Late Summer Dig & Greer's Pharmacy

[nhpharm]

So I went digging this past Sunday in an area that I have hit pretty hard for the past 7 months or so. There are areas that are so hard that I can get no probe through the top 12" or so, so I brought my soil sampling auger and it did the trick. Punched a bunch of holes in a grid, then probed them out. Found a large area that sounded promising, so dug a test hole and found that I had discovered a cistern...about 12' in diameter and 5' deep. Full of newer trash on the top, a layer of asphalt shingles, and then broken brick to the bottom. Along the inside edge there was a bit of older trash and I managed to pull a nice local beer out. Gave up on the cistern after a little bit and probed a few more holes. Found another area that was promising so dug another test hole. Turned out to be a trash pit dating to the 1910's. Full of mostly junk but did rustle up a few pharmacy bottles, one hutch soda, and another local beer. Also found this pharmacy bottle...embossed just "Greer's Pharmacy". Anyone know where this was? Dug in the Houston area. The trash pit continues...after about 9 hours of digging in the Texas heat I was spent and filled it all in. There are some every old pockets of glass in this area under the newer stuff...found this heartbreaker of an olive amber pontiled snuff bottle with a few pontiled soda bases. Nonetheless, fun stuff and amazing how a small area can keep turning up stuff even after 15+ digs.

 

[botlguy]

WOW ! That's some pretty good stuff, well worth further exploration. Jim

 

[nhpharm]

Lots to dig on are hard to find here in Texas so I am apt to hammer at them until they are pretty much barren. This one has been pretty good but I just know there is still a treasure on it somewhere!

 

[2find4me]

Keep us posted, that shard would have made a killer bottle.

 

[RIBottleguy]

I found references to a Greer's Pharmacy in Lawrence, Mass and Denver, CO

 

[nhpharm]

Could be Lawrence...I think the people that lived on this lot had some connection to the northeast, as I have found sodas from Boston, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, and New York. I'll have to watch and see if another comes up and what part of the country it surfaces in.

 

[Lordbud]

If there were more pharmacy bottle books like Ed Miller's California Pharmacy Bottles -- with one book for each state -- then the info for "Greer's Pharmacy" would be more easily accessible. Like the hutchbook webpage. Generally one is going to find local bottles in local dumps, privies, creek banks, trash pits or cisterns. But if you take into account that back in those days train travel was common, then once-local bottles can turn up many miles from home. You could ride the rails from Denver to Texas, or St. Louis to San Francisco, New Yawk to Florida, etc. I was digging on a creek bank dump maybe 50 yards from an old ford on the creek, which was replaced by a bridge across the creek which is now a 1920s cement bridge. Amazing that the bridge still exists. The bridge currently dead ends against the freeway that replaced the original road (freeway taking a somewhat different route). South San Francisco Bay area. Did I hit a local bottle? Heck no. I found an Eipper's Drug Store/Davenport, Iowa. The bottle is of the 1915 "blue ribbon" style. It was one of the bottles I sold on ebay some years ago. Brought maybe $15.00. Donald Bergseng's dose glass website is invaluable at least as far as pharmacies who also had embossed dose glasses made. He has all 50 states listed with the known dose glasses. Oftentimes pharmacy bottles without town/city names can be identified if local city directories are available. But as everyone can imagine the amount of research necessary is insurmountable without a city or town name to start with."Greer's Pharmacy" -- a google search with the name of a Texas town included -- might provide some results.

 

[nhpharm]

I agree for sure. I know there is a Florida druggist book and of course the California one. I have an Excel listing of roughly 1800 embossed New Hampshire pharmacy bottles that someday I hope to organize and publish online as a searchable listing like the Hutchbook website. I enjoy Donald's website and drool over some of those dose glasses. I've accumulated about 10 dose glasses from New Hampshire as go-withs to my NH pharmacy collection. Nonetheless, based on where I was digging and the other stuff in the hole, the Greer's dates to around 1910-1915. All of the other pharmacy bottles (broken or whole) in the hole were from Texas but I didn't have much luck finding a Greer's Pharmacy located here. Maybe one of these days I'll figure it out.

 

[truedigr]

I agree about the books, but good grief that would be a lot of pages, esp. Texas. Because I live in Texas, I have tried researching this bottle myself. I use the " ERA DRUGGIST'S DIRECTORIES ", but no match for Greer's Pharmacy. I did find some Druggist's with the last name of Greer from Texas. These directories are a wealth of info. with every state listed and the cities have the county which it resides. They started the directories in the late 1800's and the newest I was able to view was from 1921. RC

 

[MichaelFla]

While there is a Florida Druggists bottle book, few people have ever seen it, and it will never be published again because the purchaser of the copyright wants to keep the existence of some of the bottles a secret.There is also a book of pre-1920 druggists that was compiled and written in the early 70s, but it is incomplete.I have been documenting every Florida druggist bottle I have ever heard of for the past few years, but I continually hear of others in general terms.I have digitized copies of some of the Pharmaceutical ERA, the ERA Druggists, American Druggist, Practical Druggist and Pharmaceutical Review, and several others, and pore over them looking for information about whatever news I can find to add to my records.I would love to see a site like hutchbook for pharmacy bottles, because I occasionally run across them with no city on them like yours.And maybe a crown top site as well.