Early Maryland Black Glass...
Article V, Part III - Black Glass Ales of 1780-1820 | back to Articles
by Wil Martindale
We ended Part II in the series with that amazingly fat, squat, BGW squat, a dip mold pint. Now we segway into part III, a discussion of four early, dip-mold half-pint squats-- two of which we are fortunate to have the dig context and original photo scans of from 1993 and 1994.
Of the four half pints we will examine, three were dug in Maryland, and the consensus is that those three are products of a mid-altlantic region glasshouse, with a strong inclination toward a Maryland glasshouse. The fourth is a recently acquired example, which is attic mint. These bottles are numbered in the pic below, and we will reference these numbers throughout the discussion of them.
BOTTLE NUMBER ONE - HAVRE DE GRACE, MARYLAND
This 6.75 inch squat was recovered from a 10' deep, rectangular, stone lined privy in Havre De Grace, MD, in 1993. The pit contained extensive trash layer, starting with 1890's artifacts at about the 4 foot level. It then went back though an 1860-75 layer yielding some Saratogas, then graduating to a pontil layer which contained several damaged unembossed sodas, as well as a broken soda embossed on the back, "TO BE RETURNED " (probably a B. H. Fink mold with an unembossed slug). Pictured below is the pit, and some recovered shards.
This bottle was on the very bottom of the pit with some other early pontiled shards. The house was said to have been built in 1840, but the bottle appears earlier, dating estimated in the 1830-40 range. It is not uncommon for a bottle of this type to be 10 years old, or older, before being discarded, and the exterior case wear is indicative of many years of re-use. This bottle is probably a product of the Baltimore Glass works at Federal Hill.
BOTTLE NUMBER TWO - FREDERICK, MARYLAND
This 7" squat is one of my favorites, sporting a heavy tubular pontil with embedded iron oxides on the outer surface, and a single taper flared top. It was recovered in Frederick, Md. from a V-shaped trough about 8 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 4 feet deep, which ran down slope into a modest sized single barrel privy.
The diggers ended up probing out the trough first, and they didn't really figure out what they were excavating until they reached the downhill end of the trough and saw the 8 inch diameter wooden pipe that ran from the trough to the barrel privy another two feet away.
The latest items in the pit were early 1850's, going back to the 40's with a Polk & Co. tenpin, then to the 30's with an O'neill's Catholicon and then back to the 20's perhaps with the black glass dip mold squats recovered. I tend to lean toward dating this bottle to 1810 or so, possibly a product of the Kohlenberg Works, or some other Monocacy river glass house. As it was at the bottom of the barrel, it was probably discarded in the 1820's and from the heavy wear of re-filling, could easily have been a 15 year old bottle at that time.
Because this site was quite early, rural and not a large city privy, I would think that locally made bottles from Baltimore or Frederick would be found, and the marked bottles confirm this.
All glass production in New Bremen seemed to abruptly cease in the early teens, possibly due to the growing success of the Federal Hill Works in Baltimore.
Early Oneill's Catholicon (far left) and slight bulge
neck squat (far right) from Frederick dig.
