948.
Photo courtesy of Chris Weide.
May 1938. “Farm family, Scioto Farms, Ohio.” 35mm nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration. This is Earl Armentrout and his family, government rehabilitation clients who were relocated by the Resettlement Administration to a new house in a cooperative farming project, a story repeated thousands of times for families who were forced off the land by crop failures during the Dust Bowl era.
As we’ve seen in these articles, applied color label (ACL) soda bottles were often local products. Many served markets of just a few thousand consumers or even less. Because of that fact, many of the images used on ACL labels would have been meaningless to the nation. However, those same images were instantly recognizable to the local population and sometimes were a source of regional identity and pride. Let’s look at a few of these interesting bottles.
A good example is Chey-Rock Healthful Beverages, a 7-1/2 ounce bottle made of pebbled glass and put up in 1948 by the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Mobridge, South Dakota. [Fig. 1 opposite page] Mobridge is a city situated in north central South Dakota with a population of 3,008 people in 1940. It lies on the east bank of the Missouri River, across the river from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation and the Cheyenne Indian Reservation, near the birthplace of Sitting Bull. The yellow-and-black ACL depicts some sort of brick structure, capped on top with a smaller object. When I bought the bottle, I thought it might be the Sitting Bull Monument, across the river from Mobridge. The monument is dedicated to the famous medicine man from the Battle of the Little Bighorn, who later renounced warfare and joined Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. But that structure wasn’t built until 1953 (after the bottle was made) and doesn’t really look like the image on the bottle. Eventually, I discovered that the ACL shows the Standing Rock Monument near the border between the two Indian reservations (Cheyenne and Standing Rock; hence, Chey-Rock). The object on top of the brick pedestal is a stone held sacred by the Lakota people, said to be the remains of a woman and her child who turned into rock for some unexplained reason. The monument was built in 1886 and today is off the beaten track, little known and little visited.
Company of Enterprise, Alabama. [Fig. 2 opposite page] The monument was erected in 1919 in downtown Enterprise, a city in the southeast part of the state. The object held aloft by the figure in the statue is the cotton-destroying boll weevil beetle. Apparently, the townspeople wanted to commemorate the bug’s unintentional role in diversifying the regional crop from cotton (which the bug destroyed) to much more lucrative crops, such as peanuts, which made many local farmers rich. It’s a strange story, a strange monument, and possibly the only statue made to celebrate an insect.
If a monument to a rock seems odd, what about a monument to a destructive insect? Yet that’s exactly what is depicted on the ACL of Enterprise Beverages, a 10-ounce soda bottled in 1948 by the Big Rock Beverage
Sparkle Spike depicts another not-so-famous monument. The 7-ounce bottle was made from green glass in 1940 by the Twin Cities Bottling Company of Council Bluffs, Iowa. [Fig. 4 next page] The ACL shows the Golden Spike Monument at Milepost 0.0 of the eastern terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad, located in downtown Council Bluffs. Council Bluffs lies on the east bank of the Missouri River, across from Omaha, Nebraska, and downriver from Mobridge, South Dakota, where Chey-Rock soda was made. The monument was constructed in 1939 and commemorates the Golden Spike laid at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869, thereby joining the eastern and western parts of the rail line. The monument was a kind of Hollywood publicity stunt, dedicated on the opening day of the movie
“Union Pacific,” Cecil B. DeMille’s blockbuster about the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad.
Thousands of people (many wearing 1860s period costumes) attended the dedication ceremony in Council Bluffs and President FDR opened the celebrations using a telegraph set up in the White House. Over the ensuing eight decades, the Golden Spike Monument fell into neglect but is still there to see. Tripadvisor.com calls the monument “odd” and “unremarkable” but “worth a quick stop if you happen to be passing by.” The bottle, however, is very attractive!
[Fig. 3] Alma Beverages, Alma, Wisconsin, 1940.
Sitting Bull Monument near Mobridge, South Dakota, built in 1953 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
A boll weevil at work. If it could think, the insect might be flabbergasted at the notion of a statue in its honor.
The unusual Standing Rock Monument near Mobridge, South Dakota, constructed in 1886.
The Boll Weevil Monument in downtown Enterprise, Alabama, dedicated on December 11, 1919. A nearby plaque reads, “In profound appreciation of the Boll Weevil and what it has done as the Herald of Prosperity.”
ceremony
[Left] Sparkle Spike crown cap, a rare item that last sold on eBay in 2011 for $36.
[Fig. 3 below left] Sparkle Spike, Council Bluffs, Iowa, 1940. Photo courtesy of Chris Weide.
[Fig. 5 below right] Spindle City Beverages, Gastonia, North Carolina, 1940.
[Below Inset] Golden Spike Monument in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The City Council of Council Bluffs wanted to participate in the highly-publicized worldwide premiere of the film “Union Pacific” (to be held in its rival City of Omaha), so it built this monument in ten days at a cost of $3,500. The monument was dedicated with great fanfare on the day of the premiere but receives few visitors today. Photograph taken by Andrew J. Russell at Promontory Point, Utah on May 10, 1869. The Golden Spike Monument commemorated this event.
The
for the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869 representing the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad. At center left, Samuel S. Montague, Central Pacific Railroad, shakes hands with Grenville M. Dodge, Union Pacific Railroad (center right). National Archives and Records Administration
Dedication of Lock & Dam No. 4 on the Mississippi River at Alma, Wisconsin in 1935. You can almost feel the excitement of the day!
Another obscure source of local pride is a bottle I’ve shown previously, called Alma Beverages, [Fig. 3 page 13] put up in 1940 by the Alma Beverage Company of Alma, Wisconsin. It’s a 12-ounce soda bottle with an all-white ACL that depicts Lock & Dam No. 4 on the Mississippi River at Alma, which was completed a few years before the bottle was made. Alma had a population of only 1,139 people in 1940. Although the structure isn’t identified on the bottle, Lock & Dam No. 4 was of huge significance to the area, and its image would undoubtedly be known to every Alma resident. The soda brand, like several others discussed in this article, served a small, isolated market and is hard to find today.
Did you ever hear of Spindle City? Me neither. It’s the nickname of Gastonia, North Carolina, home of Spindle City Beverages, which was manufactured by the Spindle City Bottling Company in 1940. [Fig. 5 opposite page] Gastonia was the historic center of textile manufacturing in the South, which reached its peak during WWI due to huge U.S. government orders for uniforms, tents, and other cotton military products. The postwar period, however, triggered a sharp decline in demand and industry profitability, leading to increasingly lower wages and longer working hours for employees. Some female workers in the late 1920s were paid as little as $5 a week for 60+ hours of work in the local mills. The Loray Mill Strike erupted in Gastonia in 1929, seeking better pay and a 40-hour work week. It became national news after local law enforcement and army troops intervened on behalf of the mill owners, and a police chief was killed during the violence. The strike was broken and several union leaders were tried and convicted for the policeman’s murder, two of them later fleeing to the Soviet Union to escape imprisonment. The ACL on the 7-ounce soda bottle shows an old-fashioned wooden spindle, and its quaintness seems a world apart from the reality of Gastonia’s huge, automated milling factories.
a household name, Albert Miller Lea (1808-1891) was and still is greatly admired in the city named for him. Albert graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1831, fifth of the thirty-three cadets in his class, and became an engineer and topographer with the U.S. Infantry Dragoons. He led a group that surveyed southern Minnesota and northern Iowa and came up with the name for the State of Iowa, later establishing the border between Iowa and Missouri. After leaving the army, Albert Lea had a long and eclectic career, serving at different times as Chief Engineer for the State of Tennessee (where he’d been born), Chief Clerk to the U.S. Secretary of War, Brigadier General of the Iowa Militia, and Professor of Engineering at East Tennessee University in Knoxville. He was living in Texas when the Civil War started, and he joined the Confederate States Army, where he rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the Engineering Office. After the war ended, Albert Lea returned to Texas, where he lived until his death at age 83. The Col. Albert Lea soda bottle is interesting: its surface is covered with small round bumps I’ve not seen on any other bottle. [Fig. 7] The bottle is uncommon but inexpensive, with clean examples costing as little as $25-$40.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
We Americans tend to be proud of our hometowns, history, and native sons and daughters who made good, and ACL soda bottles often reflect that pride in an attempt to sell soda pop. The author welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions at mikedickman@yahoo.com
Albert Miller Lea, circa 1862. During the Civil War, Lea fought for the Confederacy and battled his own son, a Union officer, at the Battle of Galveston on New Year’s Day 1863. The Confederates won the battle and Lea’s 26-year-old son Edward was mortally wounded, later dying in his father’s arms. Edward’s last words (engraved on his tombstone) were, “My father is here.”
The Painted Soda Bottle Collectors Association (PSBCA) website contains a wealth of information about ACL soda bottles including hundreds of photos, recent prices and an archive of all ACL Corner articles. PSBCA.org
Sweeney, Rick, Collecting Applied Color Label Soda Bottles (3d ed. 2002, PSBCA).
Local pride sometimes focuses on a person rather than a place, structure, or object. One example is Col. Albert Lea, a 7-1/2 ounce soda bottle put up in 1944 by the Albert Lea Bottling Works of Albert Lea, Minnesota. [Fig. 6 above] Although not
VintageSodaCollector.com by FOHBC member Tom Pettit. A great resource containing hundreds of color photographs as well as interesting, useful articles about all things ACL.
Weide’s Soda Page (ca-yd.com) by FOHBC members Chris and Catherine Weide, is another outstanding, useful resource for ACL bottles.
Wikipedia.com
[Fig. 6] Col. Albert Lea, Albert Lea Bottling Works, Albert Lea, Minnesota, 1944.
[Fig. 7 above] Close-up image of the unique surface of the Col. Albert Lea bottle.
Colonel
Starkey & Palen sold air to the terminally ill – it was Alsina Richards’ last hope.
BY ANDY RAPOZA
She was desperate and scared. Each breath she took felt like it was stolen, scraping up nothing but bloody phlegm from an empty chest with nothing left to give. Cough pains sizzled across her lungs that long ago had filled softly and emptied effortlessly.
With every passing day, she became weaker. The once vibrant woman who did housework, helped her husband, visited friends, and went shopping, had dissolved into a fragile, feeble weakling for whom each movement took far more out of her than any benefit she got back.
As the disease set in more aggressively, it seemed to be consuming her from the inside— she was becoming emaciated and skeleton-like, the type that people across the street pointed at, whispered about, and walked away from quickly.
Her skin became paler as if the very lifeblood was being drained from her body. In a way, it really was: when she coughed, there was blood spatter in her handkerchief. There was nothing left about her that suggested life, certainly not a future.
Weaker, paler, thinner, sicker. She knew she was dying. Mrs. Alsina Richards was 33 years old and terminally sick with tuberculosis.
In her day, 1880, the disease was most often called “consumption” because of the hallmark symptom of emaciation. It was, far and away, the leading killer in the 19th century, and unlike most diseases that attacked children and old people, it most often struck young adults like Alsina.
Infection
Alsina Richards was just about as unassuming as any other young Victorian woman in rural America. Her most distinctive feature may have been her name—no one seemed to know how to spell it—she appears in records as Elzina, Alcina, Alsina, and Alsona. She lived with her parents at their small farm until she was married. In 1877, at 30 years old, she married Alphronso Richards, three years her junior. Like her parents, he was of modest means, pouring concrete for a living. A scant four months after their wedding, Alsina gave birth to a stillborn daughter; it was the only pregnancy she would ever have.
On 16 June 1880, Alphronso and Alsina were enumerated together for the first time in their own home in East Pepperell, northern Massachusetts; Nashua, New Hampshire was just over the border. Although some neighbors were found to be afflicted with such troubles as rheumatism, measles, and dyspepsia, Alsina was not among those listed as “sick or temporarily disabled”—but she knew there was something very, very wrong with her. About six months before the census, she was trying to find a cure for sickness that had come over her so quickly, out of nowhere. It wasn’t a casual concern but a deep-seated fear of what was taking over deep in her lungs.
Consolation
Alsina wrote to several women whom she had read about in promotional materials for a lung remedy. She was curious and guardedly hopeful that the women really existed and whether they truly benefited from the remedy. These questions were the common concerns shared by other sick women all over America; even the manufacturer acknowledged that many cautiously wondered about the testimonials, just like Alsina:
...they write to know if there really is any such person...or is it only an advertising dodge?—the simple truth about [the remedy] would be the best credentials it could have; hence we were not tempted to invent testimonials, nor to steal genuine ones, nor to romance on any.
Alsina didn’t have money or time to waste on a bogus medicine, so she was determined to find out if she could really believe the testimonials that appeared for “Starkey & Palen’s Compound Oxygen,” an unusual product that was grabbing a lot of attention and gaining popularity. To protect the writers’ privacy, the manufacturer rarely included their names, but told readers that “Any one, upon application, will be furnished with the exact address of any...of these cases.” So Alsina had to write to the manufacturer to get the testimonial writers’ addresses, wait for the reply, then write and send letters to the testimonial writers and wait again, hoping they would reply...all while she got sicker and weaker.
The women’s responses to Alsina, dated from 15 February 1880 to 20 November 1881, assured her that they had, indeed, written them and were not distorted or rewritten by the medicine maker. Mrs. A. G. Fourquereau of San Marcos, Texas, began her postcard response to Alsina, “I take pleasure in stating that the testimonial … with my name attached, is genuine, and was sent to [the manufacturer] without solicitation from them.” In her postcard response, Julia Barnes of Carmel, New York, wrote, “Yes, my letters...are just as I write them,” and Mrs. E. L. Miller of Beecher City, Illinois, also told Alsina that her statements in the publication were true.
Stamped Starkey & Palen advertising envelope, canceled “PHILADELPHIA, PA, 17 DEC [1881], 2 AM” addressed to “Mrs. A. [Alsina] S. Richards, East Pepperell, Mass.” (author’s collection)
The correspondence of five postcards and two letters saved by Mrs. Alsina S. Richards. Their dates range from 15 February 1880 to 20 November 1881. Their retention as a group implies that Alsina Richards valued them, used them as reference for her reply correspondence, and retained them for the last several years of her life due to the relationships built, even though the remedy was unsuccessful in bringing about her recovery, or perhaps she stuffed them away and forgot about them in the face of the increasingly difficult symptoms of consumption that were overwhelming her. (author’s collection)
Each response Alsina received was handwritten, further making them seem very much like personal notes from good friends, and all of them asked their new friend Alsina to write back. Sallie R. Fisher of Irvington, Illinois, wrote to Alsina like a dear friend and fellow sufferer, full of empathy:
Your card was received last night. I hasten to reply, I know just how you feel in regard to hearing of others being cured. I thought if I could know of one had benefited as low as I was...it would revive my spirits...
Sallie had written to another testimonial giver, just like Alsina had done with her; and so the correspondence read like chain mail, the women who were writing to reassure Alsina had once upon a time been in Alsina’s situation, writing to someone else who suffered from a lung disease. Alsina valued the correspondence, keeping five postcards and two letters from the women who responded to her pleas for help. The personal notes validated the printed testimonials, allowing Alsina to trust the promotional stories of the ladies’ harrowing ordeals, use of the remedy, and consequent restoration of health. Several personal descriptions of women who were suffering from consumption must have resonated with Alsina – they really did know just how she felt:
Julia Barnes told her, “I used to think last Winter, oh, if I could only stop coughing one day.” Vienna Douglas of Huntsville, Alabama, knew she had consumption; her testimonial in one of the promotional booklets must have been what triggered Alsina to write to her to verify her existence and her story:
I...was hollow-chested, with deep-seated pain in my lungs and great difficulty breathing. That dread disease, consumption, had been coming on me for more than fifteen years. [I] was so reduced [in strength] that I was unable to attend to my household duties—hardly able to go from room to room – with the expectation of myself and family and friends that I would not live many months.
Similarly, another consumption testimonial by the apparently wealthy Texan, Mrs. Anna Givhan Fourquereau (described as the wife of a “gentleman of elegant nature” in the 1880 census), was the likely reason that Alsina wrote to her,
She had been coughing for two years, with occasional hemorrhage—having fever all the time, expectorating profusely, so much so that she could not sleep at night, having night sweats, and reduced so in flesh and strength that she could barely leave her bed.
What Alsina did not know was that despite endorsing Starkey & Palen’s Compound Oxygen as “the most wonderful remedy in the world for sick lungs,” Mrs. Fourquereau died at 37, just a little more than a year after responding to her. Consumption was no respecter of wealth or social status. The only protection from the disease would have to be a medical miracle.
Sensation
Alsina Richards had learned about these ladies from the promo-
tional materials of the Starkey & Palen Company of Philadelphia, the makers of Compound Oxygen, the product that all the women she heard back from were swearing performed miracles on their medical miseries. Despite the fact that naysayers from the medical fraternity called magnetized oxygen compounds “the quintessence of bosh,” the fairly new product was in high demand by the time Alsina Richardson was in desperate need of a miracle.
Emaciated by the consumption, Sallie Fisher and Julia Barnes happily regained weight after using Compound Oxygen; Sallie went up to 172 pounds and Julia to 150; plus, she noted, the pain in her lower left lung left her after just a half hour after her first treatment with the oxygen, “and I have not felt it since.” Vienna Douglass called the stuff her “life preserver.” By using it regularly, she was once again able to walk to and from town “and is in a great many respects vastly superior to a dead woman.”Although this phrase was clearly meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it reads as one of the strangest endorsements in my forty-plus years of research on 19th-century medicines!
As was the case with many patent medicine success stories, Compound Oxygen was not the invention of those who made it a big seller. It was invented by a Dr. Harrison J. Hartwell of Philadelphia in 1867, but he transferred his entire interest in the business to George R. Starkey, A.M., M.D., in 1870. By that time, others in New York City, Chicago, and Omaha were advertising their own therapeutic products, also named Compound Oxygen, but only the version sold by Dr. Starkey was successfully promoted and sold across the country.
Prior to building their oxygen empire, Starkey and Palen had been non-practicing physicians. George Rogers Starkey had been teaching in a homeopathic medicine school until poor health forced him to stop, and Gilbert Ezekiel Palen worked as a chemist in a tannery before the two men became partners in the Compound Oxygen venture. The principles of using air medicinally fit perfectly into Dr. Starkey’s homeopathic mindset; homeopathy favored only the smallest, most diluted doses of medicine until it seemed to many like there was nothing there—just like air.
Dr. Starkey considered it strategically critical for the public to believe his remedy was just full of air; even the trademark he registered adamantly insisted in big, bold letters: “NOT A DRUG.” It was only oxygen and nitrogen infused in water, he explained, “the two elements which make up common or atmospheric air, in such proportion as to render it much richer in the vital or life-giving element;” then he somehow magnetized the air, then infused
it in water and bottled it. When inhaled, the Compound Oxygen supposedly stimulated the nerves, “giving energy to the body.”
This magnetized air was said to be so energizing that a certain clairvoyant was unable to slip into a clairvoyant trance because she was too stimulated. Like coffee and cocaine, Compound Oxygen kept its users invigorated and all aflutter.
“The cases of consumption – confirmed phthisis – which the Compound Oxygen has cured can be counted by scores,” Starkey & Palen’s literature promised, and Alsina’s postcard friends urged her to join their pilgrimage of converts to the miraculous compound:
“I hope you will not delay...” – Sallie R. Fisher
“Hoping you will give it a fair trial” – Grace Davis
“I hope you will get it and take it.” – Julia Barnes
“I do hope you will feel safe in using it as it is the onley [sic] thing that will restore the Lungs.” – Vienna T. Douglass
Every day was getting incrementally worse than the previous day for Alsina. As she exchanged letters and postcards about Starkey & Palen’s Compound Oxygen and studied its literature, she was trying to make the wisest, most conscientious decision possible, but like so many others in her situation, she really just hoped for a miracle.
Decision
Dr. Starkey knew there were many, like Alsina, in poor health, desperate for a miracle in his bottles, so he tried to temper their wild-eyed expectations and even admitted that sometimes his product would not work:
Do not expect a miracle to be wrought in your case. Although some cases here reported are marvelous in the rapidity with which they have marched health-ward; still many of the most satisfactory and even brilliant cases have been slower paced.
...more than eighty percent of these victims could have been well people today had they made TIMELY USE of the Compound Oxygen. Note the emphasis laid upon the phrase, timely use.—Not in all cases would we recommend it, with the idea of holding out a promise of cure.
Dr. Starkey’s pragmatism and cautious confession about his remedy’s limitations might have been the sign of an honest medicine maker, but it also gave him plausible deniability if things didn’t work for a customer, even to the point of death.
Alsina was very sick, but her postcard friends urged her to try the Compound Oxygen. It’s also possible that her own doctors had told her she had a chance if she took their own prescriptions to cure consumption, but she took the leap of faith and chose Starkey & Palen’s Oxygen Compound. It was her last gasp of hope.
Sick of sickness and scared of dying, Alsina Richards made the hefty $15 investment in a two-month supply of Compound Oxygen home treatment and hoped for her own miracle, despite Dr. Starkey’s public disclaimer.
Invention
At first, Dr. Starkey made the oxygen treatment available for those visiting his Philadelphia office, but soon after buying out Dr. Hartwell’s business, he realized the Compound Oxygen could go national if he also sold it as a kit for home treatment.
Unlike most other medicine makers, his whole business focused on lung disease, and his medicinal repertoire consisted only of his two lung remedies, Compound Oxygen and Oxygenaqua (a liquid form of the magnetized oxygen compound that could be swallowed rather than inhaled). Sure, he threw in claims that the magnetized oxygen products cured other parts of the body of other things —dyspepsia (indigestion), diabetes, headaches, sometimes paralysis, rheumatism, and kidney disease, and perhaps most obscurely, spermatorrhea (involuntarily ejaculation).
“We have proved that a number of diseases which...have been assigned to the category of “incurables” no longer belong there,” the Starkey & Palen literature crowed, but virtually all of their advertising focused on the benefits of the magnetized oxygen for diseased lungs.
Dr. Starkey saw a nation full of potential customers with corset-constricted lungs and inescapable sickness forming in the stagnant, smoky air of factories and homes. He told the consumptives, asthmatics, and victims of pneumonia, bronchitis, or other lung diseases his Compound Oxygen was a three-pronged remedy that: (1) increased oxygen in the lungs; (2) purified the blood of poisons that collected there from disease and pollution; and (3) energized the nerves and nerve centers (he liked to compare the nervous system to a galvanic battery with electricity sparking through it), bringing vitality to the person.
When someone at home received their two-month supply, they received two boxes: a larger one containing a cobalt blue bottle of Compound Oxygen and a clear glass bottle (Dr. Starkey referred to it as “the white bottle”) with Oxygenaqua. A paper cover illustrated with the two medicine bottles and an image of Drs. Starkey and Palen or a woman using the inhaler, was glued to the wooden box. The box was hinged for the bottles’ storage and reuse.
The smaller box was constructed in the same way and contained what looked like a little laboratory. There was a clear glass inhal-
[Left] Compound Oxygen bottle (label missing). Embossed “COMPOUND OXYGEN STARKEY & PALEN PHILA.”
[Above] Paper-covered wooden box that held one Oxygen Compound (cobalt blue glass) and one Oxygenaqua bottle (clear glass). About 1890. Photo courtesy of Morphy Auctions.
[Above Left] Drs. Starkey and Palen Compound Oxygen inhaler kit. Paper label over wood, hinged cover with locking mechanism on the front. Side panels: instructions for use of the inhaler. Back panel: nasal spray instructions; top panel: nasal tube instructions. About 1880. [Right] Drs. Starkey & Palen Compound Oxygen inhaler kit. The clear glass bottle sits in a tin cup (not included with the kit) per the instructions and the box illustration. During actual use, the tin cup would contain very hot water into which the bottle (partially filled with the Compound Oxygen) would be immersed. The glass of the bottle is spattered with chemical residue, indicating extensive use of the inhaler at some point in time. Embossed around the bottle’s shoulder “STARKEY & PALEN PHILADELPHIA PA.” The bottle also has an embossed line around the circumference, about half way down the bottle, above which reads “WATER LINE.” The kit also contains seven attachments: two glass nasal tubes (in box and on table foreground with white rubber tube attached), two glass elbow straws (in box and in bottle), one straight tube, corked (in box), one measuring tube (in foreground), one small vial (in foreground). About 1880. Author’s collection.
er bottle with a rubber stopper and two rubber corks in the top and a set of attachments: two glass elbow straws, two nasal tubes, a tiny bottle, a vial, and a few other glass fittings. The whole lot must have made the user feel something like a pharmacist preparing the medicine for their own cure. The label covering the box showed the inhaler bottle sitting in a tin cup filled with hot water, per the directions—tin cup not included—the customer had to get their own. This inhaler kit only needed to be purchased once since it could be used over and over, so the Compound Oxygen was sold separately.
The instructions for use were pretty basic but important to be followed exactly since any misstep by the junior pharmacist could mean their own demise. Water was to be poured into the inhaler bottle up to the line embossed on the glass, then the measured dose of Compound Oxygen was added, the chosen breathing attachments inserted into the rubber stopper, and the whole unit immersed in the tin cup full of hot water “as hot as a cook can bear her finger in it.” Then, the pharmacist became the patient and inhaled the vapors created by the heated mixture of water, magnetized oxygen, and nitrogen—it operated on the same prin-
ciple as a hookah pipe. Inhalation treatments were done twice a day and increased in one-minute increments every other day from a starting treatment of two minutes to a maximum of six minutes after several days. Each subsequent dose would be stronger because more Compound Oxygen would be poured in to replace the liquid that had been inhaled and otherwise evaporated.
Alsina followed every step precisely, and she inhaled.
Over and over.
Devastation
It wasn’t working—she continued to spiral towards her death and she knew it. Panicked, she wrote to Starkey and Palen. She told them how sick she was with consumption and apparently pleaded for hope – perhaps there was something she was doing wrong or something else she could do. What she received in return, twelve days before Christmas, was the hardest letter she had ever had to read:
Phila delphia, Pa. 12 Mo 13 1881
Mrs A. S. Richards
Dear Madam,
Yours of 12-9 is received and its contents are carefully noted. We are sorry to be obliged to say that we cannot recommend the Compound Oxygen as being able to do anything more than to make you comfortable. You have indeed been a victim to wicked charlatanry. The disease has made too great progress to be checked.
We remain Very Respectfully, Starkey & Palen
Starkey & Palen confirmed her worst fear—she was doomed— their medicine would not cure her. What “wicked charlatanry” she had been subjected to is not clear without seeing what Alsina had written to them. Perhaps she had explained that local doctors had wasted valuable time earlier in her illness, prescribing other medicines or instructions of no remedial value. Possibly, but unlikely, the phrase might have been referring to the zealous testimonial writers she corresponded with who over promised a cure from the Compound Oxygen that never came. The somber letter was accompanied by two gratuitous pamphlets containing more information and advice that would never help her.
There is one more piece of correspondence in the Alsina Richards collection. One year after the heartbreaking response from Starkey & Palen, she received another letter from them in response to her request for their charity. She apparently told them that she and her husband were financially on hard times and could not afford their medicine, which she had apparently continued to take because it provided some measure of relief even as the disease continued its destruction. Starkey & Palen responded, “From your representations of pecuniary disability, we will send you a 2 [month] Home Treatment for the Ten Dollars.” It implies that she requested that they discount the cost to ten dollars and they were agreeing to her terms. Saving five bucks may not seem like a lot today, but $15 in 1882 would be $461 in 2024 USD, and $10 back then would be $307 now. When was the last time your pharmacist agreed to a $154 discount on your medicine? Ironically, it came with another booklet, “Unsolicited Testimonials,” but the time for striking up a correspondence with them was past.
Alsina S. Richards died on 22 January 1884 of pulmonary tuberculosis (the death certificate called it phthisis); she was buried in the Pepperell Cemetery, and her husband joined her in death 22 years later—he also died of “pulmonary phthisis” after being afflicted with it for just eight months.
Conclusion
Alsina and other users of Starkey & Palen’s Compound Oxygen died sad, shortened lives despite their desperate hopes for recovery, but ironically, the medicine enjoyed healthy sales, growth in distribution, energetic advertising, and four more decades of life. A few years after Alsina’s death, Starkey & Palen put out a series of four trade cards featuring four people from very different corners of life with Compound Oxygen the one ingredient that tied them together. There was one card of an accomplished business-
man, apparently a railroad tycoon, who was taking a break during his busy day to take his inhalation treatment of the Compound Oxygen; a second card showed an old woman relaxing at home, happily taking her Compound Oxygen treatment as well, while her cat played with a ball of yarn on the floor; both of these older people were healthy, at ease, and capably managing their health by using the Starkey & Palen products. In contrast, the third card was a close-up of an athletic, muscular young man sailing his boat while holding up a bottle of Starkey & Palen’s Oxygenaqua, implying that just a sip of the stuff was easy treatment for a man on the ocean.
The last card would likely have been the one Alsina would have stared at the longest, comparing her own decrepit health to the subject of this fourth card: the young, wasp-waisted woman was promoting the Compound Oxygen along with the inhaler bottle on the table, ready for use. She was stunningly attractive, vivaciously healthy and self-assured, dressed in daring clothing, reclining seductively, and smiling coyly—it was the perfect “painted lady” portrait, worthy of hanging over the back bar of any saloon. The unquestionably healthy young lady seemed to be taunting consumption, tightly corseted and looking like she would be more comfortable in a dance hall than a sanatorium for consumptives. Oh, to be young, healthy, and full of life—but Alsina Richards was only able to dream of such things before she died at 37 years old, miserably sick for at least her last four years, robbed of life and joy. She never had a chance; there was no miracle for Alsina.
Letter from Drs. Starkey & Palen to Mrs. A. S. Richards, East Pepperell, Mass., 13 December 1881. Author’s collection.
[Above]
envelope-sized pamphlets included
the
Drs. Starkey & Palen put out a series of four trade cards featuring four people from very different corners of life with Compound Oxygen the one ingredient that tied them together.
Small,
in
Drs. Starkey & Palen correspondence to Mrs. A. S. Richards; “Unsolicited Testimonials” (Left) was included with the 1881 letter; the other two (Center and Right) were included with the 1882 letter. Author’s collection.
CANYONTELL
AN ODD SMALL TOWN MEDICINAL
By Eric McGuire
Likeso many others, this strangely named medicinal product has a questionable origin. It was produced for no other reason than to make money for the owner, with little deference to the end user. It was a patent medicine, but packaged in a slightly different-shaped bottle. Its origin was different than many as the person concocting the mixture was a barkeeper for a number of years. Often described as a bitters, the bottle design came from the mind of someone whose life was closely connected to alcoholic drink. It is unknown if this was intentional or simply drawn from the background of the proprietor.
William Thomas Donnellan was the son of William and Lydia (Uttinger) Donnellan. The couple was married in Decatur, Indiana, on April 5, 1838. The couple then moved to Missouri, where our subject was born. They then moved to Dubuque, Iowa, where the father was the owner of the People’s Hat Store in Dubuque by 1849. With financial issues troubling the young family, they decided to move West with the irresistible hope of a new beginning. After careful consideration, his parents chose to travel overland to the Northern mines of California via wagon train. Young William would have been about 13 years old at the time.
The story of a portion of the trek west can be found in a Dubuque newspaper, a full two columns long. It describes the horrific attack by Indians. The foray occurred on what was described as a new route, about 120 miles from “Ureka” (probably referring to Yreka, California). A small portion of the story follows, underscoring just one of the issues that California-bound immigrants had to endure.
“Freeman Hathorn was shot down right by my side; the most of their arrows, came from the rocky turn and were shot from the flags. I called out to the men to look out for them in the flags. When Freeman fell they raised a hedious (sic) yell and rushed from the rocks and flags and would no doubt have rushed on to us in a body, but fortunately for us, Donnellan, Wm. H. Cubb, Lunes Cook, and two of the Germans from the Ill. Wagon, took as deliberate aim, as I ever saw men take at a mark, and brought down five of them to the ground. This saved us.” (The Miners’ Express, Dubuque, Iowa, December 8, 1852, p 4). (Note: The term “flag,” as used in this quote, is assumed to mean a visual cue or marker that highlights specific features of interest. In this case, it could mean tall grass, bushes, or other places of concealment.)
“I will here say for the men that they all acted bravely and nobly – determined never to yield while one was alive; and Mrs. Donnellan, the only female in the company, unpacked a carpet
Bag and dealt out our ammunition, which had been put away for an occasion of this kind, saying with Christian courage that, Providence would provide for us.”
Sometime after arriving in California, young William Donnellan chose to modify his last name, which became an item of confusion. It caused his new name to be misspelled in a number of ways in written records. In fact, his family name was normally spelled “Donnellan,” but young William chose to divide his last name into two. So, he became William Donn Ellan. It is not known why he decided to do this. He may even be the same 20-year-old “William Don Allen” who is listed as a butcher in the 1860 U.S. Census for Michigan Bluff in Placer County, California. His mother, Lydia Donnellan, died September 16, 1859, at American Bar, Placer County, at age 42. (Daily Alta California, San Francisco, September 24, 1859) His father was difficult to track after this date.
Wm. T. Donn Ellan’s father may be the same William Loney Donnellan who is listed in the 1866 voting register for San Francisco and noted as an “Agent,” living at Stanford Street, and by 1869 listed as a messenger for the U.S. Mint in San Francisco. By the time of the 1880 San Francisco voting register, he was listed with “no occupation” and living at 539 California Street, age 64, and born in Ohio. There are several residents in San Francisco named William Donnellan, and none can be proven to be the father of our subject.
Our subject, William Thomas Donn Ellan, is very likely the same person who was listed in Novato, Marin County, California, as a dairyman in the Great Register of Voters, who signed up to vote on April 26, 1867. The Santa Cruz, California, Register of voters finds him as a dairyman at that location, where he registered to vote on September 18, 1871.
There is little doubt that he is the same person as William T. Donnellan, who married the 16-year-old Miss Betsy Janetta Thompson near Waddell’s Mills in Santa Cruz County, California, on August 27, 1870. (Santa Cruz Sentinel (Weekly), September 3, 1870). He is most certainly the same Wm. Thomas Donnellan, who was scheduled in the Stockton register of voters for 1875 with the occupation of a “Teamster,” registered there on November 1, 1875. It is not known when he made his move to Stockton, California. Still, after a quick sojourn to San Francisco, where he is listed in the 1872 city directory as a salesman, his wife and children are scheduled in the Stockton, 1880 U.S. Census, with William listed as a barkeeper.
The inception of his medicine, “CANYONTELL,” can be traced to April 7, 1886, when Donn Ellan registered California Trade Mark No. 1435 with the word Canyontell for a medicinal product. It was assigned to the firm Donn Ellan & Company, consisting of W. T. Donn Ellan, E. F. Grant, J. L. Gilman, and Peter C. Botzbach, as silent partners.
[Above] California Trade Mark No. 1435, April 7, 1886, and issued to W. T Donnellan & Co., consisting of William T. Donn Ellan, Edward F. Grant, John Lovren Gilman and Peter C. Botzbach, with a claimed use since June 1885. The place of business was noted as Acampo, California. A copy of this label was deposited along with the filing.
Soon after the formation of W. T. Donn Ellan & Co., several issues tested its existence. Two of the silent partners left the company, and it appears they were probably providing financial backing. Dr. Edward F. Grant was a Homeopathic Physician and Surgeon in nearby Lodi, California. Peter Batzbach also had a long-standing business as half-owner of the Post Office Restaurant and Saloon in Lodi along with one J. Jorgensen. In July 1886, they split, likely causing cash issues of his own in opening another saloon and restaurant in Lodi. That left Donn Ellan with only one other partner, John Lovren Gilman. He owned a saloon in Acampo, California. Gilman was certainly an important person in the development of Canyontell, with his business as a saloon owner and liquor dealer. It appears that his barn was used for the preparation and primary storage and distribution location for Canyontell. Gilman died in December 1887, which undoubtedly had a major impact on running the business.
“John L. Gilman was born in Meddybemps, Washington County, Maine, April 2, 1830. He left Machias, Maine, November 6, 1849, and reached San Francisco April 15, 1850, in the Brig Agate. Engaged in mining until 1861, mostly in Tuolumne County, then in stock-raising until 1871, when he started a saloon in Stanislaus County, which he soon abandoned on account of his health. He finally settled at Acampo, where he remained in business until his death at San Francisco, December 3, 1887.” (An Illustrated history of San Joaquin County, California, The Lewis Publishing Company. 1890, pg 52)
As a medicinal product, Canyontell was a typical “cure-all” in all respects. For instance, as described on its label, the name is said to be derived from a plant that grows in Mexico, with claims on the bottle label that it will cure practically everything. Given the possibility that the name was a transliteration or corruption of a Mexican word, no plant that sounded similar was located. Perhaps by oversight, the many advertisements in local California newspapers note it was “made of but one herb gathered in California and full of healing virtues.” Which is it, Mexican or Californian? Errors like this may have had a negative impact on its popularity. Another common error in newspapers was the reference to W. T. Donn Ellan & Co. as the proprietor of the
celebrated “Canyontell Bitters.” Although periodically referred to as a bitters, it was not advertised as such.
“Arthur Winfield Harrold, born at Farmington, (California) September 29, 1861, was educated there and afterwards at San Jose, receiving a diploma from the Business College of San Jose in March, 1881. He then went to farming on his 490-acre ranch, three miles southwest of Farmington. In 1883 he rejoined the family in San Jose, and in 1884 returned with them to Farmington. He next went to clerking in a dry-goods store in Stockton for one year, and afterwards into the manufacture of Canyontell Bitters, as a member of the firm of W. T. Donnell & Co.(sic), of San Francisco, for about two years. That business was closed out February 27, 1889, and on August 4 of that year Mr. Harrold returned to his ranch.” (An Illustrated history of San Joaquin County, California, The Lewis Publishing Company. 1890, pg 614)
After retirement from peddling his Canyontell, Donn Ellan first became the proprietor of the Cordelia Hotel for a few years and then was the “host” of the Soscol House near Napa, California. (Napa Journal, March 24, 1897) He died on January 28, 1910, at the home of his daughter in Fairfield, California.
The list of its curative powers was, of course, wildly extravagant, with a guarantee to cure just about everything. This is purely a testament to the reason why the federal government was contemplating the idea of creating a law against this sort of debauchery. And those who actually believed in such curative powers would have to be extremely desperate for treatment or along the path of gullibility. The Pure Food and Drug Act would eventually help those who couldn’t help themselves. It is well documented that thousands of bottles of worthless “cures” have been sold to the public, making the concoctors quite wealthy and the purchasers no better off.
Since Canyontell bottles appear to be quite rare, why didn’t Donn Ellan have the sort of luck that so many others had with their bogus products? It is only conjecture but it may have simply been the circumstances surrounding the poor financial luck of the company.
In death, as in life, William Thomas Donn Ellan’s name was given to posterity in error. While no known gravestone exists for him, his name is spelled incorrectly on his wife’s stone at the Rockville Cemetery in Solano County, California. (Find A Grave No. 8635435) His erroneously assumed full name is chiseled in stone as DONN ELLAN, without his given name, with the apparent assumption that “Donn”
was his first name and ‘Ellan’ was his surname. The stone sits on a platform stating MOTHER, which implies it was purchased by one or more of the three Donn Ellan children. While William T. Donn Ellan was also buried in the same plot, his monument was probably the wooden version that was once reported there but is long gone. Note also that William Donn Ellan didn’t die until 1910, about 11 years after his wife’s death.
While the shape of the bottle is unusual, it does not appear to be unique to CANYONTELL. One other business was located that used the same bottle, including the neck label. Von Laer’s Ginger Wine was a fruit juice that was popular at about the same time period which was distributed from Boston, Massachusetts. That company had its own unusual story, but it’s not connected to that of CANYONTELL and was not distributed in the West. It simply implies that the same bottles were probably purchased from a glasshouse retailer located somewhere on the East Coast. How and when Donn Ellan bought his bottle supply is not known. There is no embossing on an unlabeled CANYONTELL bottle. It is doubtful that he purchased many as they seem to be fairly rare on the West Coast based solely on the shape.
[Above] While the shape of the Canyontell bottle is unusual, it does not appear to be unique. One other business was located that used the same bottle, including the neck label. Von Laer’s Ginger Wine was a fruit juice that was popular at about the same time period which was distributed from Boston, Massachusetts. This implies that the bottles were probably purchased from a glasshouse retailer located somewhere on the East Coast. How and when Donn Ellan bought his bottle supply is not known. There is no embossing on an unlabeled Canyontell bottle. It is doubtful that he purchased many as they seem to be fairly rare on the West Coast based solely on the shape
[Left] In death, as in life, William Thomas Donn Ellan’s name was given to posterity in error. While no known gravestone exists for him, his name is spelled incorrectly on his wife’s stone at the Rockville Cemetery in Solano County, California.
The FOHBC is conducting monthly 1-hour online Zoom webinars with presentations and imagery on a broad range of topics relating to antique bottle and glass collecting. Join us for an exciting series by leading authorities in their fields discussing antique bottle and glass collecting, history, digging and finding, ephemera, photography and displaying, and so much more.
Webinars occur on Tuesday evenings during the first or second week of each month at 7:00 pm Central. Time will be left for questions and answers. FOHBC president Michael Seeliger moderates all webinars, which are recorded and available in the FOHBC Members Portal within a week after the event. Webinars are FREE for FOHBC Members and *$15 for non-members. *For a short time only, all webinars are free to all!
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Webinar #7: Classic & Zany Trade Cards
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$575 August 2017 Heckler Auction #154
84: “General Washington” And Bust – “E Pluribus Unum / T.W.D.” And Eagle Portrait Flask, Kensington Glass Works, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, 1820-1830. “Firecracker” Blue aquamarine with a strong olive tone, sheared mouth – pontil scar, pint; GI-14 (light exterior high point wear). Bill and Betty Wilson collection.
$15,690 September 2020 Glass Works Auctions #121
251: “General Washington” And Bust – “E Pluribus Unum / T.W.D.” And Eagle Portrait Flask, Kensington Glass Works, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, 1820-1830. “Firecracker” Medium amber with a strong olive tone, sheared mouth – pontil scar, pint; (light exterior high point wear). GI-14. Dr. Gary and Arlette Johnson collection.
$8,960 May 2012 American Glass Gallery #8
26: “General Washington” And Bust – “E Pluribus Unum T.W.D.” And Eagle Portrait Flask, Kensington Glass Works, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, 1820-1830. “Firecracker” Medium red amber with a strong olive tone, sheared mouth – pontil scar, pint; (light exterior high point wear). GI-14. Dr. Timoth Shuttle collection.
$15,690 September 2020 Glass Works Auctions #121
251: “General Washington” And Bust – “E Pluribus Unum / T.W.D.” And Eagle Portrait Flask, Kensington Glass Works, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, 1820-1830. “Firecracker” Medium amber with a strong olive tone, sheared mouth – pontil scar, pint; (light exterior high point wear). GI-14. Tremont Labeth collection.
$65,520 February 2019 Heckler #180
215: “General Washington” And Bust - “E. Pluribus Unum / T.W.D” And Eagle Portrait Flask, Kensington Glass Works, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1826-1840. Medium cobalt blue, sheared mouth - pontil scar, pint; (light exterior high point wear). GI-14 Known as the “Firecracker Flask”, this iconic piece is both beautiful and historically important. Fine condition with bold embossing. Ex Edmund and Jayne Blaske collection, Dr. Charles and Jane Aprill collection.
Firecracker GI-14
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AMERICAN POISON BOTTLES
KS-5
We released the American Poison Bottles book in March 2025 at the Baltimore Antique Bottle Show. Tim Adams, Joan Cabaniss, and I researched these bottles as much as possible, yet questions remained. One unanswered question was, who distributed the KS-5 poison bottle? Shortly after its initial release, Joan remembered a photo shared some years ago by John Gregory to the APBCA (Antique Poison Bottle Collectors Association). The photo was a labeled example from Strong, Cobb & Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Based on this new information, we would like to share some of the company’s history.
Samuel Merwin Strong (1832-1895) grew up west of Cleveland in Amherst, Ohio. Although his father was a practicing physician, Samuel dropped out of Oberlin College at 18 to pursue an apprenticeship at an Elyria, Ohio drug store. He continued to take on progressive roles at pharmacies and wholesale druggists. In 1858, Samuel Strong, along with his partner, Armstrong, purchased a wholesale drug company that had been in operation since 1833. It was rebranded as Strong & Armstrong Co. with Samuel Strong as the president. The timing of the purchase was fortuitous, as the Civil War afforded substantial profits and growth for the company. In 1867, shipbuilder and capitalist Ahira Cobb (18141882) bought out Armstrong’s interest. The company was reorganized as Strong, Cobb & Co. with Ahira as a special partner and his eldest son, Lester Ahira Cobb (1850-1926), as a traveling
By Vern Huffstetler, Tim Adams and Joan Cabaniss
salesman. Ahira eventually deeded his interest in the company to Lester in 1873, making him a partner. Ahira’s youngest son, Ralph Lee Cobb (1856-1918), also joined the firm at the bottom and worked his way up to manage the sundries division. Ahira worked with his ship-building partner, Captain Alva Bradley (1814-1883), to build a business block on Superior Street in 1874. Part of this block housed the offices and laboratory of the Strong, Cobb & Co. At this point, they were the largest firm of their type in Ohio, with annual sales exceeding a million dollars. They continued to grow and supply retail druggists throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, and Kentucky. By the 1890s, over 100 men had been employed at the Strong, Cobb & Co.
As Samuel Strong’s sons reached maturity, they were brought into the business as well. Samuel Erwin Strong (1866-1927) and Edwin Lee Strong (1860-1932) continued to be part of the management team after their father’s accidental death in 1895.
Cover image from American Poison Bottles.
Labeled example of a KS-5 Poison bottle containing 100 tablets of Corrosive Sublimate by Strong, Cobb & Company of Cleveland, Ohio.
L: Samuel Erwin Strong
R: Ahira Cobb
Strong, Cobb & Co. began specializing in private formulas. They sold off their wholesale business in 1918 and their retail business in 1920. The company relocated within Cleveland a couple of times. Like most of the other pharmaceutical companies of the day, they went through multiple sales and mergers from the 1940s to the 1970s.
The Strong, Cobb & Co. provided collectors with a variety of jugs and bottles. One of these is the poison bottle we know today as KS-5.
[Left] The two Strong, Cobb & Co. five-story buildings in this illustration were located at 112 and 114 Superior Street and 116 and 118 Long Street with adjacent warehouses. One building had exterior signage reading “Wholesale Druggists,” while the other had “Laboratory.” The buildings were connected by tunnels and bridges. These are part of the business block constructed by Captain Bradley in 1874. The first floor was dedicated to liquor sales, and the fourth floor was dedicated to patent medicines.
KS-5
Shape: Square Color: Amber Size: 2-1/2”, 3-1/4”, 4-7/8”, 5-1/4”, 6-7/8”, 7-1/2”, 9-1/4”
Rarity: 5 – 5+ larger Description: BIM. All corners have protrusions along the length. Two opposite sides are embossed “POISON” vertically down the face. The other two sides are plain. Contained: Corrosive Sublimate tablets manufactured by Strong, Cobb & Company in Cleveland, Ohio.
[Above] Letterhead graphics for Strong, Cobb & Co. Wholesale Druggists, Importers and Manufacturers. 112 & 114 Superior St. & 116 & 118 Long St. Cleveland, O., Specialties: Fluid Extracts, Pharmaceutical, Preparations, Non-Secrets. Represented by D. L. Hank.
Sources: Those Pre-Pro
Advertising trade card for Strong, Cobb & Co. proprietors of “Dr. Beeman’s Worm Destroyer.”
Whiskey Men! “Samuel Strong: Alcohol and the Cleveland Druggist” by Jack Sullivan and Find A Grave for Ahira Cobb, Samuel Erwin Strong and several Internet sources.
IwasWhat A Run!
talking with my buddies yesterday and reminiscing about our running days. The hundreds (or more) long, unforgettable runs through the Sierra Nevada trails, the races—Western States 100, Silver State 50-miler, and all those marathons, including Boston five times. Now we’re all much older, but still out there in our 70s and 80s doing our stuff together. It was a helluva run. Age and injuries caught up to us...but it was, truly, a helluva run. Today, another “helluva run” is coming to an end. It is time for me to retire while I still have some gas in the tank and hopefully the wheels can stay on.
Time takes its toll, and my body has paid the price. I simply can’t do what I used to do. The back is shot, the feet won’t go where they are supposed to go, and all my reconstructed and reassembled parts from years of “being the guy” make me—force me—to back off. Yes, it’s been a helluva run.
I finished my geology degree in 1975 at Humboldt State University, determined, since I was a little kid, to go into mining. I got lucky before I had any answers from applications for a master’s degree ever came and got a job with Cities Service Minerals, who had several producing mines worldwide. Frank Kilmer, an industry guy turned Geology professor at Humboldt, told me to take the job no matter what. “They are simply too hard to get,” he said, and he was right.
Back then, there were no scholarships like today. We all had to find a way to pay our way through school. It was never an argument—it was a simple, accepted fact of life. Classes did not allow time for a scheduled job, so I (we) had to get creative. I searched for and found beautiful rocks and sliced and sold them at flea markets. I rebuilt refrigerators and stoves. I cleaned fossils. I helped at rock shows. I sold doughnuts in the hallways. Entrepreneurial 101? You bet!
I had to continue this entrepreneurial trend working as a beginning geologist, who only made $800/month. I had discovered old bottles while on the Humboldt summer field class in the White Mountains of Inyo County. They soon became part of the weekend sales excursions, as did refereeing for city league and small college basketball games.
By Fred Holabird
With great bosses to learn from, and an unforgettable group of advanced geologists I met during Society of Economic Geology meetings in the 1970s who all became my mentors through life, I advanced in an abnormal, quick manner from mining research to exploration to mine development to production. A special “shout-out” here is in order—John Livermore, Neil Prenn, Gene McClelland, John Schilling, Dick Thompson, Peter Vickre, Neil Upchurch, among many others played prominent, yet perhaps unknown parts in the development of my career.
My mining career blossomed over the years. I had unknown talents in field work that led to many “discoveries,” both in mine production and in mine cleanup methodology. The Gold Bar Mine was my first, with more to come—arguably at least five. One of those, the Flowery, led to new advanced work and methods of mine cleanups that led me to work closely with various state and federal environmental agencies in Nevada and Colorado, including two branches of the EPA. I cherish my memories of those cleanups and the unsung professionals involved. We all made history doing the right thing.
Back in the 1970s, the AIME (American Institute of Mining Engineers) held fantastic international Mining Economics seminars. These were an incredible, advanced, world-class education like no other. I attended several on my own nickel, and hit the jackpot. With speakers like John Macnamara, World Bank Chairman, and a field of mining industry icons, some of whom took special interest in this young, nearly 6’5” Nevada geologist, I became immersed into the inner workings of the “business side” of mining.
A key element of those seminars, held just as then-President Nixon had repealed the Gold Reserve Act of 1933, was that it was strongly suggested to have a second business because of the unpredictable nature of metal commodity markets at the time.
So began a separate business in Americana. It had its start during those years at Humboldt, I just didn’t know it at the time. As I became immersed in mining history, and by osmosis because of my family history and my geology jobs, I dove into Nevada and California history. As a kid, I had been reading all the wonderful history books left behind by my grandfather. It became addictive,
and that addiction has never left me. So, this “second business” was a natural outflow of my life and career.
“Two careers, you say?” Heck no – there have been four! I was a die-hard athlete and never stopped. I briefly mentioned this in the opening paragraph. And I met Robin at Humboldt – another “Type A” personality, exceptionally smart, a real go-getter, and fun as all get-out. I call this another career because together, we have forged two great careers. Hers in movies, and me in my stuff. You can still listen to her movie reviews every Friday at 9am on KUNR, like you have for about 45 years if you live in Nevada, and on subscribing NPR stations around the country, or read them on KUNR’s website, or read them on Rotten Tomatoes, an international movie review website.
The Americana biz got a natural slow start. I found, discovered, and sold lots of stuff no one had ever thought about collecting, or even knew existed. These things led to discovering great stories about elements of history that few had thought of. That led to catalogs...then books...then more catalogs...then auctions.
There was a need to tell stories through the eyes of these items. They became my window to the past, unleashing hundreds of stories that I never dreamed I’d write. The discovery of documents, items, and archives proved to be a remarkable teaching tool, one that has helped uncover various yet-unknown aspects of history.
In some cases, we needed to bring science to the table, and I enlisted the help of many friends deep within the scientific communities. The stories that resulted have helped teach readers about various elements of science, and in some cases helped collectors understand the “real” from “fantasy.” This world is not without controversy, and if time in life allows, I hope to write about much of this.
All of this quite varied work led to being asked to work on many world-class projects. Some you know about. Others, you don’t –but maybe so in the future. The SS Central America and the SS Republic treasures stand at or near the top of the list of these projects. And even for these, my story has never been fully told.
The sum of all this? I was asked by an attorney on a consulting case to present all of my articles, papers, and published works of over 1,000 words. He thought it might be a page or two. It took a week to unravel a list (which is still not complete), fully more than 250 titles long. I’ll leave out his comments...
Our big auctions started in the late 1990s. We held many mail-bid auctions prior to that, but the development of the Internet changed everything. Overall, we may have held close to a thou-
sand auctions if you include daily sections. We’ve sold hundreds of thousands of lots of Americana—many millions of pieces— probably far more than anyone—yet this still will never approach the massive demand for numismatics, which overshadows all other collecting categories. Separately, we’ve sold hundreds of collections benefiting elderly Americans in their twilight years who needed extra income to “get by” in today’s world. These are the “average Joe” collections—not the ones you read about in the press—yet they are equally important. This is an element of our business that we are all proud of. There is also a ton of “stuff” that we invented, but that discussion remains for another day.
We built a great company. We’ve had a great team over the years. I don’t call them employees, because we really are a true team – one part doesn’t work without the other. Now it’s time for the next generation. We intend to have several more sales of varying nature. Our last consignment call is September 1, 2025. We will be paying consignors 30 days after the sales, and likewise canceling all sales not paid for in 20 days after a sale. Starting on November 1, we will be offering the internal fixtures of the business at cheap (I’m not supposed to use that word!) prices.
It’s Time.
Thank You to all for everything. Fred Holabird and all of our current and past team members.
Editor: This article was printed with Fred’s permission. Holabird Western Americana Collections (HWAC) is a long-time FOHBC partner and advertiser. Many will remember the GREAT auction Fred called at the FOHBC 2016 National Antique Bottle Show & Convention in Sacramento, California. The auction went into the wee hours of the morning. The star of the auction was an early yellow-green Barkhouse Gold Dust Whiskey (San Francisco, Calif.), circa 1871-1874, one of only eight known and literally flawless (100 on a scale of 1-100) having never been in the ground or mishandled. With the original cork still in place, this relic from the California Gold Rush, one of the oldest of the Western embossed whiskey bottles, eventually brought $31,500 not including the auction house premium. The happy Escobedo family had consigned the whiskey bottle that they found and had traveled to the auction to see if they could improve on their $12 investment! To see them while this lot was being auctioned was well worth the price of admission. I remember the call I received from Mr. Escobedo asking the value of what he found. His family cried as the hammer hit the final sale price, well over the pre-auction estimate. We also remember the GREAT display area for HWAC at the FOHBC Reno 2022 Convention where they displayed a once-in-a-lifetime exhibit titled “S.S. Central America Gold Treasure Artifacts.” We wish Fred health and happiness and thank him for his contributions in making our hobby so great.
These shards were recovered from the waste material of the glassworks site. Just a relatively small amount was recovered, along with other bottles, insulators, and unused mixture ready for melting.
Dr. H. Adolphus and his Anti Rheumatic Cordial
By Eric McGuire
Thisincredible little bottle is a 100% Western United States product, devised by the minds of two Prussian entrepreneurs who traveled to a new land to create new fortunes. The origin of the idea remains unknown, but it was undoubtedly driven by the desire to reap monetary rewards. This was not a new idea as California had a decade of history the likes of which our world had never seen. From a sleepy, lightly populated edge of the world, it instantly sucked in a huge population from around the world, and many prospered from its mineral riches. Still, it created a vacuum for certain essential features that our culture thrives on, both positive and negative.
quite noticeable that certain elements of “Western culture” were missing from what could easily become a new utopia. And, with no shortage of an economic base, entrepreneurs soon looked beyond mineral extraction, which became much more difficult for those with little means. It became increasingly difficult to make a decent living solely by relying on surface gold.
Many of the gold seekers came to find riches, and many were free thinkers about how one might achieve that goal. It was likely
A statement in the 1859 San Francisco Directory reflects on the unimaginable history that San Francisco had experienced. “Just six months after the village of Yerba Buena was given its current name, it was found the population had increased to 459 persons...and now, in 1859, this—the metropolis of the Pacific—numbers in population over 78,000 souls, and can boast of an assessment roll of more than $30,000,000. In exports standing first, and in imports and tonnage among the very first of the great ports of the Union.
Directory advertisement for Dr. H. Adolphus Anti Rheumatic Cordial
The ordeal, through which San Francisco has passed, has been severe and without example in the history of cities. . . Her growth was sudden; there was no infancy to her history. An existence of only ten years has given her rank among the cities of the world: and after passing through the fiery ordeal and financial abuses and disasters, she is now in her onward march to wealth and greatness.”
Healthcare would have been high on the list of needed reforms. Whether they worked or not, bottled health products were in high demand, just as they were in our more gentrified regions. However, they were mostly imported from elsewhere, which created an uncertainty of availability. Two savvy people saw a need and became devoted to filling it, with the possibility of becoming rich as well.
Prussian-born Henry Adolphus may have had some medical background, or at least he referred to himself as a doctor. Julius Louis Jungerman was more of a risk-taker who had some money to invest. His early life in San Francisco can be better documented than that of Adolphus. Also, a native of Prussia, Julius
The blue aquamarine medicine bottle is embossed “DR H ADOLPHUS – ANTI RHEUMATIC CORDIAL – SAN FRANCISCO – CALIFORNIA” Rectangular form, indented panels, 7.25 inches, blowpipe pontil. Applied tapered mouth. Blown in 1860.
Adolphus advertisement from the Sacramento Daily Union, October 1860. As you can see, Justin Gates and C.P. Morrill of later day Virginia City fame, sold the Adolphus product.
Dr. Adolphus advertisement for the health restorative taken from the Golden Era newspaper April 1860.
L. Jungerman, his wife, Babette, and his children arrived in San Francisco in 1852. He immediately set up business as a jeweler and watchmaker. Business was good, and he invested in a half-interest in Water Lot No. 56 with Gustav Muhard. (Water lots are shallow flooded lots that fronted the City of San Francisco with the possibility of filling them in for future construction purposes. They soon became some of the most valuable properties in the city.) He then returned to his homeland and came back to San Francisco in August 1858. The jewelry business was not as successful this time.
Jungerman borrowed money against his water lot and, with Henry Adolphus, partnered in the business of producing patent medicine in early 1860. He initially invested $2,000. With solid returns in the business, he invested another $4,000.
By chance and through the continued growth of San Francisco, a glassworks had just been formed in the city and was advertising for clients in March 1860. Adolphus and Jungerman decided to use the new glassworks instead of ordering bottles from the East at an undoubtedly higher cost and with a significantly longer time lag. A special bottle mold was even created for the bottles, probably at a local San Francisco foundry. As luck would have it, the medicine business was entirely destroyed by a fire on September 27, 1860, resulting in a $12,000 loss.
With additional funds borrowed against Jungerman’s water lot, the partners invested in a new business as sales agents for Ericsson’s Caloric Engines. This was a relatively new engine design that operated on hot air. They purchased three of the engines with the idea of using them to crush silver ore from the recently discovered Washoe mining district. The business was a failure, and with no more available funds, the partners dissolved their interests, with Jungerman taking the engines and Adolphus taking the medicine business in January 1861. Jungerman filed for insolvency in April 1861.
Kathrin Cawein, Telegraph Hill, San Francisco in 1859, ca. 1936, drypoint on paper, plate: 7 x 11 7⁄8 in. (17.7 x 30.3 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Chicago Society of Etchers, 1941.6.10
Shortly after the fire, Adolphus desperately tried to keep the medicine business afloat. He appealed to his agents not to give up on him. “To our business friends and Agents in the interior, we would announce that although we have been burned out completely, at the late fire in Montgomery street, we have managed, through extraordinary expenses and labor, to be able to fill all orders for our California Medicines. The enormous demands for our Anti-Rheumatic Cordial and Health Restorative, the good it has done to the thousands who are suffering from disease, and find it to be the only permanent relief in existence, have compelled us to open a new store before the fire was quite extinguished in our former place, we are, therefore, ready to do business, as usual, without any interruption whatever at No 56 Montgomery street. Dr. Adolphus & Jungerman” (The Daily Alta California, San Francisco, October 5, 1860)
And some did, with one Los Angeles agent advertising until April 1863.
Henry Adolphus finally conceded to failure and filed for bankruptcy, with liabilities of approximately $10,000 and no assets. (Sacramento Daily Union, December 4, 1862) He continued as a physician and druggist in San Francisco until 1876. Adolphus left San Francisco and arrived in Portland, Oregon, in September 1876, where he was listed as a physician and occasionally as a druggist until 1881. After that date, he disappeared. Perhaps he died, but there is no later reference for him after that.
Julius Jungerman moved to Victoria, British Columbia, by October 1861, when he placed his first newspaper advertisement for his jewelry store. He made occasional trips to the San Francisco Bay area where most of his children lived. Jungerman died in Victoria on May 28, 1879. After his death, his wife moved to Oakland, California, to be with her family.
Comstock miners, three youngsters who might have worked as pick carriers or engineers assistants, and a dog wearing a miner’s slouch hat.
One interesting character
Meet FOHBC member Rick Carney from Maine.
Ferdinand and I first met Rick and his wife Cindy when we noticed an oversized dealer display area at the gigantic Baltimore Antique Bottle show some 15 years or so ago. We were drawn to their sales setup displaying all types of beautiful glass art. We became a customer and have many of Rick’s pieces in our house here at Peachridge. We invited Rick to the Houston 24 Expo where he set up at our Peachridge “Glass in the Grass” event and the FOHBC Houston 24 Expo at Hotel ZaZa. We gave him the premier space in the Phantom Ballroom centered in front of the floor-to-ceiling glass revealing the Houston Museum District and Hermann Park beyond. Included are some of the wonderful photographs from our H24 event photographer, Gina Pellegrini-Ott, to illustrate his fine work. This is a follow-up article to “One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure” in Bottles and Extras in July–August 2016 by Jim Bender.
Richard (Rick) Carney Jr. of Brunswick, Maine, is an artist and treasure diver who says he has been underwater almost as much as he has roamed on land. Most of the sites he dives are underwater bottle dumps in New England’s lakes, rivers and ocean harbors. “It is the hunt that makes me do it— anywhere there were people, there is stuff.” Rick is referring to the thousands of old bottles, crockery items, coins, rings, and clay pipes that he digs, dives for, and collects. Rick dives year-round in Maine, recovering thousands of items dating from the 1790s to the 1890s. Though he can’t always count on great visibility, each site typically yields hundreds of whole items and countless broken glass fragments and pottery that he later uses in his creative glass pieces. Rick is also a glass collector who has been collecting even longer than he has been diving. With his extensive knowledge of bottles, pottery, crockery, and manufacturing processes, Rick knows the general value of the many objects he finds.
Rick works with his wife, Cindy, who has learned much about the treasure Rick turns into artifact art. An editor by trade and a styl-
By Elizabeth Meyer
ist at heart, Cindy adds the “spit and polish” to the business, their website, gallery, and their many shows throughout the year.
Rick’s interest in old bottles began when he was 12, and his mother had a yard sale from bottles she had dug up. After that, Rick was hooked. Early in his years as a scuba diver, Rick purchased underwater metal-detecting equipment. Soon after, he went treasure diving and found a class ring in 12 feet of water at Camp Fernwood on Thompson Lake in West Poland, Maine. Rick tracked down the owner using the initials engraved on the band. Beverly Winslow Parker, class of 1944 at Saugus High School in Saugus, Massachusetts, was speechless when she answered the phone in September of 1994 and learned her long-lost ring had been found.
Rick goes treasure diving all year, most of the time by himself. “Winter is my favorite time,” he says, “No boats, no people, and I know my comfort zone.” But as Rick emphasizes, diving is inherently dangerous, especially in winter. One wrong move and a diver could end up under the ice.
Phantom Ballroom at Hotel ZaZa
Rick Carney in the Phantom Ballroom at Hotel ZaZa
Meyer collection
Rick considers the Piscataqua River at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the most dangerous river to dive, with its tides, swift currents, and poor visibility. There is always an 8 to 10-knot current, so he rigs himself a search line from an anchor. “Navigating underwater is like navigating blind,” he says. “Always trust the equipment. You can’t see anything, and you feel around for stuff.” When Rick first started, he would spend as many as 10 hours underwater, going through five oxygen tanks a day. “Not uncommon to be surprised underwater, either by the wildlife or the things I find,” said Rick. “Typically, when I see an old bottle, I know what it is.” Once, he was diving around pilings near the Essex Steamboat Museum. As he came up to check on his friend, their regulators froze up. The air was 40 degrees F, but the water was 34 F. That was the end of diving that day. Also, it’s a whole different ballgame diving in a dry suit, says Rick, who wears this heavier outfit with extra weights from December until May. He switches to a 7-millimeter weight wet suit in late spring and a 3-millimeter suit for summer. “I don’t take chances. If the hair suddenly stands up on the back of my neck, I get out of there.” Rick mostly dives alone because others don’t want to take the time. However, visibility is often reduced due to current. So, the torpedoes he uses to propel himself usually do double duty, blasting holes in the river and ocean bottoms to reveal treasures.
Even so, Rick may have suc ceeded at every man’s dream of turning an exciting hobby into a life’s work. The trash is everywhere. “I don’t look at it that way, but in 1850, whoever threw out that jug thought it was garbage.” He researches wrecks and dumpsites, pouring over old maps and records to get background information.
Sometimes, Rick’s artifacts are found in the most unexpected places. One October, Rick and Cindy had a booth at Apple Harvest Day in Dover, New Hampshire. While taking a break from selling his wares, Rick wandered over to the nearby Cocheco River. Then, he returned the following week with his gear and went into the water. Right before him was a flawless four-gallon crock made in Bennington, Vermont, with a big blue flower painted on the side! “I was the first person in 150 years to go into Wiscasset Harbor,” says Rick in wonder. He started bringing up perfect bottles from the 1760s to the 1790s and big, colorful chunks of glass untouched since the 1850s. Rick has also brought up many old bottles, dishes, pottery, and clay pipes on the Kennebec River in Phippsburg, Maine. Phippsburg
dumped the town trash near Parker Head Steamboat Landing for 200 years.
Rick also digs old land dumps and privy sites. Before the advent of indoor bathrooms, people tossed trash into the outdoor privy during winter when they could not reach the burn pile. After 100 years, all that is left is metal and glass. Rick is radiant as he describes a massive find in 2004 while treasure diving in the Presumpscot River in downtown Westbrook, Maine. On this summer dive, he discovered a solid wall 40 yards long of bottles, glass, crockery, dishes, and other items that banked the river’s curve.
What was his most valuable find to date? In December 2008, he brought up an old amber-colored Farley’s ink bottle worth $800. At this dive, he dove with a buddy, who brought up another Farley bottle in a rare green shade. “Thousands of dollars. Thou-
Rick crafts a variety of one-of-akind products—from stainedglass windows and lampshades to seascape treasure boxes and sea-glass pendants, earrings, and key chains—which he sells at fairs, festivals, and antique bottle and glass shows, primarily throughout New England through his compawebsite Old Bottle Sea Glass of Maine. He always has smaller items on his sales table that he offers as “booty” to patrons, such as porcelain doll heads, clay pipes, and various antique treasures and
Rick’s studio workshop is filled with brown English rum bottles and eagle flasks that will go into lampshades and panels. Tiny olive morphine bottles and Carter’s aqua ink bottles line a printer’s composition drawer hanging on one wall. The workshop has spilled into the basement, and bottles of all types line the shelves. Preparing for an art exhibit, Rick was embedding an old ceramic doll’s head in a small amber demijohn bottle. He titled the piece “Preserved and hopes it will one day hang in a lucky customer’s window. “I get more excitement about making and creating the art now because every piece is different,” Every piece is a different size, but when I was young and invincible, I got more excitement from finding things. It was all about the search.” Who knows what other treasure is lurking beneath the depths?
Visit Rick’s website, Old Bottle Sea Glass of Maine, for further tales of his memorable finds.
Meyer collection
Meyer collection
ANOTHER
ADVENTURE OF THE BOTTLE THIEF: Dead Chickens & Barking Dog
By Jack Klotz
Following on the heels of my first successful dig came my second opportunity. My parents moved from the coast inland a few short miles to SLO-town, as the locals called the long-winded San Luis Obispo, or San Luis for short. As luck would have it, we moved a block away from the junior high school where I was to finish up the 7th grade. I had started that grade on the coast, and 1965 would find me an eager 13-year-old looking for trouble if not old bottles. If I could find both simultaneously, the better. We resided about 12 blocks from the heart of the downtown historic district, although it was known as “downtown” then. Still feeling the high I got from my first dig earlier the previous year, I took every opportunity to snoop, trespass, and crawl under every old porch and house I could find. These were preferably vacant, though this was not an absolute requirement. I held true to the wild digging stories found in the earliest bottle books I could find, and if adults could get away with the antics as described, why not me?
“
Oh, those aren’t old. I’ve drunk out of those kinds of bottles before. Just throw that junk out.”
I hunted under an old, dilapidated, bare wooden house downtown, catty-corner from the old Rexall store, and found a handful of small amber cork-top flasks. Up until then, I had been dragging home screw top bottles from the 1930s, to which my aunt, who helped my mother raise me, would dryly say, “Oh, those aren’t old. I’ve drunk out of those kinds of bottles before. Just throw that junk out.” After hearing this rejection more times than I can remember, I decided to take my bottles to the old woman who ran the local museum, Louisiana Clayton Dart. She must have been 100 years old at that time in my young mind. Surely, she would know how old my latest find would date. She examined the flasks and, lowering her glasses down her Victorian nose, announced, “These are from the 1880s and are miniature sample whiskey flasks.” Anything from the 1800s seemed to be the magic number to me, and I was ecstatic when I floated in the front door on Cloud 9, clutching my treasure in a paper bag. When my aunt spied my junkers, she began her spiel about drinking out of them when I interrupted with, “Well, you must be 100 years old because the museum lady says they are from the 1880s.” My aunt never again made a discouraging comment about my “trash” collecting again!
It was a few years later I discovered the museum lady had lied to me! I figured out from collecting, studying, and attending bottle shows that my flasks were machine-made and were no older than the 1920s. I know she had to know this fact, and yet, rather than delivering a likely crushing blow to an enthusiastic budding collector, she lied! Thank God she did! It definitely gave me the boost I needed to continue onward to enjoy the hobby to this day.
Triangulated between the junior high school and our house sat an eerie and darkly imposing structure. It was surrounded by a number of trees and bushes, as well as an eight-foot-tall chain-
link fence, hiding it from the casual observer. The shrubbery was seriously overgrown and sat on a small knoll overlooking our ball field. Occasionally, I searched for a home run ball hit into the jungle. On one of these safaris, I realized there was a huge two-story building in there, and it looked ancient! I could see it was made from Adobe and looked as if it had sat vacant forever! There was a metal roof that was still old and rusty, along with old windows with glass so wavy you could see the waves from the outside of the fence. I was determined to snoop and soon found myself climbing a tree next to the fence from which to drop into the yard. As luck would have it, there was another tree inside the yard that could be exited in the same manner.
I did my best Ninja stealth moves to approach the building and was amazed at its size. There was one room that stood out from the main body, with a window that I could see through. I cupped my hands to reduce the reflections, and I was stunned at what I saw! To my left was an ancient-looking, hand-crank telephone hanging on the wall! To my right sat a wall of shelves loaded with old-looking, leather-bound books! But the best of everything was on the wall opposite the window, in full glory—a map from 1913 of the entire town. WOW! Imagine the bottles I could find using that map to show me the older houses to hunt! I was obsessed from that moment to possess that map! I had to have it! But how? I wasn’t about to devolve into vandalism, such as breaking a window. No, there had to be a better way.
I circled the perimeter and discovered an outside stairway that appeared to be the entry to the second floor. The door upstairs was locked and seemed quite sturdy. Continuing around the ground floor, I discovered a somewhat flimsy door that was locked with a
chain through a hole through the door and the door jamb, secured with a huge padlock. I knew the padlock would defeat any efforts on my part, but I was developing an idea. I allowed that thought to percolate for a few days when it came to me.
I arrived the following weekend with a hacksaw blade and two pairs of pliers. As I dropped into the yard, I was convinced there was nobody around for blocks. I pulled out the blade and began cutting on one of the links of the chain. In less than five minutes, I was through on one side. Now, with my pliers, I slowly bent the two ends apart until I could separate the link and disable the chain. The plan was to return the link to its original place after securing the door back to its locked position. I should have heard God laughing since making a plan usually does the trick. I was sure it would work, and nobody would be the wiser. Ha! As I swung the door open, it revealed a number of old pieces of furniture stacked up and in disarray. It smelled of hay and mustiness. To my left were a couple of lawnmowers, along with a half-dozen bales of hay. Directly behind the furniture and about eight feet up was a sill with a dirty, dusty window that allowed no light to intrude. On this shelf stood about a dozen bottles that I made a mental note about. As tempting as it was, I was on a mission to find the map!
To my right was a hallway that led in the direction of the map room, likely a library room in its day. As I started down the hall, I balked. I was hit solidly in the face with a massive spider web! Grabbing an old table leg, I proceeded to wrap the webbing around the leg as I inched forward. By the time I got to the library entrance, that table leg resembled an elephant leg! I dropped the web torch on the floor, as the library was void of spider webs, and I went directly to the map to claim my prize! I was stymied by my attempts to remove it as it was a pull-down-type map that was firmly screwed into place! My pliers were useless! All I could do now was to retreat to where the bottles waited for my inspection
on the window sill. They were well out of my reach, so I moved a chair next to the wall and climbed up where I could barely reach them. One by one, I pulled them down, and one by one, I replaced them as they were all machine-made. All but one, which I recognized from the book as a “lady’s leg” bitters, and it wasn’t machine-made! I also recalled it was listed as valued at $50! Now I was excited!
Just at that very moment, with treasure in hand, I heard a noise behind me! As I turned slowly around, I saw a grizzled old man standing in the doorway! He was inspecting the chain missing its link! Panic hit my brain in an instant! What to do? As luck would have it, there was a dresser between him and my chair, so I squatted down on my heels! Fortunately, he hadn’t seen me, and
[A, D & E] La Loma adobe photographs taken by my friend Ken Bennett in 2023. [B & C] La Loma adobe photographs taken circa 1990. [F] Bottles are left to right: “Waklee’s Cameline” from San Francisco circa 1880, free-blown wine with laid on ring lip circa 1850s, “Warner’s Safe Kidney & Liver Cure” circa 1880s
fork of one of the branches as high up as I could reach. When the old man said, “All right you, get down from there!” I explained I was going to need help getting unstuck.
as I heard his footsteps disappear down the hallway, I cautiously peeked around the dresser. Quietly as possible, I tip-toed over towards the open door to freedom and slowly looked down the hall. The coast was clear! As I got to the doorway, I was suddenly aware there was a big, unfriendly dog sitting by the door! As soon as he saw me, he began barking loudly and wouldn’t stop! I took off running for my tree ladder to enable my escape with the big dog hot on my trail! I swung myself up and climbed as fast as I had ever climbed any tree in my life! Hanging over the free side of the fence, I jumped in a panic. Sadly, the back of my coat got caught in the tree branch and left me swinging no less than a hanged man! Oddly, that’s exactly how I felt by the time the old man caught up with me. By then, any efforts on my part to free myself were in vain, so I took that prize bottle and wedged it in a
After he fetched a ladder and helped me down, it was off to the police station, where my mother would arrive to take me home. The old police station looked much like the ones in the gangster movies from the 1930s, with a milk glass globe featuring “POLICE” painted in stark black hanging off the side of the building. Inside was a very long oak bench that seemed longer than the building! It was here that I sat alone, waiting in my small 70-pound frame, waiting for the arrival of “the executioner.” Strangely enough, my mother defended me! It was the first time I ever heard the phrase “attractive nuisance,” which was what she called it. I can’t repeat what she called me, even though I was only 13! I found myself grounded until I was 21 but allowed on mommy parole as behavior allowed. The strangest thing was that, up until then, I had never mentioned my discovery to anyone, least of all my mother, so how did she know it was an attractive nuisance, as she called it? Regardless, that little “event” put a serious damper on my trespassing...for a while.
It was probably a year before I was brave enough to return to the old Adobe. It turns out the old man was a sheriff’s deputy, and his family had owned the property for generations. He used it as more of a barn to store hay for livestock and chicken feed for the hens. I had told my best friend about my previous adventure and he bugged me until I conceded to take him there. After we arrived, I discovered the library was empty! Looking through the window, I saw that it had been thoroughly cleaned out. A quick check of my tree also revealed the bottle treasure had been plundered and was no longer wedged in the branch, nor was it lying on the ground anywhere. We finally made our way up the stairs to the second floor. I can still see those tiny stairs built for
and an early 1880s odd-sized “Smith’s Bile Beans” round bottom pill flask.
people smaller than us 200 years ago. As we reached the door, I was surprised to find it unlocked. As we entered the dark, windowless room, our eyes finally adjusted to see one massive room. Some say it was a dance or ballroom. An enormous crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, well out of the way of the teen-aged termites below. Back against the far wall was a lone trunk that we opened to reveal old dresses that looked like silk and lace, the kind a Spanish senorita would have worn. Under all the clothes was a sterling silver-handled clothes brush and a square purplish perfume bottle. When we left, I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to the bottle hidden in the tree.
Eventually, I decided to make one last solo visit to see if my bottle was in the hay room. It just happened to be on Halloween night that I decided to make my move. What better night of the year to go skulking about with flashlights? As I dropped in from my faithful old tree, I shined my light in the direction of the Adobe and froze in my tracks! Between me and the Adobe were blood-stained chicken feathers and parts everywhere! Something must have gotten into the coop and killed every chicken, and very recently! This creeped me out to my extreme and I turned and shimmied up my tree for the last time, never to return.
This building was likely as old as the Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, which was built in 1772. Some say it served as a defensive outpost to warn the mission of invading bandits. The window sill where the bottles were had to be at least three feet thick! It has sat much the same as it did back in my misspent youth, alone and neglected. The only thing that is much different is that the surrounding area has grown up with apartments and houses. Though a good number of commuters and joggers must pass by it daily, few likely know the secrets the trees and bushes guard from youthful eyes and imaginations.
Fast forward to 2005, when I had a reason to be in this neighborhood, and I had a passing thought of my “adventure” from so many years ago. I noticed some residential development creeping closer to the old property and was pleasantly rewarded with the discovery of a recent future home site excavation. Opposite the Adobe and over the tiny creek near where an old barn had stood was now a leveled lot with a neatly dug-out area for a basement. Since it was during a holiday, there were no workers present, so I resorted to my 13-year-old mode and waltzed on in with my trusty screwdriver in hand. I have learned to use discretion while conducting a fact-finding ops mission. I didn’t have high hopes or expectations as the dirt piles looked pretty clean, plus this would be much too far from the Adobe for a privy location. I have often thought of the usefulness of a secondary privy for the men working out nearer to the barns and corral areas. Beats having to trot back near the house. I was happy to discover some glass frags looking 1890s to perhaps late 80s stuck in a side corner of the future basement. Pulling out my screwdriver, I scraped the trashy area about three feet from the top edge, and something tiny came loose and rolled between my legs. I was lucky to have captured a glimpse of it and discovered that one of my early favorites had shown up—a round-bottom Smith’s Bile Beans. Started in St. Louis in 1879, this one was slightly larger and cruder looking than any previously found. Guessing by the pieces of glass around it, I would say it dates from the mid-1880s. One reason it’s one of my favorites is that the first one I ever dug was back
in the mid-1960s at the local Elks’ dump. I quizzed the local “expert” digger who was digging about 50 feet away from me, and he had never heard of it before. For a couple of years, I would listen to him bemoan that he had not found his own Bile Beans, and to my knowledge, he never did.
The next bottle was a Murray & Lanman Florida Water from the early 1890s, followed by an aqua cone ink. Not a bad start for New Year’s Day. I poked around for a bit more but came up empty, and it petered out as though it were a shallow trash pit. I snooped about for a little longer but the ghosts of my past seemed to be haunting me. I decided to leave and as I began to turn the corner a block away, the cops were cruising by! Now I wondered, was it a haunting or a warning?
It took me a couple of years to make another drive-by in the area, and sure enough, the development had expanded into the sweet spot area I had always suspected should have a dump of sorts. I had often dug into the creek bank that flowed freely in the spring and not at all during most other seasons. On rare occasions, I would recover a slick or two from the creek but nothing of collectible value. Again, I remained cautiously optimistic as I approached a similar situation to before, with a couple of lots trenched out for foundations. Along one long cut into the sloping embankment I noted a couple of areas where the dirt changed color. One had a rust color, and I suspected it was a newer trash pit from the turn of the century, and I was right. A number of slick shoe polish and meds came out of the embankment, along with two more Murray & Lanman Florida Water bottles, which rounded out the meager horde. Another shallow trash pit, with no age to match the property’s 200-year history, was disappointing.
Searching further along the bluff, I discovered yet another color change, much more subtle than the last, and immediately found a shard that looked every bit like the 1860s! Poking into a grayish clay layer about two feet thick, I stabbed a piece of green glass, indicating likely a champagne or wine bottle. Never an exciting find as they are rarely embossed, I was surprised to pull out an undamaged, free-blown wine with a sheared top and applied string lip! Next to that was a grayish white salt glaze stoneware quart ale! The last interesting bottle on the bottom of this trash pit was a honey amber key mold flask with a gloppy applied lip and a crooked neck. Sadly, no embossing! Digging upward into the layer came a smattering of newer glass, yet more interesting now as I pulled out a cobalt blue Wakelee’s Camelline cosmetic from San Francisco. Next to that was a local “Booth’s Eagle Drug Store” bottle from the late 1870s, and then my first ever Warner’s Safe Cure! The Warner’s is in the deepest rootbeer color with an applied top and a crudeness of most bottles ten years older! To round it out was another amber flask, neatly tooled but sporting a backward “S” on the base and a cathedral-type pepper sauce with an embossed “O” on the base. My backpack was bulging and clinking as I made my way back to the car, grinning from ear to ear with several “firsts.” Most recently, I contacted one of my remaining friends in the area and managed to get him to take a few current photos and email them to me, as I had discovered through Google Maps the old Adobe had a name and a benefactor of protection. Named the La Loma Adobe, the city was now in charge of preventing future detritus to the ancient structure.
Ralph Finch writes his confession — in ink!
And here is what happened...
OK, you know how when you are at the computer and suddenly a warning sign pops up saying: ”Your printer is out of ink!”
And it’s in the evening, you are in your bathrobe (OK, I admit, I am always in my bathrobe) and the ink store is closed and...
It just happened at about the same time John Pastor’s American Glass Gallery was auctioning off a ton of goodies and there, right on the screen in front of me, was:
Lot 148, GIANT “SPENCERIAN,” Advertising Master Ink. America or possibly England, 1885 – 1905. Red-dish brown vitreous glaze, (similar to the P & J Arnold ink bottles), cylindrical, cone form shoulders, large flared mouth with pour spout, ht. 26 ¾”, perfect. Extremely rare! Spencerian was a script style popular in the U.S. during the latter half of the 1800s. Until this example, we have never seen it embossed on any ink bottle. Provenance: Fred Swiechowicz collection.
So, I’m thinking, if I order ink online, it will be a small amount
Photos by Janet Finch
and take two days to arrive, and if I win this, it should supply me with enough ink for the rest of my life...(and, how long can it be, I’m 85). Plus, I can get free shipping, as John Pastor lives 15 minutes away.
So... bid, won, and in due time John arrives with this big, heavy thing under his arm and asks, “Where do you want it?”
A quick look at John and I realized:
1: I am no rocket scientist, and
2: I didn’t fully read the description
I look more closely at the catalog and there is indeed a yardstick against the ink, indicating the true reason behind John’s use of the word “GIANT” in bold capital letters!
We found a place for it (and it wasn’t easy), I have enough ink for a lifetime, and a talking point to anyone who visits and can’t find a place to sit, since we are running out of space!
Ralph writes a story, in ink, sitting next to the “Giant” Spencerian ink bottle. However, Ralph admits, it doesn’t help if you are using a ball-point pen.
A close-up view of the impressed “Spencerian” name.
Period illustration for “Spencerian Blue Black Writing Fluid.”
Rare “Spencerian” advertising trade card.
Tennessee Bottle Collectors Sixth Annual Show
Dealer Set up:
Fri. 11 am – 6 pm Sat. 7 – 8 am
Saturday: 8 am – 2:30 pm FREE ADMISSION!
Tennessee Building
945 E. Baddour Pkwy, Lebanon, Tennessee 37087 Right of Expo Center Bldg. (I-40 Exit 239B)
Advertising, Signs, Soda Pop, Beer & Ales, Hutches, Bitters, Inks, Medicines, Milk, Soda Water, Whiskey, Jars, ACL’s, Blobs, Flasks, Insulators etc.
Early Buyers: Fri. 1 – 6 pm $20 Admission Free Appraisals! Bring the Entire Family!
Show Chairmen: Greg Eaton, 865-548-3176 Stanley Word, 615-708-6634
[Above & Right] J.M. ROSEBERRY & CO ALEXANDRIA VA. With embossed EAGLE SHIELD, and FLAGS on reverse 1855-57. Applied top with open pontil. Medium to deep bright olive green. The chances of finding an 1850s soda in this condition are slim to none. Alan Schmeiser collection. A California native, Alan wrote one of the first books on sodas and mineral waters in 1968. His insight into the fascinating world of soda bottles is unparalleled, especially at the time. We recently met with Alan and he brought us 12 sodas after 50 years of storage. Alan has been nice enough to include a copy of his soda book with each purchase of any of his bottles. – Jeff Wichmann, American Bottle Auctions
[Left] New artifacts such as 1700 gold 8-escudo coins are expected to be found on the legendary Spanish galleon San Jose, Colombia’s government announced on 12 June 2025, after the first robotic exploration of the three-century-old shipwreck. Dubbed the “holy grail” of shipwrecks, the San Jose was owned by the Spanish crown when it was sunk by the British navy near Cartagena in 1708. Only a handful of its 600-strong crew survived. Among the new artifacts are an anchor, as well as part of the ship’s cargo such as jugs and glass bottles. Previous images included cast iron cannons, porcelain pieces, pottery and objects apparently made of gold. The exploration also revealed the “biological diversity on the seabed” near the shipwreck, the statement said, showing species such as a dorsal finless shark and swordfish about 2,000 feet below the surface. “The sinking has created a dynamic and living ecosystem on the seabed, providing shelter and food for diverse forms of marine life.” – Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History
[Below Right] Hey Ferd, we dug this yesterday. base embossed “JK and Co Pitts Pa.” Amber Pineapple. Assuming it’s a bitters. We haven’t figured out who is going to end up with it (there were three of us) but was wondering if you had any idea of value so we can try and be fair about the split. LOL maybe we should just have all three of us keep it and rotate who has it every 6 months — Jeff Mihalik [Editor] This pineapple is unlisted and will be added to BBs3.
Lost & Found
Read and see more in the FOHBC Virtual Museum.
[Above] Occupational Shaving Mug, made for “Otto Jaeger” and showing a mid 1920s airplane, 3 5/8”h, ‘Germany’ on base. Perfect condition and having most of the gold trim. According to the Fighter Pilot “Ace” List compiled by Al Bowers and David Lednicer, Otto Jaeger flew in the Austro-Hungarian air force during World War I (1914 - 1918). He was credited with shooting down seven enemy aircraft (five were required to attain “ace” status). He apparently came to America after the war possibly to seek work as a pilot. Winning Bid: $2,750 – Glass Works Auction, Auction #183 – The Bill Ham Collection of Occupational Shaving Mugs
[Above] Rare emeralds, especially those from North Carolina and Colombia, are known for their size, quality, and value. One notable find in North Carolina is the “Carolina Queen,” a large, gem-quality emerald discovered at the North American Emerald Mine. The “Carolina Queen” and its smaller counterpart, the “Carolina Prince,” were cut from a single rough emerald. The first specimens of the hiddenite variety of spodumene were recovered circa 1879 near the settlement of White Plains, west of Stony Point, Alexander County, North Carolina. Similarly, rare emeralds have been found in shipwrecks, like those discovered in the Nuestra Señora de Atocha. – Wikipedia
[Left] The Third Imperial Easter egg is often considered the rarest and most expensive Fabergé egg. Created in 1887 for Tsar Alexander III, it was discovered in America in 2011 by a scrap dealer and was valued at $33 million. The egg is made of solid 18k gold, adorned with sapphires and diamonds, and features a Vacheron Constantin watch inside.
[Above & Left] Minnesota’s North Star Bottle Assoc. meetings always result in some cool “show and tell” bottles and the latest was no exception. “I did not even know that chickens could contract cholera but this might all be owed to the effectiveness of Hillemann’s American Chicken Cholera Cure.” This cobalt blue, embossed and labeled medicine is off the charts for interest, color, and humorous relief.” – Henry Hecker, photos courtesy Steve Ketcham
[Above] Irregular hexagon, green, KI-2 “Kienly’s” drug store poison bottle from Lafayette, Indiana. The authors of American Poison Bottles suggest that there are more KI-2’s and rumors of unlisted ones. Can you help them out? See Shards of Wisdom, page 4, this issue.
SATURDAY
Member Photos
A collection of spectacular and inspiring photographs from around the world and around the web. Please feel free to submit your images for consideration.
Read and see more in the
Antique Bottle & Glass Collector
Bottle Room – Larry Faucheux
FOHBC Virtual Museum.
Summer-Winter Tree flask – Tony Moller
Panoramic photo of my room – Giftflasche Antique SKULL Poison Bottles on Facebook
Presidential Flasks – Alan Sargeant
Climax Bitters – Rich Dotson
Note the reverse is embossed “PAT.
The cologne collection seems to be coming along – Woody Douglas
Mothers day –Hans-Jürgen Krackher
Benicia glass – Michael & Karen Peart
R25 Raffle Drake’s –Michael Seeliger
APPLIED FOR.” This means the bottle is not French, but American. – Eric McGuire
Reno 25 Seminar #1
19th Century Ammonia Bottles from the San Francisco Bay Area
This presentation by Stephen Hubbell will review the historical roots of ammonia production in the San Francisco Bay area and the bottles used to sell this product. Special emphasis will be given to the San Francisco Gaslight Company bottles. Bottle mold types, sizes and the colors for the San Francisco Gaslight bottles will be discussed as well as their rarity.
Reno 25 Seminar #2
Western W hiskey & Bourbon Bottles Applied Top Fifths & Flasks from San Francisco
This presentation by Lance Westfall will review the historical roots of the early west coast liquor merchants and their embossed whiskey and bourbon bottles manufactured in the San Francisco Bay Area. Special emphasis will be given to the early applied top cylinders and flasks. Bottle mold types, rarity, sizes, characteristics, colors and pairings (fifths/flasks) will be highlighted as well as noteworthy trivia and myths. There will be a featured “Show & Tell” with a bottle display!
Reno 25 Seminar #3
Reno Red Commemorative Drake’s
This seminar by Treg Silkwood & Michael Craig will explore once again the difficulties and craftsmanship required by glassblowers in the 19th Century. Using those techniques, coupled with advanced technology and equipment available today, Treg and Michael have reproduced the Drake’s in Ruby Red for a commemorative bottle for the FOHBC Reno 25 Convention. The seminar will feature a film of the making of the commemorative Drake’s. Afterwards, Treg and Michael will be available to answer questions about the making of these bottles and the peculiarities of glass manufacturing.
31 July – 03 August 2025
Reno, Nevada
Classified Ads
ADVERTISE FOR FREE
Free advertising in each issue of Antique Bottle & Glass Collector (AB&GC). One free “WANTED” or “FOR SALE” ad in AB&GC per year each renewal. See page 72 for more info. DEALERS: Sell your bottles in the Antique Bottle & Glass Collector. Change the bottles each issue. Include your website in your ad to increase traffic to your site. Send all advertisement info to FOHBC Secretary, Alice Seeliger, N8211 Smith Road, Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521 or best, email to: AliceSecretaryFOHBC@ gmail.com
FOR SALE
FOR SALE: Quality bottles largely from the US, meticulously described and well-priced. Listings with images available on my High Desert Historic Bottle website at historicbottles.com. My email is on the website. Bill Lindsey, Chiloquin, Oregon. (11.01.26)
FOR SALE: Jar Doctor business is for sale, however, we are still going strong with no letting up in sight. All supplies are still available and can be shipped immediately. June Lowry, 816.318.0161, JarDoctor@aol.com, JarDoctor. com (07.01.25)
FOR SALE: FOHBC logo shirts and hats, Reno 25 Conv. shirts, H24 Expo shirts. Contact: Alice at alicesecretaryfohbc@gmail.com
WANTED
WANTED: Hobble skirt embossed Coca-Cola bottles: 1915s, 1923s, D-Patent’s 6 oz and 6 1/2 oz. Collector will buy or trade. Jim Georges, georges77@twcny.rr.com or 315.662.7729. (11.27)
WANTED: Amber, aqua or clear bottles or jars with the logo “N” inside a Keystone symbol on the base. Contact Barry Bernas at phone 717.338.9539 or email barryb6110@aol.com (07.01.25)
WANTED: OWL DRUG bottles, tins, boxes, paper, anything from The Owl Drug Company. Marc Lutsko, Unit 6922, 2300 N. Harris Street, Helena, Montana 59604-7347, letsgo@ montanasky.net, 406.291.0861, Box 97, Libby, Montana 59923 TOP DOLLAR paid (01.1.26)
WANTED: Harley bottles of West Chester, Pa. and Philadelphia, Pa. The West Chester bottles (four) display either J. Harley, James Harley, Jas. Harley or E.M. Harley. The Phila. bottles (four) display Edwd. Harley, Schul (Schuylkill) 4th & Market St., Philada. or E. Harley, 802
Market St. or E. Harley, West Market St. or Edw. Harley, 1838 Market St., Phila. Bob Harley, Phone: 610.790.5520, rwh220@Yahoo.com (11-1-26)
WANTED: Two Cohansey jar clamps, Patsy, patsy_jett@yahoo.com (07-1-25)
WANTED: Hutchinson stoppers: Paying $1.50 cash each for those I can use. Send to Zang Wood, 1612 Camino Rio, Farmington, NM 87401. I will mail you back the bad stoppers, plus your postage cost to me. Strictly cash deal. (09.01.25)
WANTED: New Jersey collectors: Will pay a fair price for NJ Hutch. Anchor Bottling Co. Atlantic City, NJ embossed on Anchor in slug plate. If you have one and will sell, please contact Zang Wood, 1612 Camino Rio, Farmington, NM 87401, 505-327-1316 or zapa33-5l@msn.com with information and cost. (09.01.25)
WANTED: We are looking for a Cerrillos NM Hutch soda bottle. Please contact 505.438.3008 or Brownp52@yahoo.com (07.01.25)
WANTED: Williamsport PA, any rare bottle including labels (no milks). Also, Dr Porter bottles, Towanda PA, Minnequa Springs, Canton PA and McHenry PA whiskey jugs from Benton or Shamokin. Call Bob Kane 570.220.5982 (07.01.25)
WANTED: Los Angeles and area pictures, drug stores and color squares and round cylinders. Rare locks and keys. Bob Hirsch, 562.619.8338, bob. hirsch@verizon.net (07.01.25)
WANTED: Earliest Singer Oil Bottle (pre-1860) embossed only with “I.M. Singer & Co. – New York” on the front. Send photo and price to Craig Solomonson, craig@solomonson.net (09.01.25)
WANTED: Houston and Galveston, Texas bottles–Muscadine Punch, Dr. Nut, Triple XXX Root Beer, Cola and Ginger Ale, Junie Phosphate any flavor. Richmond and Rosenberg TX bottles. Mexican Hot, High Island TX Mineral Water, Sazerac Ginger Ale and Root Beer, Pepsin Punch and Clavet Mist, Papoose Root Beer. Earl McIntyre, 14214 Jaubert Ct, Sugar Land, TX 77498, 832.914.2477 (07.01.25)
WANTED: Milwaukee Pre-Prohibition back bar bottles and shot glasses. Greg Markovic, 262.408.3616, gcmarko@sbcglobal.net (11.01.26)
VOLUNTEERS
The FOHBC is always looking for help and
volunteer work for the many projects and initiatives of the organization. Join the Board of Directors as Vice President or Membership Director to fill out terms until August 2026. Lend a hand with committee work for seminars, merchandise and other upcoming projects. Contact president Michael Seeliger, mwseeliger@ gmail.com or 608.575.2922.
AVAILABLE NOW
American Antique Glass Masterpieces
The depth and breadth of the Fuss Collection place it among the greatest groupings of Early American glass ever assembled. Many of the objects are unique and of those with multiple examples known, Sandor has chosen the finest available. The Fuss Collection is a monumental achievement made possible by his great eye, unwavering focus, and determination. It is a joy to share this fabulous glass with the World! – Jeff Noordsy
Wilber & Gugliotti Barber Bottles
The group of items Joel Bartsch assembled includes the Dave Wilber collection, the Anthony Gugliotti collection and still others Joel purchased separately. The Wilber collection is massive, more than 1,000 pieces, and we knew it contained some great pieces that were sold at auction 15 to 30 years ago. The Gugliotti collection contained hundreds of items, and included a lot of rare shaving paper vases. We were familiar with numerous pieces in the Gugliotti collection because they are pictured in earlier books about barber bottles. – Ed Gray
Each book is 300+ pages, full-color, oversize, hard bound with dust jacket, and museum quality. Contact Ferdinand Meyer V at fmeyer@fmgdesign.com or Michael Seeliger at mwseeliger@ gmail.com for special discounted rates for FOHBC members.
Sho-Biz Calendar of Shows
FOHBC Sho-Biz is published in the interest of the hobby. Federation-affiliated clubs are indicated in red. Information on upcoming collecting events is welcome, but space is limited. Please send at least three months in advance, including telephone number to: FOHBC Sho-Biz, c/o Alice Seeliger, Advertising Coordinator, N8211 Smith Road, Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521-9789; email: fohbcmembers@gmail.com; phone: 608.575.1128. Request event insurance and show ribbons two months in advance. Show schedules are subject to change. Please call before traveling long distances. All listings published here will also be published on the FOHBC.org website.
05 & 06 July 2025 – United Kingdom Britain’s Biggest Show! 33rd Summer National, the largest event of its type in Europe, Elsecar Heritage Centre, S74 8HJ, Live BBR Auction. Saturday, 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, Sunday, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm. Info: alan@onlineBBR.com, BBR, Elsecar Heritage Centre, Nr Barnsley, S. Yorks, S74 8HJ tele: 01226 745156
20 July 2024 – Rotterdam Junction, New York Capital Region Antique Bottle Club Annual Show & Sale, This will be an outdoor vendor show. 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, at the Mabee Farm Historic Site, 1100 Main St., Rotterdam Junction N.Y., Contact: Adam Stoddard, 518.256.7663, acstoddard63@gmail.com or Jeff Ullman, 518.925.9787, jullman@nycap.rr.com, FOHBC Member Club
31 July–03 August 2025 – Reno, Nevada FOHBC Reno 2025 National Antique Bottle and Glass Convention at the Silver Legacy Resort Casino. For information contact Craig Cassetta, ccassettafohbc@gmail.com or Richard Siri, rtsiri@sbcglobal.net, Direct Link to Hotel Reservations at FOHBC.org, FOHBC National Event
09 August 2025 – Munford, Alabama Cheaha Bottles, Antiques and Collectibles Show. Celebrating 10 Years! Previously the Lincoln Bottle Show. Munford Community Center, 65 Mitchell Street, Munford, Alabama 36268, Doors open at 9:00 am. Contact chairman Jake Smith, 256.267.0446 or syl_bottleguy@yahoo.com. Free public admission, $20 early admission Saturday 8:00 am till 9:00 am. Free appraisals. Info on Facebook.
17 August 2025 – Poughkeepsie, New York Hudson Valley Bottle Club 38th Annual Mid Hudson Bottle Show & Sale, 9:00 am to 2:30 pm, early buyers 8:30 am, Poughkeepsie Elks Lodge 275, 29 Overocker Road, Poughkeepsie, New York, Contact Info: Mike Stephano, 27 Rogers Road, Hyde Park, New York 12538, 845.233.4340, mjsantique@aol.com, FOHBC Member Club
30 August 2025 – Santa Ana, California
The Los Angeles Historical Bottle Club’s Annual Antique Bottles, Fruit Jars, Insulators, Antiques & Collectibles Show & Sale, 10:00 am to 3:00 pm Free, Early Bird $15 at 8:00 am, Club Members All Day Entry, at the Santa Ana California Elks Lodge, 1751 South Elks Lane, Santa Ana, California 92705. Free Admission, Info: Don Wippert, 818.610.9332; Email: donwippert1@ gmail.com or Dave Hall, 310.710.8118. FOHBC Member Club
06 September 2025 – Castle Rock, Colorado
The 58th Anniversary Antique Bottle Collectors of Colorado Show, Douglas County Fairgrounds at Kirk Hall, 500 Fairgrounds Dr., Castle Rock, Colorado 80104. Early Bird Admission Sept. 5th at 8:00 am $10. General Admission: Saturday, 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, Free. More information: Fred Bjork, 719.310.8388, manfredbjork@ yahoo.com, antiquebottlecollectorsofcolorado.com, FOHBC Member Club
06 September 2025 – Seekonk, Massachusetts
The Little Rhody Bottle Club Tailgate Swap Meet starts
at 8:00 am and ends at 2:00 pm. There is no set up fee and no admission fee. Bring as many tables as you want. Buy, sell, trade and keep what you make. Show Address: Leonard’s Antiques, 600 Taunton Avenue, (Rte #44) Seekonk, Massachusetts 02771, Contact Info: William Rose, 508.880.4929, sierramadre@comcast.net, FOHBC Member Club
07 September 2025 – Pekin, Illinois
Pekin Bottle Collectors Assoc. 55th Antique Bottle Collectors Annual Show & Sale, 8:30 am to 3:00 pm, Admission $2, Free Appraisals, Moose Lodge, 2605 Broadway Street, Pekin, Illinois, Contact Info: Daryl Weseloh, 309.264.9268, darylweseloh@gmail. com, FOHBC Member Club
14 September 2025 – Chelmsford, Massachusetts
Merrimack Valley Antique Bottle Club’s 50th Annual Bottle Show & Sale, Chelmsford Elks Lodge, 300 Littleton Road, Chelmsford, Massachusetts 01824, 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, $4 admission, $20 early admission (8:00 am), Visit mvabc.org or contact: Kevin Cantrell, 978.551.6397, kmcantrell86@gmail.com, FOHBC Member Club
19 September 2025 – Aurora, Oregon
Oregon Bottle Collectors Associations’ Bottle, Antique & Collectibles Show & Sale, Friday 12 noon to 5:00 pm Dealer set-up and Early Bird admission $5. Saturday 9:00 am to 3:00 pm regular public admission by donation. American Legion Hall, 21510 Main Street N.E., Aurora, Oregon. Contact: Wayne Herring, show chairman, 503.864.2009 or Bill Bogynska, 503.657.1726 billbogy7@ gmail.com, FOHBC Member Club
20 September 2025 – Santa Rosa, California
Northwestern Bottle Collectors’ Association’s 58th Annual Antique, Bottle & Collectible Show at the Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Building, 1351 Maple Avenue, Santa Rosa, California 95404. General Admission: Saturday Noon to 4:00 pm, FREE, Saturday early admission 10:00 am to Noon, $10. For dealer and show information contact Richard Siri, 707.481.5423, rtsiri@sbcglobal. net or John Burton, 707.523.1611, johncburton@msn.com, FOHBC Member Club
21 September 2025 – Depew, New York
The Greater Buffalo Bottle Collectors Association’s 26th Annual Show & Sale, Polish Falcons Hall, 445 Columbia Avenue, Depew, New York 14043, General Admission $4: Sunday 9 am to 2 pm. Contact chairman Tom Karapantso, 716.487.9645, tomar@stny. rr.com or Peter Jablonski, 716.440.7985, peterjablonski@roadrunner. com or Joe Guerra, 716.207.9948, jguerra3@roadrunner.com, gbbca. org, FOHBC Member Club
21 September 2025 – Ellendale, Delaware
DELMARVA Antique Bottle Club Show and Sale, Ellendale Fire Hall, 302 Main Street, Ellendale, Delaware, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm, Info: Keith Fleming, 302.684.8138, moonderby327@gmail.com, FOHBC Member Club
27 September 2025 – Brookshire, Texas
Peachridge “Glass in the Grass” 7:00 am to Noon. Ferdinand and Elizabeth Meyer residence, 2131 Peach Ridge Road, Brookshire,
Texas 77423, $25 Dealer fee, Free admission and food. Texas shootout at high noon. Contact Ferdinand Meyer V, 713.305.4432, fmeyer@fmgdesign.com
28 September 2025 – Topsham, Maine
The Mid-Maine Antique Bottle Club 5th Annual Show and Sale, Topsham Fairgrounds Exhibition Hall, Topsham, Maine, $3 General Admission, 9:00 am, $20 Early Buyers 8:00 am to 9:00 am. Contact Paul McClure, 207.832.1503, oldbottles@outlook.com, FOHBC Member Club
28 September 2025 – Hammonton, New Jersey
2025 Fall Bottle Show at Batsto Village by the Batsto Citizens Committee, Inc., 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, rain or shine! Free admission! Historic Batsto Village, Wharton State Forest, Rt. 542 Pleasant Mills Road, Hammonton, New Jersey. Contact Info: Jim Hammell, 856.217.4945, hammelljm@gmail.com
03 & 04 October 2025 – Biloxi, Mississippi
Presented by the Olde Guys Digging Club of Biloxi, Mississippi, the 8th Annual Mississippi Gulf Coast Antique Bottle Show will be held from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm Saturday at the Joppa Shrine Temple, 13280 Shriners Blvd., Biloxi, Mississippi 39532 (Exit 41- I-10). Dealer Set Up on Friday, from noon to 5:00 pm and Saturday, October 4, 2025 from 8:00 to 9:00 am. Free Admission on Saturday. Early Buyers $20 per person during dealer set up on Friday. Please make your hotel reservations early as a major automotive event takes place the day after the show in the area. For more information or table contracts contact: Peter Taggard, 645 Village Lane South, Mandeville, Louisiana 70471. Phone 985.373.6487 Email: petertaggard@yahoo.com
03 Oct & 04 October 2025 – Williams, California
Sacramento Valley Museum Antique Bottle Show, Bottles, Collectables & Antiques, 1492 E St., Williams, California, Friday, Oct 3rd, Early admission $20, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, Saturday Admission Free 10:00 am to 3:00 pm, Show chairs Cristy and Slim Edwards, closethegatefenceco@yahoo.com, 530.586.0717
04 October 2025 –Pickens, South Carolina
3rd Annual Pickens South Carolina Bottle Show & Sale at The Market at the Mill, 225 Pumpkintown Hwy, Pickens, South Carolina 29671, 8:00 am to 2:00 pm, Set-up 7:00 to 9:00 am. Show and dealer information Samuel Rhodes, 864.508.6518, samuelrhodes99@gmail.com, FOHBC Member Club
04 October 2025 – Chesterfield, Virginia
The Richmond Area Bottle Collectors Assoc. presents their 53rd Richmond Antique Bottle and Collectibles Show and Sale; General Admission is $3, 9:00 am to 3:00 pm; Early Admission is $10 from 7:30 am, at the Chesterfield County Fairgrounds, 10300 Courthouse Road, Chesterfield, Virginia 23832. Info: Tony Townsend, 804.379.0902; RichBottleClub@comcast.net, FOHBC Member Club
11 October 2025 – Fayette, Alabama
12th Annual Fayette, Alabama Bottle Collectible Bottles & Antiques Show & Sell, Free admission to the public, Boy Scouts of America Scout Building, 100 3rd Avenue, Fayette, Alabama
35555, Saturday 8:00 am till 1:00 pm, Set-up: Friday, October 10th from 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm and Saturday, October 11th from 6:00 am till 7:30 am, $15 per table. All table rental goes to local Boy Scouts. Limit 50 tables. Contact: Jeff Pendley, Chairman, 205.275.2650, JfPendley@aol.com
12 October 2025 – Keene, New Hampshire
The Yankee Bottle Club’s 56th Annual Keene Show & Sale, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm, early buyers 8:00 am, at Keene High School, 43 Arch Street, Keene, New Hampshire. Contact: Alan Rumrill, PO Box 782, Keene, New Hampshire 03431, 603.446.7447. Email: alanrumrill57@gmail.com. Website: yankeebottleclub.org FOHBC Member Club
18 October 2025 – Macungie, Pennsylvania Forks of the Delaware Bottle Collectors Association 50th Annual Bottle and Antique Show & Sale, Macungie Memorial Park Hall, 50 Poplar Street, Macungie, Pennsylvania 18062, Saturday, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm, $3 Admission, Early shopper admission at 7:30 am ($20 admission fee for early shoppers). For info contact: Ray Buch, 908.797.7302, forksofthedelawarebottles@hotmail.com For updates see our Facebook Page Forks of the Delaware Bottle Collectors, FOHBC Member Club
19 October 2025 – Findlay, Ohio 48th Annual Findlay Antique Bottle Club Antique Bottle & Collectibles Show & Sale, Owens Community College, Education and Wellness Center, 3200 Bright Road, Findlay, Ohio 45840, 9 am to 2 pm $5, Early Bird Sunday 7 am to 9 am $20 (Dealer-only set up Saturday) Contact: Fred Curtis, 419.424.0486, finbotclub@gmail. com, Website: finbotclub.blogspot.com, FOHBC Member Club
24 & 25 October 2025 – Nashville, Tennessee Area Tennessee Bottle Collectors Presents their Nashville Area Antique Bottle & Advertising Show, Wilson County Fairgrounds, 945 E. Baddour Pkwy, Lebanon, Tennessee 37087, Behind Expo Center, I-40 Exit 239B, Friday 1:30 to 6:00 pm Early Buyer $20 Admission, Saturday 8:00 am to 2:30 pm Free Admission. Dealer Set-up: Friday: 11:00 am to 6:00 pm, Saturday: 7:00 am. For Show Info or Vendor Contract, Contact Show Chairmen Greg Eaton: at 865.548.3176 or Stanley Word at 615.708.6634, FOHBC Member Club
26 October 2025 – Countryside, Illinois
1st Chicago Bottle Club 56th Annual Show and Sale 9:00 am to 2:00 pm. Admission is $5. Holiday Inn Chicago SW-Countryside, 6201 Joliet Road, Countryside, Illinois 60525. Contact Tom Majewski, 630.778.1932, tnsmski@comcast.net, FOHBC Member Club
02 November 2025 – Newark, Delaware Tri-State Bottle Collectors and Diggers Club 52nd Annual Antique Bottle & Collectibles Show and Sale, Aetna Hose Hook & Ladder Banquet Hall, 410 Ogletown Road (Route 273), 9:00 am to 2:00 pm, No Early Buyers! Free Admission, Set-up same day at 7:00 to 8:30 am. Contact: Dave Porter, president, 100 Jarmon Road, Elkton, Maryland 21921, 717.779.8324, daveelle@msn.com, FOHBC Member Club
09 November 2025 – Pompton Lakes, New Jersey
North Jersey 55th Annual Antique Bottle Show and Sale, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm, Pompton Lakes Elks Lodge #1895, 1 Perrin Ave., Pompton Lakes, New Jersey 07442, just off I-287 Exit 57 or Rt. 202., Free Admission, $15 early admission (8:00 am), Featuring all types of antique bottles, glassware, stoneware, advertising, postcards, small antiques, etc., Sponsored by North Jersey Antique Bottle Collectors Ass’n, Vendor info: Call Ed, 201.493.7172 or email
metropetro222@gmail.com, All welcome! FOHBC Member Club
09 November 2025 – Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania
The Pittsburgh Antique Bottle Club’s 55th Annual Show & Sale, 9:00 am to 2:00 pm, early buyers 7:00 am, $25. Admission is $3. PittsburghAntiqueBottleClub.org, New and improved Location!
WTVFC Social Hall, 1314 Axton Street, Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania 15012, Contact Info: Bob DeCroo, 724.326.8741 or Jay Hawkins, 724.872.6013, FOHBC Member Club
NEW SODA WATER BOOKS FOR SALE !
Early Sodas of the Carolinas
22 November 2025 – Clemmons, North Carolina Clemmons Antique Bottle Show at the Village Inn Hotel & Event Center, 6205 Ramada Drive, Clemmons, North Carolina 27012, Saturday 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, No Early admission, Set up: Saturday 7:00 am to 9:00 am. Free to the Public! Contact: David Erickson, 336.247.1928, dave.erickson111@gmail.com
29 - 31 July 2027 – Nashville, Tennessee Area FOHBC Nashville 2027 National Antique Bottle and Glass Convention FOHBC National Event
Early Sodas of Texas Austin, Belton, Corsicana, Denison, Fort Worth, Galveston, Hearne, Houston, Marshall, Mexia, Paris, Temple and Texarkana.
Early Sodas of Alabama Eufaula, Mobile, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa.
Early Georgia Sodas Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, Savannah and Valdosta.
Early Sodas of The Carolinas Charleston, Columbia, Georgetown, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Statesville, Weldon, Wilmington, Wilson, Winston, North Carolina.
Early Sodas of Florida and Cuba Jacksonville, Key West, Ocala, Sanford and Havana.
Early Sodas of Mississippi Biloxi, Jackson, Meridian, Natchez and Vicksburg.
Sold as softbound book or digital PDF file. Visit website or contact David for more info.
David Kyle Rakes email: barakes123@gmail.com website: bottlesandjugshistoricalbooks.com
The Bottles & Proprietors series by David Kyle Rakes
Membership Benefits & Display Advertising Rates
The Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors (FOHBC) is a non-profit organization supporting antique bottle and glass collecting. The goal of the FOHBC is to promote the collection, study, preservation and display of historical bottles and related artifacts and to share this information with other collectors and individuals. Membership is open to any individual, club or institution interested in the enjoyment and study of antique bottles and glass. Membership benefits include:
–Antique Bottle & Glass Collector (AB&GC), the official publication of FOHBC and the leading publication for those interested in antique bottle and glass collecting and all associated ephemera. Annual subscription includes 6 issues (bi-monthly) of this all-color, 72-page plus covers publication. (Digital memberships also available.)
–Free classified advertising in AB&GC. Ads may be up to 100 words for items of $25 or greater value; and one free ad of 60 words each year For Sale, Wanted, or For Trade. (Restrictions apply and free ads are limited to the first received for available space.) Ads appear on the FOHBC website also. See page 67
–FOHBC.org, a comprehensive website dedicated to the organization and hobby, providing access through the Members Portal to the latest news in the collecting world, Membership Directory, archived magazine issues, indexed articles, Federation meeting minutes and announcements, and a vast assortment of research material.
–Virtual Museum of Historical Bottles and Glass, the most comprehensive antique bottle and glass experience on the Internet. Spinning images of museum-quality examples of antique bottles and glass, including well-researched history of the manufacture, distribution, and use of each item.
–Auction Price Report, an online resource which includes the sale price and description of anything auctioned by the top antique bottle and glass auction houses in the past decade. Easy to use. Updates planned. (Password protected)
–National Shows and Conventions, featuring displays, educational seminars, membership meetings, social events, and banquet with interesting speakers, all centered around a first-class sale event. Members are eligible for discounts on “Early Admission” or table rental.
–Newsletter, digital presentation of periodic postings to keep FOHBC members up to date on current issues affecting the hobby.
Affiliated Bottle Club Membership brings these additional benefits to your antique bottle and glass collecting group:
–Federation-sponsored Insurance Program for your show and any other club-sponsored activities. (Application required for each event.) Value of this is many times more than the cost of club membership.
–Club Display Ad in AB&GC at discount of 50%.
–Free Club Show Ad on the Federation website to increase your show’s exposure.
–Free Links to Club Website; Social Media (Facebook) exposure.
–Free Federation Ribbons for Best in Show and Most Educational display at your show. Please order two months in advance of event.
For more information, questions, or to join the FOHBC, please contact: Michael Seeliger, President and Interim Membership Director, N8211 Smith Road, Brooklyn, WI 53521-9789; phone 608.575.2922 or email: fohbcmembers@gmail.com
Visit us at FOHBC.org
Where there’s a will there’s a way to leave Donations to the FOHBC
Did you know the FOHBC is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization? How does that affect you? It allows tax deductions for any and all donations to the FOHBC. You might also consider a bequest in your will to the FOHBC. This could be a certain amount of money or part or all of your bottle collection. The appraised value of your collection would be able to be deducted from your taxes. (This is not legal advice, please consult an attorney.) The same-type wording could be used for bequeathing your collection or part of it; however, before donating your collection (or part of it), you would need the collection appraised by a professional appraiser with knowledge of bottles and their market values. This is the amount that would be tax deductible. Thank you for considering the FOHBC in your donation plans.
Membership Application, Classified Advertising & Article Submission
FOHBC Individual Membership Application or Renewal (Circle One)
Please complete the following application or sign up at FOHBC.org
(Please Print)
Name
Address
City ______________ State_______________
Zip ___________ Country _________________
Telephone
Email Address
Collecting Interests ________________________
Additional Comments _______________________
Do you wish to be listed in the online membership directory?(name, address, phone number, email address and what you collect) { } Yes { } No
Would you be interested in serving as an officer? { } Yes { } No
Would you be interested in contributing your bottle knowledge by writing articles for our magazine? { } Yes { } No
Would you be interested in volunteering to help on any FOHBC projects? { } Yes { } No
Membership/Subscription rates for one year (6 issues) (Circle One)
(All First Class sent in a protected mailer)
United States
-
-
-
- Standard Mail 3 years w/Associate*
Digital Membership (electronic files only) $25
Canada – First Class $85 Other countries – First Class $120
Life Memberships:
- Level 1: $1,000, includes all benefits of a First Class Mail Individual Membership. No promise of a printed magazine for life.
- Level 2: $500, includes all benefits of a Individual Membership with a digital subscription. No printed magazine.
*Add an Associate Membership to any of the above at $5 for each Associate for each year. Associate Membership is available to members of the immediate family of any adult holding an Individual Membership. Family members age 21 or older must have their own Individual Membership. Associate Members enjoy all of the rights and privileges of an Individual Membership.
Associate Member Name(s)
Signature
AB&GC Free Advertising
Classified Ads: Preferably ad copy should be sent via email to FOHBCmembers@gmail.com. If mailing, send clearly and legibly written or typewritten copy to Alice Seeliger at address shown below. The FOHBC is not responsible for errors in ads due to poor quality, illegible copy. FOHBC reserves the right to refuse any advertising submittals. Send Free or Classified Ads to: Mail: FOHBC Advertising, c/o Alice Seeliger, N8211 Smith Road, Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521
Email: FOHBCmembers@gmail.com
Provide address for invoicing. For questions, call Alice at 608.575.1128. NOTE AD DEADLINES ON PREVIOUS PAGE.
Date
Please make checks or money orders payable to FOHBC and mail to: FOHBC Membership, Michael Seeliger, President and interim Membership Director, N8211 Smith Road, Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521, 608.575.2922, mwseeliger@gmail. com. To pay by PAYPAL, FOHBCmembers@gmail.com (or register at FOHBC.org). To pay by charge card, call Michael Seeliger at 608.575.2922.
Affiliated Club Membership applications are available at FOHBC.org. One year memberships are June 1 to May 31 and payment is due by May 1. $130 includes liability insurance coverage for all club-sponsored events. [Please request Certificate of Insurance two (2) months before show at FOHBCmembers@gmail.com.] $80 is membership only with no insurance coverage. (Payments after May 1 incur a $25 late fee.) Both Affiliated Club Memberships include a 50% discount on advertising in Antique Bottle & Glass Collector. Payment process is same as above.
AB&GC Submission Requirements:
SUBMISSION POLICY – Articles:
We welcome the submission of articles and related images pertaining to antique bottle and glass collecting, digging, diving, finding, displaying and other interesting topics related to the hobby.
All Antique Bottle & Glass Collector articles or material should be submitted via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or email depending on size. Text files should be submitted electronically in Microsoft Word or similar software. Electronic image files should be in a JPEG, PNG, TIFF or EPS format. Minimal resolution of 300 dpi at actual publication size is preferred but as low as 150 dpi (at double publication size) is acceptable.
Please send proposed articles and images to fmeyer@ fmgdesign.com or mail (if necessary) to Ferdinand Meyer V, Peachridge Collections, P.O. Box 1825, Brookshire, Texas 77423
SUBMISSION POLICY – Classified Ads:
All copy should be typewritten, or clearly and legibly printed, or sent via email. The FOHBC will not be responsible for errors in an ad due to poor quality or illegible copy. The FOHBC reserves the right to refuse any advertising.
Please send Classified Ads to Alice Seeliger, FOHBC Advertising Coordinator, N8211 Smith Road, Brooklyn, Wisconsin 53521, 608.575.1128, FOHBCmembers@gmail.com
Thursday, July 31 - Sunday, August 3, 2025
Antique Bottle Show & Sales, Bottle Competition, Early Admission, Seminars, Displays, Awards Banquet, Membership Breakfast, Raffle, Children’s Events and more…
$5 General Admission Saturday and Sunday half day Early Admission $100 – Friday Afternoon
Richard Siri (Show Co-Chair) rtsiri@sbcglobal.net
DeAnna Jordt (Show Treasurer) dljordt@yahoo.com
Craig Cassetta (Show Co-Chair) craig.cassetta@gmail.com
Gina Pellegrini-Ott (Event Photographer) angelina.pellegrini@gmail.com
