Previously only known to collectors from a fragment
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.
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The J.F. Dallinger hutch from Milwaukee is relatively rare. Recently, a nearly identical variety of this bottle appeared on eBay except that it was embossed with the city of Tacoma, Washington instead of Milwaukee. Then another eBay listing appeared for the Milwaukee variety with a paper label. It was being sold by a different Tacoma area seller who was a descendant of Joseph Dallinger. The seller had a pair of Dallinger Milwaukee bottles with paper labels that had passed down in his family. They were generic stock labels without Dallinger’s name printed on them.
This article gives some background on Joseph Dallinger’s soda business which lasted just a couple of years in the Milwaukee and Tacoma.
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