Buried Treasures
One of our plans for an upcoming Halloween display was to decorate our enclosed front porch as a Witch’s house. One of the key fixtures for this display was to be a bookshelf of potion bottles and jars of different ingredients and curiosities. Over the past year, my wife and I have visited several Garage sales, and I am always keeping an eye out for old bottles.
While digging a large hole in which to bury some excess stone, I happened upon a few small bottles buried about 18″ deep. My 15 year old son took an interest and took over the dig. Since the immediate area is all slated to become part of our vegetable garden expansion, I allowed him to dig to his hearts content.
After 2 days, we finally gave up on digging up the yard. Within the approximately 100 square foot area that we dug, we discovered a total of 31 jars bottles and medicinal vials, all dating back to the late 1800′s and early 1900′s.
Several of the bottles we found have one type of marking or another, but only 8 of them have any type of labeling print. The three cobalt blue bottles are all marked “BROMO-SELTZER EMERSON DRUG CO. BALTIMORE, MD”, which are apparently very common and worth very little (about $3-$5). 
The others, seen here, are marked with the following (right to left) DR. J.R. MILLER’S MAGNETIC BALM (on sides of bottle), HARRIS PURE FLAVORS BINGHAMTON, NY, SCOTT’S SPRING BOTTLING WORKS SCHENECTADY, NY (“S” in Schenectady is printed backwards and apparently upside-down as well), WEISS SCOTT’S SPRING BOTTLING WORKS SCHENECTADY, NY BEER REGISTERED(on front) THIS BOTTLE NOT TO BE SOLD (on back) A.C.W. (on bottom), and GUARANTEED FULL PINT H.HEILBRONNER & CO. WHOLESALE LIQUOR DEALERS SCHENECTADY, NY.
Anyone who may have information on any of these bottles, or on the companies named on them, please share your info. I plan to bring these all by a local bottle museum to try to gain some information on them all. Ultimately, unless there is any significant value to any of them, they will all be incorporated into the Witch’s personal apothecary in this years Halloween home haunt.
