Chapter II: Part 2

Litigation and often violent public resistance (an 1894 “whiskey rebellion” left three dead) plagued the system in its early years. By 1905 the internal corruption had become so pervasive that a legislative investigating committee recommended closing the system as unmanageable. Despite the now-handsome profit that it was returning to the state treasury, the South Carolina dispensary was abolished by the Carey-Cothran Act of the state legislature in 1907.

South Carolina Dispensary bottles came in three basic shapes: Union flasks, Jo-Jo flasks, and cylindrical bottles and jugs. Bottles made before 1899 were embossed with palmetto trees (Fig. 22A and C), and those made after 1899, when public disapproval forced the removal of the state symbol from liquor bottles, were embossed with an intertwined SCD monogram. Bottles were manufactured for the dispensary by over 20 different glass factories, but after 1902 all but one brief contract went to the Carolina Glass Company of Columbia.

FOOD CONTAINERS

Although olive oil, pickles, and other foods that do not require sterilization have been packed in glass and ceramic containers for centuries, the preserving of hot foods in airtight glass or metal containers is a comparatively recent development. Housewives in the eighteenth century knew how to preserve fruits by boiling them in glass jars that were subsequently corked and sealed with wax, glue, or pitch, but the idea of canning as we know it was popularized by Nicholas Appert, a French confectioner who in 1809 won a prize from Napoleon for his method of keeping food fresh for soldiers in the field. Appert succeeded in preserving over 50 kinds of food, including meats and vegetables, and published an essay detailing his method of boiling food in a wide-mouthed jar and sealing it with a firmly driven cork. The process was quickly copied in England and America, where seafood, fruit, and pickles were first packed for wholesale in New York and Boston about 1820.

A major problem with Appert’s method of preserving in glass was the irregular finish of hand-made bottles, which often prevented the cork stopper from forming an absolutely airtight seal. For commercial packers, an early and lasting solution was the tin-plated canister, patented in England in 1810 and in the United States in 1825. An inexpensive and effective closure for glass containers had to await John Mason’s 1858 patent of the threaded jar seal, which consisted of a molded screw thread that allowed the cap to seal on the shoulder rather than the uneven lip of the jar. Home canners still use a similar screw-top jar today.

Many Americans, both civilian and military, had their first taste of commercially canned foods during the Civil War. Increasing varieties of meats and vegetables were packed in tin cans in the late nineteenth century, but glass bottles remained—and still remain—chiefly the package of condiments, sauces, and other foods that require a reclosable cap.

These limited uses can nonetheless result in a large number of empty containers. Food bottles are usually one of the most numerous items found in a household trash heap. At Middleton Place, only four of a total of seventy-seven bottles were food containers, and all had originally held the preserves, flavorings, and oils that are usually packaged in glass. Figure 23A shows a “One-pound American preserve,” a jar sold at the turn of the century by at least one glass company, and Figure 23B is a typical late nineteenth/early twentieth century olive oil bottle. Figure 24 shows both the excavated example and a 1920 catalogue illustration of a white pressed glass container for Armour’s Beef Extract, a by-product of the packing business produced by Armour & Co. beginning in 1885.

None Genuine without

4 OZ. NET WEIGHT

Armour’s
Extract ^of Beef

MANUFACTURED & PACKED BY
ARMOUR & CO,
Chicago. U.S.A.

BOTTLES MADE AFTER 1900

This final group of bottles and jars have nothing in common except their date. The two clear glass bottles at left are standard desktop ink bottles made after the 1904 introduction of the Owens bottle machine and before screw top inks replaced the corked variety around 1930 (Fig. 25). The conical ink in the center was one of the earliest shapes for desk-top ink bottles, introduced when ink was first bottled in small individual containers in the 1840s. The contents of the ointment jar at right, made after 1916, are unknown. Patent records indicate that the May 15, 1916, date was neither a trademark registration nor a patent issue. It may be a false patent date, put on the bottle to lend the contents an air of legitimacy.

Although other artifacts, such as the Austrian porcelain in Figure 11 and the beef extract jar in Figure 24, may have been manufactured in the twentieth century, these three containers were the only items in the privy pit that were definitely made after Susan Middleton’s 1900 abandonment of the plantation. As such, they were the only evidence archeologists had that these nineteenth century objects were probably deposited in the twentieth century. All three are items likely to have been in use at the time of the Smith family’s 1925 move to Middleton Place, and they were probably discarded at that time.

LAMP GLASS

In 1859, drillers in Pennsylvania brought in the nation’s first producing oil well, an event that was to alter radically the lives of generations of Americans. The first revolution achieved by this versatile new fuel was not in mechanical power, but in lighting. A working oil field made possible the manufacture of kerosene, a promising coal and petroleum-based illuminant that had been patented in New York in 1854 but had not been put into production because of the scarcity of one of its principal ingredients. Kerosene burned more brightly, steadily, and efficiently than almost any known fuel except gas, which suffered from the twin disadvantages of requiring immovable fixtures in the wall or ceiling, and of being generally unavailable outside large urban areas. The abundance of petroleum from the Pennsylvania fields made kerosene one of the cheapest fuels available, and by the mid-1860s, its use had far outstripped that of gas lighting. In many rural areas, it remained the only practical form of household lighting until electrification of these areas in the 1930s.

Early kerosene lamps often resembled the oil lamps of the first half of the century, and many were oil lamps converted to kerosene. Among the new designs that became popular in the 1870s was the adjustable student or reading lamp (Figs. 26 and 27), an 1863 Prussian invention used through the early twentieth century. In the 1880s decorated lamp chimneys came into fashion. One of the earliest, simplest, and most enduring of these styles was the familiar “pearl top” chimney rim, patented by the George A. Macbeth Company in 1883 (Fig. 28). Similar crimped rims were produced by the Thomas Evans Company, which in 1899 merged with Macbeth to become, by virtue of a semiautomatic lamp chimney machine, the nation’s largest glass chimney manufacturer. Demand for glass lamp chimneys was curtailed by the spread of electric power in the early twentieth century, and, although it continued in production, the lamp chimney industry did not fully mechanize until after the 1920s.

LABORATORY GLASS

Figure 29 is a laboratory beaker of a type manufactured in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, probably a relic of William and Susan Middleton’s inventor son Henry. It is free-blown in lead glass, one of many glass compositions used for American laboratory equipment before Corning Glass Works introduced low-expansion Pyrex glass in 1915.

Henry lived at Middleton Place with his parents until the 1870s, when he went to study at Cambridge University under the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell. Henry lived in England until his death in 1932.

CONCLUSIONS

The artifacts from the Middleton Place privy present a unique opportunity to observe one aspect of this plantation’s past. This collection of ceramics, bottles, and other items constitute the refuse discarded by the occupants of Middleton Place following the Civil War. It reflects their needs and tastes and represents an unconscious record of activities a century ago. Artifacts in the collection include items from an earlier time as well as things purchased throughout the last half of the nineteenth century.

These materials also reveal much about the privy’s history. When compared with collections discarded around contemporary buildings, the artifacts from Middleton Place are similar to those often associated with abandoned buildings. The artifacts in the Middleton Place privy, then, are likely to have been deposited there, not as the result of day-to-day living, but as a consequence of cleaning out the rubbish of the house’s earlier occupants. We may identify the privy artifacts as a collection of items accumulated during a time of refurbishing as in the 1920s when J. J. Pringle Smith moved into the family residence and began restoring it.

Although interesting and informative as individual objects, the privy artifacts are much more informative as an “assemblage” resulting from past activities. The archeologist must study assemblages, like pieces of a puzzle, to reconstruct, interpret, and explain past events that produced them. It is important to record carefully all the artifacts found together as well as their relationships to one another and to the deposit from which they were removed. Artifacts taken from the ground without proper recording are removed from their archeological context, and the information they hold is forever lost. Aimless “treasure” digging has destroyed much of our historical heritage. The Middleton Place privy collection illustrates how proper care, recording, and analysis can reveal new information. With foresight and planning, archeology can increase knowledge of the past for ourselves and for future generations.

APPENDIX I
CERAMIC MANUFACTURERS’ MARKS

A. Arthur J. Wilkinson, Royal Staffordshire Pottery, Burslem,
Staffordshire. White ironstone plate, 1891-1896.
B. John Edwards, Fenton, Staffordshire. White ironstone plate, c.
1891-1900.
C. John Maddock and Sons, Burslem, Staffordshire. White ironstone
plate, 1891-1896.
D. C. C. Thompson & Co., East Liverpool, Ohio. White ironstone nappy,
1884-1889.
E. Limoges, France. White porcelain saucer, c. 1875.
F. Haviland & Co., Limoges, France. White porcelain plate, c.
1876-1891.
G. Unidentified mark, decal-printed porcelain plate.
H. John and George Alcock, Cobridge, Staffordshire. Light blue,
transfer-printed bowl, 1839-1846.
I. Josiah Wedgwood, Burslem, Staffordshire. Impressed on creamware
sauce tureen, 1769 to present.
J. Unidentified impressed mark, white porcelain platter.

APPENDIX II
SIGNIFICANT DATES IN THE AMERICAN GLASS INDUSTRY

First three-piece hinged mold c. 1808
Two-piece hinged mold first used in America by 1809
First widespread use of slanting collar finish c. 1820
Ricketts patent for three-piece mold with lettered base 1821
First side-lever glass press late 1820s
“Lacy” pressed glass 1820s-1840s
Popularity of smooth-patterned pressed glass tableware c. 1840s-1880s
sets
Development of jawed lipping tool for bottles pre-1840
Amasa Stone receives first U.S. patent for lipping tool 1856
Introduction into U.S. of non-pontil holding devices late 1840s-1850s
for bottles
Formula for kerosene patented by Abraham Gesner 1854
Development of two-piece mold with separate post base pre-1858
Mason jar patent 1858
Blow-back mold in general use c. 1858-1900
First oil well in Pennsylvania leads to widespread use 1859
of kerosene fueled lamps
Introduction of French Square pharmacy bottles early 1860s
Student lamp patented in Prussia 1863
Leighton formula for improved lime glass 1864
Development of plate mold for embossed bottles pre-1867
Widespread embossing of bottles 1860s-1920s
Empontilling of bottles almost entirely replaced by 1870s
use of holding devices
Greatest popularity of turn-molded bottles 1870s-1920s
Student lamp introduced in U.S. 1870s
Louis Pasteur developed sterilization techniques for 1870
beer
Anheuser-Busch begins first commercial bottling of early 1870s
American beer
Heavily embossed and colored poison bottles 1872-1930s
Improved finishing processes result in smoother and by 1880
more uniformly applied bottle finishes
Argobast patent for semiautomatic press-and-blow 1881
machine for wide-mouthed jars
H. W. Putnam acquires patent rights for lightning 1882
stopper
Borosilicate glass developed in Germany 1883
Macbeth-Evans Co. patents “pearl top” lamp chimney 1883
William Painter patents crown cap 1892
Enterprise Glass Co. puts Argobast semiautomatic into 1893
commercial production
South Carolina dispensary system 1893-1907
Michael Owens patents semiautomatic turn-molding 1894
machine for light bulbs, tumblers, and lamp chimneys
First lamp chimney and tumbler production on Owens 1898
turn-mold machine
Most wide-mouthed jars produced on semiautomatic by 1901
machines
Owens automatic bottle machine patented 1903
Owens machine put into commercial production: first 1904
narrow-necked machine-made bottles
First production of narrow-necked bottles on _c._ 1907
semiautomatic machines
Corning Glass Works develops Pyrex heat-resistant glass 1915
Use of manganese to decolor glass 1917
State prohibition law goes into effect in South 1916
Carolina
National beer and wine production halted under Wartime 1918-1920
Food Control Act and Volstead Act
National prohibition of alcohol under eighteenth 1920-1933
amendment and Volstead Act
Machine-made bottles comprise 90% of total United 1925
States production

APPENDIX III
MARKS LEFT BY DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES OF BOTTLE MANUFACTURE

Free-blown bottles usually date before the second half of the nineteenth century and are characterized by an absence of mold lines of any sort. Because no molds were used, these bottles are often asymmetrical. Dip-molded bottles, or bottles molded for basic body shape below the shoulder, are also generally pre-Civil War and can only tentatively be distinguished from free-blown bottles by their symmetry below the shoulder and a slight tapering from shoulder to base. Bottles blown in a two-piece mold have mold lines extending up two opposite sides, usually to just below the tooled lip. On early nineteenth century bottles of this sort, the mold lines continue across the center of the base, but after the 1850s, most two-piece molds had a separate base part, either a cup bottom, in which the seam encircled the outer edge of the base, or a post bottom, which left a circular seam on the bottom of the bottle. Most bottles from the Middleton Place privy were blown in two-piece molds with cup bottoms.

The three-piece mold leaves a single horizontal line around the shoulder of the bottle, and vertical lines extending up either side of the shoulder. The height of these lines can vary from partway up the shoulder to nearly to the top of the neck. A turn-molded bottle has been rotated in the mold to erase mold marks and will exhibit faint horizontal scratches and striations on the body and neck.

Embossing, very popular after the Civil War, usually consists of the name of a company or product printed in raised letters on the sides or base of the bottle. Isolated numbers and letters on or just above the base are usually, but not always, mold numbers used by the manufacturer for identification. Embossed letters are sometimes carved into the body of the mold, but for smaller runs a plate mold, with a removable lettered plate on one or more sides, was used.

Mold lines on bottles finished with a specialized lipping tool are usually obliterated by faint horizontal striations extending to about a quarter inch below the lip. The two-piece blow-back mold, however, leaves mold seams to the very edge of the lip, and a lip surface that has been ground smooth rather than shaped with a lipping tool.

A pontil mark is a circular scar left on the base by the iron rod used to hold the bottle for finishing the neck and lip. Although there are many different methods of empontilling, only two types of marks were found on bottles from the Middleton Place privy. One is a “sand pontil mark,” a roughened grainy area covering most of the base, apparently the result of dipping the glasscoated pontil iron in sand before attaching it. The other is a “blow-pipe pontil mark,” which results from empontilling a bottle with the same pipe that was used to blow it. A blow-pipe mark is a distinct ring of glass the same size as the bottle neck.

Pressed glass is formed with a plunger in a mold on one or more pieces. Pressed glass items are comparatively thick-walled, have smooth molded lips, usually with mold seams, and often are distinguished by a short, straight shear mark, like an isolated mold line, on the inside base. This mark is from the severing of the “gob” of glass before it is dropped into the mold. Bottles that are made on either automatic or semi-automatic machines will have mold lines encircling the top of the lip, as well as on the sides and base.

APPENDIX IV
ARTIFACT CATALOGUE FROM THE MIDDLETON PLACE PRIVY EXCAVATION

_Artifacts_ _No. of _Minimum
Fragments_ No. of
Whole
Items_

Ceramics
Porcelain
Undecorated Haviland & Co. plate 9 1
Undecorated saucer, D & Co., Limoges 5 1
Undecorated saucer 6 1
Undecorated plates 17 2
Undecorated platter 13 2
Gold-banded cup 9 1
“Cornflower” pattern tea or bread plate 4 1
Decal-printed tea plate or saucer, hallmark Alice / 5 1
Austria
Decal-printed Austrian teacup 11 1
British meat dish, hand-painted oriental design 16 1
Chinese export porcelain serving dishes 4 4
Creamware
Banded Wedgwood sauce tureen 1 1
Undecorated baker 1 1
Whiteware
J & G Alcock “Tyrol” pattern transfer-printed bowl 5 1
Blue transfer-printed mug, rural English scene 6 1
Fragment of blue transfer-printed cup or bowl, 1 1
bucolic scene
Undecorated ironstone or graniteware nappy 5 1
Undecorated ironstone or graniteware plates 23 4
Undecorated ironstone or graniteware cup 1 1
Molded white ironstone chamber pot 4 1
English majolica pitcher handle 1 1
Glass Tableware
“Four Band” style pressed glass tumbler 1 1
Fluted pressed glass tumbler 2 1
“Thumbprint” style pressed glass tumbler 5 1
Engraved tumbler, floral design 1 1
Wheel-cut champagne flute glass 2 1
“Almond Thumbprint” pressed wine glass 1 1
“Mascotte” pattern pressed wine glass 1 1
Pressed glass lid 2 1
Cut glass pitcher 9 1
Fluted cut glass decanters 8 2
Free-blown bowls 75 2
Bottles and Jars
Food Containers
Armour & Co. beef extract jar, white milk glass 1 1
Olive oil bottles, aquamarine glass 2 2
American preserve jar, clear glass 4 1
Alcohol Bottles
Palmetto Brewing Co. champagne beer bottle, 1 1
aquamarine glass
Export beer bottles, amber glass 2 2
South Carolina Dispensary Jo-Jo flask, clear glass 4 1
South Carolina Dispensary Jo-Jo flask, aquamarine 3 1
glass
South Carolina Dispensary cylindrical whiskey 2 1
bottle, clear glass
Unembossed Union flasks, amber glass 15 2
Unembossed Union flask, aquamarine glass 1 1
Rhine Wine sample bottle, amber glass 1 1
Dark Green wine or spirits bottles 21 4
Medicine Bottles
Panknin Apothecary plate-molded prescription 3 3
bottles, French Square shape, clear glass
Panknin Apothecary plate-molded prescription 4 4
bottles. Philadelphia oval shape, clear glass
Unembossed French square prescription bottles, clear 20 14
glass
Narrow-mouthed round prescription bottles, clear 2 2
glass
Narrow-mouthed round prescription bottles, 3 3
aquamarine glass
Narrow-mouthed round prescription bottles, light 1 1
green glass
Wide-mouthed round prescription bottles, clear glass 3 3
Unembossed Baltimore oval prescription bottle, clear 1 1
glass
Unembossed Philadelphia oval prescription bottles, 2 2
clear glass
Unembossed taper neck oval prescription bottles, 2 2
clear glass
Neck fragment from round or oval prescription 1 1
bottle, clear glass
Paneled pharmacy bottles, clear glass 26 3
Paneled pharmacy bottle aquamarine glass 1 1
Free-blown apothecary vials, aquamarine glass 8 4
Maltine Mf’g Co. bottle, double Philadelphia oval 1 1
shape, amber glass
Keasbey & Mattison Bromo-Caffeine bottle, round, 1 1
cobalt blue
Rumford Chemical Works Horsford Acid Phosphate 1 1
bottle, octagonal, blue-green glass
Bullock & Crenshaw decagonal vial, clear lead glass 1 1
Unidentified embossed French square bottle, amber 5 1
glass
Whitall Tatum quilted poison bottle, cobalt blue 1 1
Ointment or Cosmetic Jars
White milk glass patch box with lid 2 1
Aubry Sisters white milk glass screw top ointment pot 1 1
Pharmaceutical Accessories
Corks 2 2
Clear glass Lubin stopper 1 1
Clear glass medicine dropper 2 1
Ink, Glue, and Polish Bottles
Clear glass conical ink bottles, machine-made, 1 1
Carter’s Ink Co.
Clear glass cylinder ink bottle, machine-made 1 1
Amber glass conical ink bottle, blow-molded 1 1
Bell mucilage bottle, aquamarine glass 2 1
British brown stoneware blacking or master ink bottle 1 1
Tappan’s Relucent gold and silver polish bottle 1 1
Ink bottle cork 1 1
Lamp Glass
Student lamp chimney 2 1
“Pearl top” and crimped lamp chimney 19 4
Laboratory Glass
Pontil-marked beaker 2 1
Metal
Pewter Spoon 1 1
Brass curtain rings 7 7
Pill box with lid 1 1
Square-cut spike 1 1
Machine-cut nails 4 4
Hand-wrought nails 3 3
Hazel hoe 1 1
Coins
Liberty head quarters 5 5
Liberty head nickel 1 1
Personal Items
French toothbrushes 2 2
Lady’s leather shoe heel 2 1
White clay pipestem 1 1
Other
Isinglass stove windows 3 3
Delft tile fragment 1 1
Terracotta drainpipe fragment 1 1
Window glass 1 1
Slate tile fragment 1 1
TOTAL 473 164

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

The information contained in this booklet is a partial synopsis of archeological reports published by the Institute of Archeology and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, as Numbers 148 and 174 of the _Research Manuscript Series_. For a detailed treatment of the history and archeology of Middleton Place, and a complete listing of bibliographic sources, the reader is referred to _Middleton Place: initial archeological investigations at an Ashley River rice plantation_ by Kenneth E. Lewis and Donald L. Hardesty (1979), and _The Middleton Place privy: disposal behavior and the archeological record_ by Kenneth E. Lewis and Helen W. Haskell (1981). General reference works on historical archeology and artifacts are listed below.

Baron, Stanley
1962 _Brewed in America: a history of beer and ale in the United
States._ Little, Brown, & Co., Boston.
Cheves, Langdon
1900 Middleton of South Carolina. _South Carolina Historical and
Genealogical Magazine 1:(3)_: 228-262.
Collard, Elizabeth
1967 _Nineteenth century pottery and porcelain in Canada._
McGill University Press, Montreal.
Cox, Warren E.
1970 _The book of pottery and porcelain._ Crown Publishers, New
York.
Daniel, Dorothy
1971 _Cut and engraved glass, 1771-1905._ William Morrow & Co.,
New York.
Douglas, R. W. and S. Frank
1972 _A history of glassmaking._ G. T. Foulis & Co.,
Henley-on-Thames.
Godden, Geoffrey A.
1974 _British pottery: an illustrated guide._ Barrie & Jenkins,
London.
Huggins, Philip K.
1971 _The South Carolina dispensary._ Sandlapper Press,
Columbia.
Hughes, G. Bernard
1960 _English and Scottish earthenware 1660-1880._ Abbey Fine
Arts, London.
Lee, Ruth Webb
1960 _Early American pressed glass._ Northboro, Massachusetts.
Lehner, Lois
1980 _Complete book of American kitchen and dinner wares._
Wallace Homestead, Des Moines.
McKearin, George P. and Helen McKearin
1966 _American glass._ Crown Publishers, New York.
McKearin, Helen and Kenneth M. Wilson
1978 _American bottles and flasks and their ancestry._ Crown
Publishers, New York.
Munsey, Cecil
1970 _The illustrated guide to collecting bottles._ Hawthorn
Books, New York.
Noël Hume, Ivor
1969 _Historical archaeology._ Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
1970 _A guide to artifacts of colonial America._ Alfred A.
Knopf, New York.
Revi, Albert C.
1964 _American pressed glass and figure bottles._ Thomas Nelson
& Sons, New York.
Russell, Loris
1968 _A heritage of light._ University of Toronto Press,
Toronto.
Scoville, Warren C.
1948 _Revolution in glassmaking: entrepreneurship and
technological change in the American glass industry,
1880-1920._ Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
South, Stanley A.
1977. _Method and theory in historical archeology._ Academic
Press, New York.
Toulouse, Julian H.
1969a A primer on mold seams. _Western Collector_ 7(11):
526-535.
1969b A primer on mold seams. _Western Collector_ 7(12):
578-587.
Wetherbee, Jean
1980 _A look at white ironstone._ Wallace Homestead, Des Moines.
Wright, Louis B.
1976 _South Carolina, a bicentennial history._ W. W. Norton &
Co., New York.

Transcriber’s Notes

—Silently corrected a few typos.

—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
is public-domain in the country of publication.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
_underscores_.