|
 Maurice: In April of 1994 I pointed to a map of Acton
and said to Darren lets check outside of town on Saturday. It may have been a
sunny spring day, but the ground was still frozen in many shady spots.
We spent most of our time at an abandoned farm with a small woodlot in
back. I noticed small 1/2 pint milk bottles sticking out of the earth
with embossed names. I was only successful in getting one out of the
ground, being careful not to damage it. Darren and I agreed we would
come back in a month. It is funny thinking
back we did not get very excited about this find. We had no milk bottles
of our own and knew nothing about them. Milk bottle fever had not
infected us yet.
A month latter on a
layoff week I drove my sister and nephew to visit an old friend in
Acton. I excused myself for a few hours to check the farm. What I found
was the ground was now ideal for digging, (dry but loose enough to get
through it). With out getting to dirty I raked through the broken
bottles we saw frozen amongst the many rock boulders. It did not take
long before I had filled two bags of full milk bottles hidden between
the rocks deeper in the ground. I found 1/2 pints and pints of Masales
Jersey Dairy and Watson Dairy. I figured I had enough to show Darren and
we would return on the weekend. I gave two to Carla who lives in Acton
and she put them in the dishwasher and they survived and came out
looking great for late 1930's early 1940's bottles.
Darren and I showed up early Saturday in
the late May we could not believe how much broken milk bottles lay about.
We figured this had to be an indication that there was a milk business
here or a supplier. This dig was really fun you would find five or seven
bottles at a time. Trying to get the initial one you saw, you would have
to expand your hole and unearth all the surrounding bottles. I will not
mention that I had three full bags while Darren was complaining because he
had dug into where they broke all the bottles with rocks (now who would do
that?) Oh I also won't mention I had to dig him a dozen bottles to keep
him quiet. In the end Darren's little ford escort was full of bottles. It
was our biggest single bottle haul then and still is. Approximately 130
1/2 pints, pints and quarts and they were all
Masales Jersey Dairy
and
Watson Dairy.
Darren: Our success continued for the rest of the
year finding such bottles as; Erin Dairy quart,
Johnston's Dairy quart, Steel's Pure Clean Milk Queen Dairy half pint, Toronto
Dairymen's Bottle Association pint, Propriete De L'union Des Laiters De
Granby pint and
Watson & Winton Dairy in quart, pint and half pint, and
one coffin shape cobalt poison with RIGO on the base.
The following spring
and early summer Maurice continue to find a few Masales 1/2 pints stuck
between some rocks or nestled in some saplings roots but I did not
return until late July when Maurice was in New Brunswick and I finally
decided to poke around the property again. I started digging up a slight
slope to one side of where we had been digging. It paid off and I
unearthed a Silverwood's Cream Top all by itself. Needless to say when I
told Maurice it rekindled hope in both of us and dreams of finding more
bottles consumed us.
 Maurice and I made a return visit
to the place that we thought we were almost done with. We spent some
time digging around the area where I had found the cream top. Not having
much luck I decided to move back down the slope a bit even further from
our original spot. I surveyed the area then started digging and almost
immediately heard the sound of metal on glass. I cleared enough dirt to
see it was an embossed quart but I could not budge it. I found it was
jammed against another bottle which was in turn jammed against another
bottle and so on and so on. I can't remember at what point I let Maurice
know I just remember him flying from the slope beside me across to the
other side and started digging madly. Funny thing was that Maurice was
digging in a shallow test hole he dug half a
year earlier and sure enough about a foot deeper he hit bottles. I must
have had eight or nine quarts exposed before I actually pulled one from
its long burial.
This time there was more
diversity in the bottles we found many coming from Toronto and Guelph
plus others such as; Donland's Dairy quart, Sani-Dairy quart,
Hamilton
Dairymen's Bottle Association quart, Guelph City
Dairy quart, Guelph Good For 5 Cents G.B.E. quart, Royal Milk Guelph
quart,
Valley Co-operative Creameries quart, Blantyre
Dairy quart, several Silverwood's Safe Milk quarts, Cedarvale Farms Dairy pint, Royal (Guelph) ribbed pint, Rickert's pint,
Glenholm
Dairy pint, Weston Dairy pint, Caulfield’s (Toronto) pint,
Elmhurst Dairy Ltd (Montreal) half pint, Purity Products half pint, Sanitary Dairy
half pint and a Sunrise Dairy (North Bay) quart. Most of the bottles
weren't broken and most were quarts and pints unlike the other section
we had dug which was mostly pints and half pints. We cleaned out the
area with another huge load of milk bottles still wondering what more
this property would yield.
Maurice :
Digging out this section took most of the summer on the days we had
time to come to Acton. With each dig we came closer
and closer to the road and more exposed to those who might wonder what
we were up to. Fortunately know one did bother us, not even the farmer
who used the property as short cut with his tractor. Mother Nature was a
little different however. After a rain storm it dropped an old dead vine
infested tree right across our digging path. Our team work paid off in
removing the obstacle, but the local chip monks became down right
unnerving in their continued howling and screeching at our digging
activity. I’ve let chip monks take peanuts from my lips but these guys
were holy terrors. They dropped dead branches on us, made false runs at
us and definitely told us off, just because we disturbed their buried
treasure.
This front part of the property also yielded some none milk bottle items
such as: Horlick’s Malted Milk - Toronto Canada half pint, Nonsuch
International Stove Dressing - Toronto (clear), Trade mark Vaseline
Chesebrough New York (clear), The Tube Of This Atomizer Is Made Of One
Piece Fill To This Line - Pat May 18th 1894 (clear), Hires
House Extract For Home Use Manufactured By Charles Hires Co Philadelphia
Pa U.S.A. (aqua), Orange Crush 6 Fl oz (reg. Aug 22. 1921 / clear), ALB
Bottle Not Sold Deposit Charged To Ensure Return (aqua), Tabloid B.W. &
Co Wellcome Chemical Works – on lid (clear),
Luxo For The Hair 3 In 1 Hair Tonic Head Rub Dandruff Cure
- Jones
Bros & Co Limited Toronto Canada (clear / pre 1906), Edwardsburg Crown
Brand Registered Pure Corn Syrup Seal Jar (amethyst / square) and my
first cobalt poison B.F.C. Co – Not To B Taken 40oz.
Darren: Once again we finished out the year poking around the property wondering
just where they would have put more garbage. We dug into a fair sized
ash pit alongside the driveway but at about 4 1/2 - 5 feet I hit clay
and nothing to show for the hole I dug.
We returned the
following spring and of course found a few more Masales half pints
scattered here and there buried between rocks. There was one
spot Maurice had thought about digging because of all the small
rocks. This was along side the drive way, and it didn’t take long to
find old class shards. When an old blank amethyst milk bottle came up,
we both started digging near the driveway and worked our way back
towards the hill. We soon learned that there were more rocks than
bottles but the odd time you would find something to tease you.
 Maurice: I now had a trench leading from the driveway right into the side of the
hill. I was finding lots of old blank aqua medicine bottles (believe it
or not as novice diggers / collectors we use to keep this stuff). I also
found some nice no name aqua and amber flasks. I still have in my
collection the following: Underwood's Inks (clear), aqua coned Ink, aqua Carnold's ink , aqua L.E. Waterman Co ink, N. McGarvin Druggist Acton
(amethyst), J.V. Kannawin & Co Listowell Ont (amethyst), two A.J.
Mcdonald Elora (clear), The T. Eaton Drug Co Limited Toronto (clear /
13.5cm), Ayers Cherry Pectoral Lowell Mass (aqua), Hood’s Sarsaparilla
Apothecaries C.I. Hood & Co Lowell Mass (aqua), Scott’s Emulsion Cod
Liver Oil With Lime Soda (clear), two Northrop & Lyman Co Ltd Toronto
Ont Internal Dr SN Thomas Eclectric Oil External (aqua and clear),
Hamlin’s Wizard Oil (aqua), Norway Pine Syrup Wood’s Toronto Ont (aqua),
Dr Pierce’s Golden Medical Discovery / R.v. Pierce M.D. Buffalo N.Y.
(aqua) and a cracked red ware jug with missing handle and seal. Among
other forgotten bottles I haves since replaced with better conditioned
ones.
Darren: Further down from Maurice I was starting to
get a little frustrated at all bottles I wasn't finding. I started with my
reverse psychology "That's it I'm done, I'm packing it in and going home".
Hey don't laugh it has worked before. So I looked behind
me towards the driveway where Maurice had been digging. "Hey Maurice are
you done digging here? Do you mind if I dig this spot", I asked and he
said okay.
I started digging and found that
there were a lot of rocks in this spot. I kept at it and it was only about
fifteen minutes when I saw the dark base of a bottle. It was completely
pinned between three rocks so I didn't get my hopes up. I gradually
exposed more of the bottle trying to feel some embossing and wondering how
far along the bottle the sharp jagged edge would be. I removed the top
rock and finally freed the bottle. It was a style of bottle we had never
dug before. It was a deep aqua colour and I gave it a rub. Embossed words
appeared
Copp Guelph C.W. I
couldn't believe it and Maurice couldn't believe it either. "Hey I never
told you that you could dig there", Maurice said jokingly. We thought
this was a sign of things to come, but we never found any other soda
bottles that age, not even shards.
It wasn’t until
later that I found out how rare (one of two known back then, one more
was dug in Guelph a few years back) and how valuable the bottle was. It
appeared in the last issue of the Canadian Bottle and Stoneware
Collector before it folded. The Copp is still the only Canada West I
have dug and remains in my collection.
The following year the last finds on this property were more Masales
half pints and one still unlisted
Savas & Savas Dairy pint, found
below a mound of broken glass and shell casings.
Based on a local Acton
contact and a early dairy photograph it is safe to conclude that this
farm was once home to
Cloverdale Dairy. In sum total 402 milk bottles
were excavated.
Somewhere on this old property exists the privy’s and other unfound
trash pits waiting to be discovered. |
