I Found A Bottle In The Yard

The bottle story starts with my dogs. I have two of 'em. 

Farley and Freckles on the temporary couch; Farley ate the previous couch

They're big. Large breeds. Together, they weigh around 200 pounds. They eat a lot, and, needless to say, I have to be vigilant with the poop pickin' up. Every couple days I'll walk a couple laps around the yard, shovel in hand, and do what I gotta do. 

It's usually a slow, methodical walk because my entire yard is essentially dirt. No grass, aside from a few random clumps that refuse to reproduce. In this environment, dog poop is easily camouflaged. Also, I tend to find a lot of glass shards in the yard after it rains -- not sure how they rise to the surface, but they do -- another reason to walk slow and be on the lookout. 

My collection of glass and plate shards found in the yard

Because of the slow walk, every now and then I'll inadvertently tap the shovel on ground -- like one would with a walkin' stick. And every now and then, that action will result in an audible "clink". Why? Because there is an endless supply of junk, mostly of the masonry variety, not too far beneath the surface. Maybe this is why grass won't ever grow.  

So...last weekend I was making the rounds, carefully looking for glass and poop, and while scooping something up I heard a "clink". This happened in the somewhat mysterious northeast corner of the yard by a big oak tree so I decided to start diggin'. Per usual, I found a lot of buried brick and limestone.     ​

Near the house, this isn't an uncommon find. Brick and limestone got chiseled on site during original construction and there weren't any trash trucks coming around in 1878 to haul away the offcuts. Burying the scraps was the easiest means of disposal. 

But this location is about as far from the house -- a few feet from the alley -- as one can get in my yard. When I moved in 5 years ago, after clearing enough brush, I realized there was an aluminum shed back there.

I tore it down and discovered some sort of manmade structure beneath it, and plenty of scrap brick and limestone chunks buried beneath that.

Long story short, I have found a LOT of buried masonry in this part of the yard. I'd understand the offcut thing -- build the retaining wall (it's brick, although not 1878 brick) along the alley in the 1910s or 1920s or 1930s, backfill it with scraps, bury it all, move on. But some of the stuff has mortar on it, which means it's not all offcuts; it's brick and limestone that had been a structure, somewhere, at some time. On my property? Who knows. 

Anyhow...while digging last weekend, I would up pulling out a decently large piece of curvy, amber glass. It was maybe a foot down. Then I found a piece that matched up with first piece I'd pulled out. At this point I could tell that I'd unearthed parts of a glass bottle. I proceeded to find additional parts of the bottle -- all caked with mud -- and slowly realized it had probably been a full, intact bottle...before I started digging. 

I took the glass in the house -- I didn't find all the parts of the bottle, didn't have enough gas in the tank -- and cleaned off the mud. No markings, aside from 1 piece: the bottom.

And then...the research was on. At first I thought the embossing was "BC Co", but the internet quickly led me to realize that it's actually "BG Co". Know what that means? 

Belleville Glass Company, which I was able to discern by matching the embossing on the glass I found with pics of bottles confirmed to have been made by them. 

Belleville Glass Co. (Belleville, IL) was only around for about 4 years, 1882-1886. The company made beer and soda bottles, flasks, fruit jars, and druggists vials; in its early days, the glass factory employed around 100 people and produced over 14,000 bottles a day. 

Belleville Glass Works (the factory run by the Belleville Glass Co.), 1884 Belleville City Directory

Aside from Belleville being just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, here's its REAL connection to St. Louis: in 1883, Belleville Glass Co. signed a contract to make beer bottles - they apparently stopped making any other type of glass container - for the infamous William Lemp Brewing Company just south of downtown St. Louis.

Atlas of The City of St. Louis, Missouri, 1883 -- Lemp Brewery

The St. Louis connection doesn't stop there. The company, apparently, ran into financial trouble quickly. In 1886 the company was turned over to the Belleville Savings Bank, and guess who bought it? 

Adolphus Busch, co-founder of Anheuser-Busch, headquartered in St. Louis.

Did Busch take advantage of an opportunity to gobble up a discounted bottle-maker (A-B needed bottles too)? Or did Busch take advantage of an opportunity to put a dent in a competitor's bottle supply? I'm guessing it was a bit of both.   

Adolphus Busch Glass Co., 1894 Belleville City Directory

Former Belleville Glass Works; Insurance Maps of Belleville, St. Clair County, Illinois, July 1900

That's the bottle story. What are the odds of finding a bottle, buried a foot down, that's 140ish years old and may have contained Lemp's beer at one time, made by a company that was only in operation for 4 years? 

I can't figure out how the bottle wound up where it did. Around the time of the bottle's production, my house, several years old, was still the only structure on the entire block, and the streets and alleys had already been laid out, if not entirely built.

Atlas of The City of St. Louis, Missouri, 1883 -- my little house is the pink shape on the left side

It wasn't buried in the yard by the original home builders (too early). It wasn't, I don't think, put there by the retaining wall builders (too late). Maybe there was a trash pit in the back corner of the yard in the late 19th century? 

Who knows. But...with all the glass I continue to find, and pottery shards, and pennies, and miscellaneous stuff...I really feel like, somewhere on the property, there's a buried trash pile somewhere. Someday, maybe I'll get lucky enough to find it.    

**Research:
sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/BellevilleGlassCo.pdf
sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/AdolphusBusch.pdf