I did a little looking on him and he died in 1879, a bit early in my opinion. There were some New Jersey Yards I haven't looked at, one a druggist. FROM 1917 page 88[attachment=Clipboard07.jpg]
Yeah you're right, that is too early. And I am by no means 100% sure on it being Yard, heck I'm not even 50% sure on it being yard, that's just the first name I've been able to come up with that seems believable and fits perfectly into the space on the bottle. Those last four letters are so messed up though, it's impossible to be certain about any of them.
Could be FORD as well. Or, heck, maybe he's Scandinavian and it's TORD. I think the first letter of the second word is F/P/T/V/Y and the second letter could really be any vowel, although I is pretty unlikely. RD seems pretty likely for the last two letters. I'm pretty sure the first word is ---A-NS. That leaves possible letters between A and N as E/H/I/R/U/W/Y with a slight possibility of G/L/M/O/. The shape of the spot, however, makes E/H/U/W/Y very unlikely. Since it's a lot wider than an I, R seems the most likely option. That leaves us with ---ARNS. I found an obscure Irish name that fits - O'Tearns. But it's really rare. I just thought of something though. What if that O/C/G is actually an S? An S is a pretty round letter. Stearns, Yard & Co. seems like a pretty believable name. Or Stearns, Ford & Co. Neither come up in Google searches but the more I think about it the more likely this seems. There was a big company in Detroit called Frederick Stearns & Co. It could be related to that, or a completely different Stearns. There were a lot of them.
Yeah it's not easy to see these letters, I've only been able to figure out what some of them might be by blowing it up to an enourmous size in Photoshop and looking at the shape of the edges of them and ruling out what they can't be. From the Imgur pictures I was only really able to see the A.