Adirondack Artifacts

Posted On September 26, 2024

A Pre-Civil War Bean Pot & Mysteries Surrounding an Early 1800’s Ale Bottle

Researching a Pair of Early Adirondack Artifacts

My Ongoing Quest for “Before”

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“Before”

That’s a powerful word.

The desire to discover it is in large part what drives me.

I just love finding old bottles. I spend many long hours and days scouring my favorite Adirondack lake bottoms and riverbeds driven by hopes I will discover one small piece of “before”.

Although this year’s search efforts came much later than usual, 2024 has been no exception. I am normally in the water during July and August, but this year’s extreme early weather left lake water levels too high and river currents too strong for me to safely and productively dive them. The last half of September, however, gave me a gift: low water levels, little wind and a series of warm, sun filled days, perfect conditions for bottle diving. So, at a time when I’m normally busy putting the finishing touches on my season’s stockpile of firewood, a little late season inspiration courtesy of Historic Saranac Lake Museum Curator Chessie Monks-Kelly led me back to the water.

Chessie’s and my shared passion for Adirondack history has over the last several years forged a working relationship that has proven to be mutually beneficial and productive. When I’m in the water, I’m searching for shapes. Nature’s aquatic beauty is geometrically random. Man’s imprint is not. So, when I spot circular objects poking their heads from the muck, sharp edges, right angles, I take a deep breath and dive down to retrieve them. Through the years I have learned that such objects are manmade, more often than not.

Most of the time, what I retrieve ends up being a rusted tin can, modern soda or beer bottle, or some other carelessly discarded junk. Occasionally, however, the results are quite different. It’s like a lightning bolt. I’m immediately teleported back the better part of two centuries. From the weight and feel of the glass, my hands tell me immediately:

“You’ve found something.”

I call them my grail bottles.

I don’t always know exactly what I’ve found, just that my instincts tell me “This one’s really old.” That’s where Chessie comes in. After my own post dive online research efforts, if I still have questions or think the bottle may be of historic interest, I send her some photos. In this manner Chessie and I have teamed to make several additions to Historic Saranac Lake’s bottled history collection.

What led me back to the water for this year’s series of late September dives wasn’t a bottle, but instead, a unique piece of pottery. I frequently find pottery when I’m bottle diving. I’m certain some of it is likely quite old, but it’s almost always broken, nothing but pieces and shards. Two years or so ago, however, I found a piece of pottery that struck me. Whether it was the crudely rustic elegance of design, or the mere fact that after over a century in the water, it somehow remained fully intact, something told me:

“Hold onto this one. You may have just found something.”

Since, upon inspection, it lacked any visible dates, labels, or maker’s marks, not being in any way shape or form a pottery expert, my initial efforts to identify it came up empty.

I put it on my display shelf for safe keeping, where I somehow forgot about it, until sometime early this spring, when it occurred to me,

“I should share this one with Chessie.”

So, on one of my frequent hometown ventures up Route 3 to Saranac Lake, I carefully wrapped it up, cased it, and emailed Chessie.

“I’ll be in town tomorrow. I’m bringing you something.”

Once at the Historic Saranac Lake Museum, I opened the case, unwrapped the pottery piece, and shared it with Chessie. Upon examination, she agreed it looked old. However, not being a pottery expert herself, she asked if she could hold onto it for a spell, take some photos, and reach out to some pottery experts she knew for expert consult.

I didn’t hear back from Chessie right away. Several months passed, in fact. Then, on September 10, 2024, Chessie sent me this email:

Hi Dick, I have news about your pot – I sent photos along to a friend at the NYS Museum, who also showed it to her colleague. This is what she said:

“I just talked with John Scherer, our curator emeritus, who wrote the stoneware book, and was glad to hear that he agreed with my first impressions. It looks like stoneware, with a Rockingham glaze. He thinks that based on its shape, it is probably 1840s or 50s and based on size and shape possibly a bean pot (that would have originally had a lid). The marks on the side (even the piece sticking out) may be due to minor explosions due to air bubbles in the clay during the firing process. The number of them, and also the shoddy trim job at the base makes me think this was maybe by someone who was learning, or it was really quickly produced on the cheap.”

“So – it’s a really old piece! What an amazing find!”

(Chessie Monks-Kelly, Archivist/Curator, Historic Saranac Lake, The Saranac Lake Laboratory Museum)

Reading Chessie’s email made me sit back. My Saranac River find was a pre-Civil War bean pot!

According to Historic Saranac Lake’s “Local Wiki” timeline, what would later become the village of Saranac Lake was little more than a frontier outpost at that point. Its founding fathers were still in the process of building the village’s first hotels, school and post office. My mind’s eye immediately began conjuring images of whose dinner table that bean pot may have adorned during that early time period.

That news in and of itself, combined with September’s low water levels and warmer than average early fall temps, was enough to motivate me to get back into the water in my ongoing quest for antique Adirondack bottles. As I prepared to do so, it occurred to me that I had another old bottle sitting on my shelf that I believed was from that early Adirondack pre-Civil War time period.

It was a bottle I found several years ago, diving off of the northern shore of Middle Saranac Lake’s Ship Island. I spent two summers diving that lake, scouring the lake bottom around all the islands and old great camp shorelines. As is generally the case, I knew that bottle was extremely old the minute I found it, safely embraced by the lake’s soft silt bottomed muck in about six feet of water.

As part of a much larger bottle identification project, I had done some cursory research on it at the time. Its heavy, hand tooled, double collared, black glass pushed up bottom pontil construct led me to date it between 1845-1870. I added it to my collection, where it sat on a display shelf, so labeled. Now that I realized that, in the bean pot, I actually owned a pair of pre-Civil War Adirondack cousins, I decided to dig a bit deeper into the bottle’s provenance.

(At this point I must confess; I don’t consider myself in any way shape or form a bottle ID expert. Bottle identification can be a very complex endeavor. It can get a bit wonky, with a great many variables.) So, I decided to go online in search of some expert help. I joined several bottle groups and posted some photos. The response was almost immediate.

Several online bottle collectors concurred, identifying it as an H. Ricketts & Company Glass Works ale bottle, from the 1830’s or ’40s. I was even directed to an auction site that had one up for auction (current bid at the time I saw the posting was $110). It looked & was described exactly like mine, black glass, double collared, 3-piece mold (seam line visible on both sides of the neck and between the base and the collar, pushed up base construct. So, I was, (with as high degree of certainty as an amateur bottle sleuth might muster) confident that their ID was spot on.

That in and of itself was extremely exciting. It actually pushed my bottle’s date BACK twenty years or so from what I had initially pegged it at, pre-dating my bean pot by at least a full decade. Then, as I studied the examples of similar H. Ricketts & Co. ale bottles, I realized that although all other aspects seemed identical, there were two identifying features on most antique H. Ricketts ale bottles that on mine were missing. First, they had the word “Patented” embossed into the glass on the shoulder, and second, they had an exterior “washer” ring on the base, on which was embossed “H. RICKETTS & Co. GLASS WORKS, BRISTOL” (Bristol Being Bristol, England, not Bristol, Tennessee).

I at that moment reached a point of bottle identifying self-doubt and confusion. Had I mis-identified my bottle? Was I therefore off on the date? I double and triple checked my bottle construct data: Heavy black glass, double collared, 3-piece mold, pushed up pontil … No. I was as certain as is amateur bottle sleuth possible. Just based on its construct, this was most definitely an ale bottle from the early 1800s. Beyond anything else, the pushed up bottom pontil confirmed that. That characteristic alone dated the bottle as pre-1850’s. (Apologies for my bottle ID wonkiness).

So, I decided that what I needed to do was once again get online and do more research, this time of the history of H. Ricketts & Co. Glass Works. In doing so, I came across an excellently detailed study title “The Ricketts Family Glass Firms”, (Lockhart, Lindsey, Schriever & Serr. last updated 1/29/2019).

As I read through this paper, two paragraphs jumped out at me:

“Burton (2015:191) * a reference to one of the study’s cited references: “Burton, David 2015 Antique Sealed Bottles -1640-1900- and the Families Who Owned Them. Antique Collectors Club Ltd., Woodbridge, Suffolk, England (with research by Christopher Mortimer) *.

“Added that “a few three-piece (or three-part) mould (sic) bottles exist (c. 1810-1811) but have no base markings to indicate their place of manufacture. It is thought, however, that they were early Ricketts bottles made before the company’s policy of mould (sic) marking the base.” However, he discovered no historical confirmation, but he found one three-piece-mold bottle in his sample that he dated ca. 1810-1820.

For our dating of the Ricketts markings, we have elected to accept ca. 1811 as the initial date based on the idea that the naming of the company after the younger Ricketts must have been selected because of his invention- even though that was ten years prior to the patent. It seems relatively certain, however, that none of those bottles bore the Ricketts embossed name.”

Well, as one might imagine. Upon reading & re-reading this several times, my mind was blown.

With the LACK of embossed shoulder or bottom bottle ring markings actually being the definitive identifier, My Ship Island bottle may have been from 1810-1820!

According to Historic Saranac Lake’s Wiki Timeline, Jacob Smith Moody didn’t even settle Saranac Lake until 1819. Captain Pliny Miller, who built the original Lake Flower Dam, didn’t arrive with his family until 1822. So, in considering the question of how such a bottle came to rest off the north shore of Middle Saranac Lake’s Ship Island, the list of potential candidates is intriguingly small.

For arguments sake, let’s for a moment postulate. If (and it is admittedly an “if”), I have accurately identified this bottle as an early pre-patent H. Ricketts & Co. ale bottle, then, according to the Lockhart et al research cited above, this bottle’s manufacturing date was between 1811-1820. Taking the later of those two dates, let’s further postulate that the ale contents of this bottle would have been consumable for approximately 2-3 years after bottling. So, just to embrace all realistic potentialities, let’s push the end date for this bottle out to 1825. (Unless or until someone with the appropriate antique bottle dating curriculum vitae takes issue, I’m confidently comfortable with my bottle ID effort.)

So, given a dating bracket of 1811-1825, who might have spent a warm afternoon on the shores of Middle Saranac Lake’s Ship Island enjoying a bottle of fine British ale?

In the years during and immediately following War of 1812, it is certainly easy to imagine numerous scenarios as to how a British ale bottle ended up in the hands of an Adirondack frontiersman, making its way into Middle Saranac Lake as they explored wilderness while enjoying the spoils of war.

It conceivably could have been the aforementioned Jacob Smith Moody, or someone from within his Saranac Lake settler’s constellation. It is easy to imagine him paddling his way up through the Saranac chain of lakes as he explored his surroundings, or perhaps in his role as a guide. It likely wouldn’t have been any of his children though, as, per Saranac Lake Wiki, his oldest son Harvey wasn’t born until 1808, his second son Smith until 1813, and his third son Cortis not until 1822. They may well have been rugged Adirondack outdoorsmen in their own right, but I hardly think any of them were on Middle Saranac Lake drinking English ale as children.

It also easily could have been Captain Pliny Miller or someone in his orbit. Again, According to Historic Saranac Lake Wiki’s timeline, he arrived with his family in 1822. It is very conceivable to imagine Captain Miller or one of his lieutenants exploring their way upriver to Middle Saranac Lake as they scouted timber and made plans for constructing what in 1827 was to become what is now the Lake Flower dam.

According to Saranac Lake Wiki, both Jacob Smith Moody and Captain Miller (and presumable many amongst their associates) served during 1812’s war.

As I perused the list of potential explorers and settlers, I turned my attention to early Adirondack surveyors. While most of their efforts, names like McIntyre, Henderson, Palmer, & Sanford seemed focused on high peaks region exploration for iron ore, one intriguing name jumped out at me:

Judge John Richards (1765-1850).

I found an excellent article via the archives of The Adirondack Almanack entitled: “Lost Brook Dispatches: The Discovery of Lost Brook Tract”, by Pete Nelson. This article concisely synopsizes Judge John Richard’s accomplished career as a surveyor, including surveys of the Totten and Crossfield Purchase, Old Military Tract, Moose River Tract, McIntyre Iron Works, as well as numerous roads. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that the course of his efforts took him or those associated with him into Middle Saranac.

There are, of course, numerous other candidates for who deposited that bottle. Of the three listed above, I think my pick as the most viable option is Captain Miller or one of his lieutenants, exploring Middle Saranac Lake, stopping on Ship Island for some lunch washed down with a bottle of fine English Ale as they made plans to develop a timber market. Truth be told though, it’s all speculation on my part. We will never with certainty know. That’s part of what draws me to the search.

What I do know with absolute certainty is this. I now have in my collection two pre-Civil War Adirondack artifacts that rightly belong in a museum.

Which is where they will end up. I’ve already promised them to Chessie Monks-Kelly, once Historic Saranac Lake finishes its current building project and she lets me know she has a home for them in one of their display cases.

In the interim, I’ll continue my bottle dive searches. There are more Adirondack Artifacts out there.

It’s one of my life’s missions to find them.

My ongoing quest for “Before”.

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Until Our Trails Cross Again:

ADKO