New and Rare

[capsoda]

Picked this up Friday from a bud who is helping another bud get rid of some bottles. We all used to dig, trade and go to shows together. The bottle is a William Hudson/ Pensacola, Fla. William was a soda water bottler and for a short time he was listed as a saloon owner. There is no info to show that he bottled beer so there is some speculation that it may have been used for soda. It is one of two known.

My bud also has some other rare bottles that I would like to show. Several are one of a kind. He also has a super rare Pensacola patent medicine he wants to sell that I will put up when he sends me some pics.

 

[capsoda]

Doesn't look like much but it is rare as all git out and it is mine.

 

[cyberdigger]

That is a very early and crude blob.. magnificent!!!!!!!!

 

[baltbottles]

Cap,

Whats the dates he was in business?

Chris

 

[capsoda]

He owned a local retail grocery business and got into the soda water bottling in 1877 and sold the business to his friend and manager Jacob Lipps in 1900. It wasn't until after his death on Feb 9, 1903 that anyone found out anything about him. Turns out his name wasn't William Hudson. When he was a boy he went to sea and adpoted the name William Hudson. His real name was Mark H. Miles. He was born in 1835 in Vermont and came to Pensacola in 1857. In his will he ordered all photos and correspondance with the name William Hudson be destroyed but the bottles were already out there waiting to be found decades later by bottle nuts.

He used Codds, gravitating stopper bottles, hutchs, and lightining stopper bottles and may have used others. His was the largest most modern bottle works in the area and was only surpassed in the 1970s by Coke.

Jacob Lipps went on to be the only bottler in the world to use a hutch to bottle Pepsi. The Escambia Pepsi Cola Bottling Works hutch.

 

[CALDIGR2]

COOOL, Warren. You guys should be slamming those Fla towns, including Key West. That place looks extremely "bottley" to me. The Sanborns are thick with early houses.

 

[treasurekidd]

That's sure is a sweet one Cap, and it looks even better now that it's yours, right! )