There was a 1920s house on the lot but there had been an 1850s house there originally. This was good incentive to find a possible pontil pit. The back of the yard was open for the most part with a small garage being the only obstacle.
Probing along the back alley line quickly revealed a pit It felt like it was mostly ash, with no glass being felt with the probes. This can be deceiving, so the pit was opened to see what was below
After removing the sod and digging out a foot of top
soil, a white layer of solid ashes was now exposed. Exactly what
the probe had said.Continued digging produced more ashes and not even a single shard of glass to help date the hole. Near the bottom of the pit were old boards,
presumably the side boards to the
outhouse pit that had fallen in after its use as a privy was
discontinued. Continued probing and digging in this hole revealed
not a single piece of glass, so the decision to fill it back in
was easy. After topping off the hole and replacing the sod, we
watered down the sod so the grass wouldn't die, as it was very
hot that day. The question now was, "Where is the old pit from the 1860s or ’70s?" The old garage was looking like more and more of a curse now, and its cement floor prevented probing from inside the garage.
A grid probing of the majority of the back yard revealed nothing more than a few old post holes. The next option was to angle probe around the garage in hopes that the older pit was just underneath the perimeter of the garage. No luck there either.
My partner was getting hot, so he headed off to get a couple of Gatorades for us. I stayed and persisted in looking for that older pit. The finally paid off, as I hit a pit that had that "older" feel to it.
The trash layer really didn't start until at least the 3-foot level,
so it could have been easily missed by not probing to
the handle of the probe.When my digging partner returned I told him the good news, which was to dig another hole in the sun on a 90-degree day. No problem when old bottles lurk below!
After a Gatorade rush, we opened this hole which was quite a distance off both alley lines. Another clue that it should be an older pit.
After removing the sod and the three feet of dirt, a few glass shards began to show up along with a lot of old bones. In fact, we filled a five-gallon bucket with all of the bones that we dug. The folks who lived here had a hearty appetite. The glass shards and bottles were few, but the age was looking good. A broken double-eagle flask was good encouragement to continue digging in this pit.
In addition to the glass shards and bones were a large number of salt-glazed stoneware shards. Several were cobalt decorated and one large crock shard was stamped with a local pottery manufacturer. Too bad that one wasn't whole.
Further down, another broken double-eagle flask came forth, along with a whole schoolhouse ink bottle that was crude and, unfortunately, unembossed. Then the shards of an iron pontiled bottle were found. It had a strange sunken panel that was embossed CHICAGO ILLS. A great looking shard and certainly not from a bottle that I was familiar with. Hopefully a whole example lay just beneath. Another shard of the same bottle was dug, this one embossed PECTORAL SYRUP OF WILD CHERRY. Man, that really would have been a great bottle!
The bottom of the pit was nearing and the number of bottles was definitely disappointing. Then, in one corner, a small cache of glass came to light. The first bottle was a small round bottle with an open-pontil. This was now looking good! A quick wipe of the dirt and the embossing revealed: WELLS GERMAN LINIMENT CHICAGO ILLS.
Wow! That just about made the dig right there. Now, if only there was another to help out in the split. Sure enough, another pontiled bottle came out, this one was a little larger and iron pontiled. The embossing read the same as the smaller version we had just dug, WELLS GERMAN LINIMENT, CHICAGO ILLS.
The smaller open-pontiled bottle had a crude rolled lip, while the larger example had a super-crude, tapered-collar lip with lots of bubbles and imperfections, and was that nice deep-blue aqua color. These were the last bottles to come out of the pit.
The numbers weren't great but the rarity was there and it was nice to find the original pontil pit to boot. Time to fill in and work on lining up another lot to dig.
Fast forward to October of that same year.
I got a call from a friend of mine who was doing some construction work on an old smokehouse that had been long ago converted into a storage shed. The support posts of the building had rotted away and the building needed to be leveled and the floor needed a lot of restoration. This particular smokehouse was located on the same block where we had previously dug the pontiled Wells bottles.
Randy and I had talked about digging for old bottles in old outhouse pits, and he was always intrigued with the concept. Prior to this day, he had been on one other dig with me so his digging expertise was definitely limited. My friend had already removed the floor boards and noticed a suspicious area of ashes and brick mixed in with the dirt.
Thinking it might be an old privy, he called me and told me to come over right away with the probes.
Upon my arrival I noticed the ashy area, but relentless probing of that area revealed nothing more than surface fill.
A little surface digging revealed a 1910 vintage bottle or two and various glass shards from the same time period. Nothing much exciting here.
Since the entire wooden floor was now removed, I decided to probe the entire area inside the old smokehouse. In less than five minutes I had located two possible shallow trash pits. With the previous finds, I wasn't too optimistic about anything old showing up.
With nothing else to lose and the trash layer not being that far down, we decided to seek what lay beneath the top soil. About a foot down into the first trash pit revealed the first bottle shard, the base of an iron pontil medicine bottle. A fluke perhaps, or had the age of this trash suddenly jumped 60 years back from the age of the surface finds. More digging was the only way to find out.
More early shards were uncovered and then the first bottle. Yes, this one was iron pontiled too and still intact and embossed! This large aqua bottle had two weird shaped sunken panels on the back side with lots of embossing on the front. A crude double-collar lip added greatly to its appearance. After wiping the mud off, the embossing revealed the following: WELLS PECTORAL SYRUP OF WILD CHERRY, CHICAGO ILLS.
Further examination revealed a neat oval-shaped iron pontil mark and then a crack along one side. From ultimate excitement to a major bummer in one minute! Oh well, perhaps there would be another one to be found. It was such a super-looking bottle that the cracked example was still an exciting find.
By now the hole was getting deeper and a large limestone pier footing became exposed. The glass seemed to be concentrated around this limestone pier. We continued to carefully dig with hand tools and soon another WELLS PECTORAL SYRUP bottle emerged. It was identical to the first one we'd dug, including the crack!
Further digging produced more and more of the PECTORAL SYRUP bottles, all with oval iron pontil marks and all with some form of damage or some completely broken. Man, what a cruel dig this was turning into! By the time we were down a full 1 1/2 feet we had dug 18 of the PECTORAL SYRUP bottles.
At this point the pit was getting wider and different shards began showing up. A broken, olive green, open-pontil CARTER'S SPANISH MIXTURE bottle was the next major crier. Following that gut puncher was a broken iron-pontiled bottle embossed DR. S. F. COLLINS / JAUNDICE BITTERS / CHICAGO, ILL. Could this get any worse?
I guess it did, as we dug four of the COLLINS BITTERS bottles, all broken.
Now don't get me wrong, digging pontil-era bottles is great, as pontil pits in Iowa are few and far between, but digging these great bottles in pieces was getting a little hard to take. Nothing left to do but continue digging and hope for the best.
The glass trail continued to go deeper and a different shaped bottle was showing. This one had a nice iron pontil and was round and about six inches tall. Curious as to the condition and embossing, we were rewarded with our first whole bottle complete with no cracks and … no embossing!
Oh well, at least it was whole.
Another utility type bottle came to light, this one having an open pontil and it too was whole. Then the base of a crude open pontil showed through the dirt. Perhaps another utility bottle. Upon removing it from the muck, a quick wipe of the side of the bottle revealed the embossed letters: WELLS GERMAN LINIMENT, ST LOUIS MO. This was a cool looking bottle and it was whole! The jinx was off and the digging tempo increased greatly.
Continued digging in this area produced more of the WELLS GERMAN LINIMENT bottles, some with damage and a few whole examples. At one point there were six open pontil bases all lined up in a row staring at us, just waiting for us to remove them from their 150 year old earthly grasp.
Among the WELLS GERMAN LINIMENT bottles was one example that was similar but had an iron pontil mark and was from CHICAGO ILLS.
Unfortunately this bottle had a damaged lip, but was still a neat example to dig.
The hole really didn't have any definite walls or dimensions. It just sort of extended out from the limestone pier and eventually ran out. Thinking this was the end we poked around a little more on the opposite side of the hole and found another glass layer. More great shards came forth including another broken CARTER'S SPANISH MIXTURE bottle; shards of a dark-green cathedral pickle bottle; various utility bottles and broken puffs; a broken’ iron-pontiled DR. MCLEANS CORDIAL bottle; and a neat salt glazed, stoneware ale bottle that was unmarked.
The next discovery was perhaps the worst crier of the hole. This bottle was larger than the first Wells bottles we found and had a round iron-pontil mark. The color was a nice deep bluish aqua and there was embossing on all four sides of the bottle which read: WELLS PECTORAL SYRUP OF WILD CHERRY, BLOOMINGTON ILL, GREAT WESTERN FAMILY MEDICINE DEPOT. Man, what a great bottle with great embossing and a crude sloping-collar lip! We dug four of these bottles with only one example being whole.
The hole eventually ended’ as all digs must. I told my friend to remember this dig as it would most likely never be repeated or equaled. Not a bad dig for only his second time out!
Now it was time to try to solve the mystery of how all of the bottles came to rest in this particular area. It turned out that the property and house were originally owned by Alvin Thayer Wells, a definite connection.
Some detailed research revealed that during 1853, A.T. Wells was employed as a traveling salesman for his brother’s drugstore in Bloomington, Illinois. The following year he came to Fairfield, Iowa, where he operated his own drugstore. He remained in the druggist business at Fairfield through 1857. During that same year he moved back to Illinois to join his brother in operating the patent medicine business, which was now located in Chicago. Later in 1858, his brother died and A.T. Wells remained in Chicago to continue managing the medicine business. During 1860, he moved back to Fairfield and operated the patent medicine company from his old drugstore. Sometime during 1861 he discontinued the entire operation and eventually became the librarian for the public library in 1864, a position he held through May of 1899.
While specific details are missing, Alvin’s brother must have established his patent medicine business in St. Louis prior to 1853.
The company was then moved to Bloomington, Illinois, by 1853 and eventually to Chicago although the exact date is yet to be determined, but can be no later than 1857. The Chicago bottles can then be dated to a time line of 1857 to 1860, which was the year the company was closed down in Chicago.
It’s apparent that A.T. Wells brought back to Iowa the stock of Wells medicine bottles as evidenced by the examples that have been dug here. The bottles found under the smoke house floor were perhaps buried there when A.T. Wells discontinued his drug and medicine business in 1861. The other bottles found give support to this theory as many of the bottles are those that would be found on the shelves of an 1850s or 1860s drugstore.
It’s also interesting to note that there is a small-sized bottle from Bloomington, Illinois, that has an open pontil and is embossed WELLS GENUINE LINIMENT instead of GERMAN. Only the Bloomington example is embossed with this particular wording and was dug at a different site.
Here’s a rundown of the Wells bottles that have been found:
- WELLS / GERMAN / LINIMENT on the front. ST. LOUIS MO. on the back. 6 1/8 inches tall, 2 inches diameter, open pontil, tapered-collar lip, deep aqua.
- WELLS / GENUINE / LINIMENT on the front. BLOOMINGTON /
ILL’S on the back 3 7/8 inches tall, 1 3/8 inches
diameter, open-pontil mark, narrow rolled lip,aqua.
- WELLS / GERMAN / LINIMENT on the front. CHICAGO / ILLS. on the back. 3 7/8 inches tall, 1 3/8 inches in diameter, open-pontil mark, narrow rolled lip,
aqua.
- WELLS / GERMAN / LINIMENT on the front. CHICAGO ILLS. on the back. 5 3/4 inches tall, 2 inches diameter, round iron-pontil mark, crude tapered-collar lip, deep aqua.
- WELLS on the left side sunken panel, PECTORAL SYRUP / OF / WILD CHERRY on the front sunken panel, BLOOMINGTON ILL on the right side sunken panel, GREAT WESTERN FAMILY / MEDICINE DEPOT on the back sunken panel. 1 11/16 inches by 2 15/16 inches rectangular base with beveled corners, 8 13/16 inches tall, round iron pontil mark, crude tapered collar lip, deep aqua.
- PECTORAL SYRUP / OF / WILD CHERRY on the front sunken panel. Side sunken panels are plain. WELLS and CHICAGO / ILLS on the two narrow sunken panels on the back. 1 5/8 inches by 2 11/16 inches rectangular base with narrow beveled corners, 7 5/16 inches tall, oval iron-pontil mark, crude double-collar lip, aqua.
Will there be any more Wells bottles found? Only time will tell, coupled with some good luck.
Better close for now, as I have to chase down a local rumor that there is a 6-sided Wells bottle out there. Until then, enjoy the opportunity to dig!