Wheelah23
Well-Known Member
I dug a few dozen of these in that weirdo 1890-1915 privy two weeks ago. I couldn't find much about them, and since they're kind of sodas, I was hoping the soda people might be able to help. They're all BIM, so they're probably pre-WWI. But from the little information I found about a possible company online, they must be post 1910. This is from the 1910 "American Bottler" magazine:
I found them mixed in with almost 100 slick amber beers from before 1905. These dates don't match up, which is why I consider the privy so strange. That and the fact that it was 5' x 10'! I suspect when the privy was being filled in when the house got plumbing around 1917, the homeowners just tossed whatever trash they had in the basement, into the privy. The house was built in 1889, but unfortunately the privy had been dipped, so we only got a little bit of the older use layer. Perplexing to say the least!
The embossing on the bottles is: "FROM/ IROQUOIS SPRINGS (in diagonal script)/ A.S.W. CO PROP'S/ INCORPORATED/ NEW YORK".
I dug many with partial labels intact. This one was the best. Obviously the neck says it's sparkling water, and the label has what looks to be an Indian woman getting water from a spigot coming out of a rock pile.
Some still had cap and contents, and fizzed up when I shook them!
"Mr. J. H. Lyons, formerly of Bradford, Pa., has recently opened the Iroquois Bottling Works at Salamanca, N. Y., and is meeting with great success. Among the standard and up-to-date apparatus installed by Mr. Lyons is a Woodbury Beer Pasteurizer and Ouster Spring for bottle-washing machines."
I found them mixed in with almost 100 slick amber beers from before 1905. These dates don't match up, which is why I consider the privy so strange. That and the fact that it was 5' x 10'! I suspect when the privy was being filled in when the house got plumbing around 1917, the homeowners just tossed whatever trash they had in the basement, into the privy. The house was built in 1889, but unfortunately the privy had been dipped, so we only got a little bit of the older use layer. Perplexing to say the least!
The embossing on the bottles is: "FROM/ IROQUOIS SPRINGS (in diagonal script)/ A.S.W. CO PROP'S/ INCORPORATED/ NEW YORK".
I dug many with partial labels intact. This one was the best. Obviously the neck says it's sparkling water, and the label has what looks to be an Indian woman getting water from a spigot coming out of a rock pile.
Some still had cap and contents, and fizzed up when I shook them!
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