In April 2022, a short road trip to the antique shops in Watertown resulted in the discovery of an early style stoneware bottle marked “F. SCHWARZ & Co MILWAUKEE.” It had been someone’s subject for an art project. When I spotted it, I immediately recognized the style as a Milwaukee made bottle, but upon examination I was overjoyed to see the stamp!

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One of the staple products offered to settlers, farmers and local residents was utilitarian pottery. In the Territorial years most of it was imported via Great Lakes shipping from Ohio or New York. After pottery manufacturing started in the late 1840's some merchants sold locally made and imported pottery, both stoneware and earthenware. Some pieces were made to order with merchant names stamped into them. Some were sold with product inside, other pottery was sold as containers for use on the farm or in the home. This presentation covers pre-civil war examples of pottery and the history of the merchants who sold them.

A recent discovery of an unusual bottle in the Lake Geneva area adds an amazing footnote with a mysterious but strong Mukwonago connection.
  
Mukwonago had its own patent medicine manufacturer!  Quite a creative one too in terms of the fanciful branding of his product.  The bottle shown was recently found in an old collection of pharmacy items, and to the author, a collector of local bottles for half a century, a quite significant one.  The aqua glass bottle exhibits glass blowing technology of the late 1880’s to about 1905 and is 8 5/8” tall. 

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While sorting through some of the ephemera I have collected over the years related to bottle collecting, I recently ran across a scrap of paper that I acquired at a farm auction south of Sussex, Wisconsin.   The hand writing style and quill or fountain pen ink indicate it probably dates to the mid-19th century.  While interesting enough for me to save it at the time, it takes on additional relevance as I deal with the aches and pains of arthritis in my advancing years.  As many of our club members are in the same general age bracket, I thought I would share with you the old recipe that is on this piece of paper.  You might find it quite useful but probably pretty dangerous as well.

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A recent addition to my collection spurred an investigation with surprising results and proved once again that the history behind the glass and ceramic containers that we collect can be absolutely fascinating. The bottle is a clear quart cylinder whiskey embossed in a bold slug plate, “Fred W. Pawinski Marble Hall Milwaukee.” It is pre-machine made and I judged its age to be in the 1900 to 1910 age. I wondered who was this Fred guy and what was “Marble Hall.” It also intrigued me that in my nearly five decades of collecting I had not seen any other bottle from Pawinski. I presumed his business must have been an obscure, short-lived venture. My assumption proved to be wrong on several levels.

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Within the Mukwonago Historical Society’s collection are two very old wood and iron signs that by their construction and style would seem to date to the mid-nineteenth century. It is believed that these signs were used to direct weary travelers to establishments in the Mukwonago area to rejuvenate and spend the night. This was a time when stagecoaches ferried people from Milwaukee to points west on plank roads, to Prairieville (now Waukesha), Janesville, East Troy, Mequanigo (Mukwonago), South Port (Kenosha), Whitewater and other destinations. Stagecoaches were the primary source of transportation, save for horseback and by foot for the heartiest souls, until the advent of the railroads starting in the 1850's. One sign directs travelers to the “J.M. Stockman Inn” and the other to “J.Smith’s Inn.”

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I found this bottle at an estate sale in Antigo, Wisconsin about 10 years ago. It is a machine made corker about 5 inches tall with a label reading from the top of the label downward, “Genuine Jean Batiste’s SQUAW SMOKE in liquid form As Effective Safeguard Against the Bite of Mosquitoes and Other Insects, DIRECTIONS Apply to Exposed Parts, SERVALL LABORATORY, Antigo, Wisconsin.
This little bottle with the now politically incorrect brand name on the label seems to date to the 1920-40 decades and is still half-filled with what is presumably the concoction produced by Servall Laboratory. The cork is quite tight and I have not tried to open it for fear of destroying the original seal and unleashing what today might be a potential chemical spill Even if it is not that lethal, I have no interest in applying some and testing it on the mosquitoes the size of sparrows that we get here out in Mukwonago. But here’s the rub of a different sort, I have completely struck out on finding anything on Jean Batiste, Squaw Smoke, or even Servall Laboratory. Presumably Servall was some small, fly by night, or from-home operated business in Antigo.
Does anyone know anything about this company and other products it might have produced?

On Saturday, September 17th several members of the club made an excursion to West Bend to view the display of early Wisconsin beer and liquor advertising at the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA.) Sid Hatch, Peter Maas, Erik Hecker and Henry Hecker made the trip and enjoyed seeing some of the finest examples of beer, whiskey, and bitters advertising still in existence in the form of trays, signs, posters, labels, calendars and broadsides.

The exhibit includes some of the best examples known of early advertising from Wisconsin breweries. The centerpiece of the exhibit is an astounding Pabst Blue Ribbon print with a turn of the century gaff rigged racing sailboat.  It is made up of 12 panels and stands over 20' tall. MOWA was the perfect venue to display such a massive sign fully assembled and is perhaps the first time this particular sign has been on display.

The Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) explores the art and culture of Wisconsin. Founded in 1961, MOWA is one of the top museums of regional art in the United States, with almost 5,000 works of contemporary and historic art by more than 350 artists.

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About 20 years ago, I was lamenting the time I had spent driving to a small, start up flea market on the Union Grove fair grounds on a nice early Sunday morning. After skimming past rows and rows of tables covered with dumpster fodder, I was startled to find a dealer putting out beer flats filled with hundreds of small old bottles of every description. Inks, perfumes, medicines, doll nursers, you name it. My arrival to this table was perfect as the boxes were just coming out of the trunk. A guy was selling a long time accumulation of small bottles, none more than 4 inches high, that had caught someone’s fancy for eye appeal, interesting labelling, with a few modern bottles mixed in. “$3 a piece!,” said the dealer. At that exorbitant price, I would have to choose carefully, but since I seemed to have a monopoly as a customer, I could take my time in making my selections. Click on the photo to read the full article.

In our collecting hobby, we sometimes encounter artifacts that seemingly are the only remaining evidence of a past person’s life. Usually with subsequent research from the name, location, or approximate date of the bottle, jug, or other item, we are able to assemble a story about the original owner. We do this by studying old city directories, business organization listings of the time, genealogies, census records, and land ownership documents.
Such is the case of one Henry W. Chamberlain of Sheboygan County Wisconsin in the 1850’s. I acquired a salt glazed jar marked “H. W. Chamberlain Sheboygan Wis” in the 1980’s from an avid auction goer in Menomonee Falls. Then in 2002, I acquired a decorated, salt glazed pitcher with the same mark from Bob Markiewicz that he had just purchased and I was able to seize the opportunity before Bob got too attached to the pitcher. Accompanying the pitcher was a 1997 letter from Janice Hildebrand, a well known author of Sheboygan area history.

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Colby is located halfway between Green Bay and Minneapolis, near the only bend in Hwy 29. Colby is so small the "Thank you for visiting Colby" sign is painted on the backside of the "Welcome to Colby" sign - population about 1,500. The fact that a soda bottler was in business there in the early 1880's is astonishing. The bottle is a Hutchinson soda shaped like a Matthew Gravitating Stopper bottle. It is embossed MATH KRAMER COLBY WIS and WIS GLASS CO. MILW on the bottom. According to Roger Peters, Kramer bottled soda and beer between 1881 and 1883. The lip is applied. There were several other bottlers that operated there later but this is the earliest bottle known so far.

Charles Hermann & Co. is the best known and most productive stoneware manufacturer in Wisconsin in the 19th century. Spanning thirty years in Milwaukee, starting in 1856 and ending with the transfer of his business to his step-son in 1886, his products are still found all over Wisconsin and the upper Midwest. His factory employed a large staff of potters and decorators and served as a school for a number of these craftspeople to launch their own potteries From the finest decorated jugs, pots and his churns of his pottery’s earliest years to the ubiquitous Albany slip, “bee-hive” jugs with the “C. HERMANN & CO.- MILWAUKEE” oval stamp, this entrepreneur made his mark. The authors provide new research that expands the knowledge of Hermann’s products and the people that made them.

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On May 13, 2014, the Pewaukee Historical Society hosted the MABAC monthly meeting in its visitor center building on the Asa Clark Museum property. Over 40 Society and club members attended and were treated to a presentation on the life of Col. Nicolas P. Iglehart, an early hotel and mineral springs owner in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. The presentation by Henry Hecker, a long-time member of MABAC, was a culmination of his research on the Oakton Spring Water Company and Oakton Springs Hotel which entrepreneur Iglehart ran in the 1870’s.

The presentation covered Iglehart’s illustrious public and private life with special focus on his last four years of his life in Pewaukee. Henry showed a number of artifacts related to Oakton Springs including a stereopticon photo of the hotel and a 3 gallon jug stenciled with “Oakton Springs Water.” A special treat was the fact that the Kirley family, the current owners of the Octagon house in Pewaukee were in the audience. Colonel Iglehart lived in the Octagon house during his stay in Pewaukee. The Kirley’s were thrilled to learn about Iglehart and shared some of the ghost stories of this incredible home.

A number of Historical Society members were able to augment Henry’s research during open discussion. Finally, the most amazing part of the meeting was the appearance of a previously unknown 3 gallon Oakton Springs stoneware jug brought to the meeting by the Sampsons, Pewaukee residents. The jug is a family heirloom that has remained in Pewaukee for almost 150 years and will someday likely find a home in the Museum collection.

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