Canadian LYMAN druggist/pharmacy/medicine bottle ?

mctaggart67 said:

Lyman, Sons & Co. (1879-1908) was one firm name in a chain of continuous businesses established by the Lyman family around 1800 (some sources put the founding in 1800, other in the late 1790s and yet others in 1808). Anyhow, the firm name Lyman, Sons & Co. reflects a re-organization of the business a year after the death of company mover and shaker Benjamin Lyman. The company was Canada's foremost wholesale drug firms. The Lymans also operated what was effective a branch of their Montreal business in Toronto. The only connection between Lyman, Sons & Co. and Toronto's Northrop & Lyman (patent medicines) was that both Lymans were very distant cousins through descent from an English settler in the American colonies in the 1600s. The two firms were only connected by an infinitesimal degree of shared genetic material.

As to the OP's bottle, it's a difficult one to find, but quite ironically because of the nature and size of the company. As Canada's largest wholesale druggists who seldom ventured into producing "directly for sale" preparations, the company wasn't much concerned with maintaining a public brand image; it didn't have to. Rather, Lymans focussed on maintaining reputation with the pharmaceutical and related trades by supplying chemicals, drugs, etc. for use in producing retail products. Embossed bottles were an unnecessary extra expense. This translates into lots and lots of paper-label-only bottles from Lymans, making embossed examples harder to find. My best guess is that the OP's bottle was for a one-off type of medicine or chemical compound that was intended for retail sale. I concur with an 1880s attribution. I also imagine that the bottle got to Michigan in the hands of a private individual travelling from Canada (likely Ontario) to that state, as American tariff barriers made it difficult for Lyman, Sons & Co. to export to the U.S.

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mctaggart67 said:

View attachment 174204

Here's an exterior view of Lyman, Sons & Co., ca. 1880.

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