[Illustration: uncaptioned]
The artifacts from the Middleton Place privy present a unique
opportunity to observe one aspect of this plantation’s past. This
collection of ceramics, bottles, and other items constitute the refuse
discarded by the occupants of Middleton Place following the Civil War.
It reflects their needs and tastes and represents an unconscious record
of activities a century ago. Artifacts in the collection include items
from an earlier time as well as things purchased throughout the last
half of the nineteenth century.
These materials also reveal much about the privy’s history. When
compared with collections discarded around contemporary buildings, the
artifacts from Middleton Place are similar to those often associated
with abandoned buildings. The artifacts in the Middleton Place privy,
then, are likely to have been deposited there, not as the result of
day-to-day living, but as a consequence of cleaning out the rubbish of
the house’s earlier occupants. We may identify the privy artifacts as a
collection of items accumulated during a time of refurbishing as in the
1920s when J. J. Pringle Smith moved into the family residence and began
restoring it.
[Illustration: Figure 30. Many hours are spent in the laboratory
conserving and studying the artifacts.]
Although interesting and informative as individual objects, the privy
artifacts are much more informative as an “assemblage” resulting from
past activities. The archeologist must study assemblages, like pieces of
a puzzle, to reconstruct, interpret, and explain past events that
produced them. It is important to record carefully all the artifacts
found together as well as their relationships to one another and to the
deposit from which they were removed. Artifacts taken from the ground
without proper recording are removed from their archeological context,
and the information they hold is forever lost. Aimless “treasure”
digging has destroyed much of our historical heritage. The Middleton
Place privy collection illustrates how proper care, recording, and
analysis can reveal new information. With foresight and planning,
archeology can increase knowledge of the past for ourselves and for
future generations.
APPENDIX I
CERAMIC MANUFACTURERS’ MARKS
[Illustration: CERAMIC MANUFACTURERS’ MARKS]
A. Arthur J. Wilkinson, Royal Staffordshire Pottery, Burslem,
Staffordshire. White ironstone plate, 1891-1896.
B. John Edwards, Fenton, Staffordshire. White ironstone plate, c.
1891-1900.
C. John Maddock and Sons, Burslem, Staffordshire. White ironstone
plate, 1891-1896.
D. C. C. Thompson & Co., East Liverpool, Ohio. White ironstone nappy,
1884-1889.
E. Limoges, France. White porcelain saucer, c. 1875.
F. Haviland & Co., Limoges, France. White porcelain plate, c.
1876-1891.
G. Unidentified mark, decal-printed porcelain plate.
H. John and George Alcock, Cobridge, Staffordshire. Light blue,
transfer-printed bowl, 1839-1846.
I. Josiah Wedgwood, Burslem, Staffordshire. Impressed on creamware
sauce tureen, 1769 to present.
J. Unidentified impressed mark, white porcelain platter.
APPENDIX II
SIGNIFICANT DATES IN THE AMERICAN GLASS INDUSTRY
First three-piece hinged mold c. 1808
Two-piece hinged mold first used in America by 1809
First widespread use of slanting collar finish c. 1820
Ricketts patent for three-piece mold with lettered base 1821
First side-lever glass press late 1820s
“Lacy” pressed glass 1820s-1840s
Popularity of smooth-patterned pressed glass tableware c. 1840s-1880s
sets
Development of jawed lipping tool for bottles pre-1840
Amasa Stone receives first U.S. patent for lipping tool 1856
Introduction into U.S. of non-pontil holding devices late 1840s-1850s
for bottles
Formula for kerosene patented by Abraham Gesner 1854
Development of two-piece mold with separate post base pre-1858
Mason jar patent 1858
Blow-back mold in general use c. 1858-1900
First oil well in Pennsylvania leads to widespread use 1859
of kerosene fueled lamps
Introduction of French Square pharmacy bottles early 1860s
Student lamp patented in Prussia 1863
Leighton formula for improved lime glass 1864
Development of plate mold for embossed bottles pre-1867
Widespread embossing of bottles 1860s-1920s
Empontilling of bottles almost entirely replaced by 1870s
use of holding devices
Greatest popularity of turn-molded bottles 1870s-1920s
Student lamp introduced in U.S. 1870s
Louis Pasteur developed sterilization techniques for 1870
beer
Anheuser-Busch begins first commercial bottling of early 1870s
American beer
Heavily embossed and colored poison bottles 1872-1930s
Improved finishing processes result in smoother and by 1880
more uniformly applied bottle finishes
Argobast patent for semiautomatic press-and-blow 1881
machine for wide-mouthed jars
H. W. Putnam acquires patent rights for lightning 1882
stopper
Borosilicate glass developed in Germany 1883
Macbeth-Evans Co. patents “pearl top” lamp chimney 1883
William Painter patents crown cap 1892
Enterprise Glass Co. puts Argobast semiautomatic into 1893
commercial production
South Carolina dispensary system 1893-1907
Michael Owens patents semiautomatic turn-molding 1894
machine for light bulbs, tumblers, and lamp chimneys
First lamp chimney and tumbler production on Owens 1898
turn-mold machine
Most wide-mouthed jars produced on semiautomatic by 1901
machines
Owens automatic bottle machine patented 1903
Owens machine put into commercial production: first 1904
narrow-necked machine-made bottles
First production of narrow-necked bottles on _c._ 1907
semiautomatic machines
Corning Glass Works develops Pyrex heat-resistant glass 1915
Use of manganese to decolor glass 1917
State prohibition law goes into effect in South 1916
Carolina
National beer and wine production halted under Wartime 1918-1920
Food Control Act and Volstead Act
National prohibition of alcohol under eighteenth 1920-1933
amendment and Volstead Act
Machine-made bottles comprise 90% of total United 1925
States production
APPENDIX III
MARKS LEFT BY DIFFERENT TECHNIQUES OF BOTTLE MANUFACTURE
Free-blown bottles usually date before the second half of the nineteenth
century and are characterized by an absence of mold lines of any sort.
Because no molds were used, these bottles are often asymmetrical.
Dip-molded bottles, or bottles molded for basic body shape below the
shoulder, are also generally pre-Civil War and can only tentatively be
distinguished from free-blown bottles by their symmetry below the
shoulder and a slight tapering from shoulder to base. Bottles blown in a
two-piece mold have mold lines extending up two opposite sides, usually
to just below the tooled lip. On early nineteenth century bottles of
this sort, the mold lines continue across the center of the base, but
after the 1850s, most two-piece molds had a separate base part, either a
cup bottom, in which the seam encircled the outer edge of the base, or a
post bottom, which left a circular seam on the bottom of the bottle.
Most bottles from the Middleton Place privy were blown in two-piece
molds with cup bottoms.
The three-piece mold leaves a single horizontal line around the shoulder
of the bottle, and vertical lines extending up either side of the
shoulder. The height of these lines can vary from partway up the
shoulder to nearly to the top of the neck. A turn-molded bottle has been
rotated in the mold to erase mold marks and will exhibit faint
horizontal scratches and striations on the body and neck.
Embossing, very popular after the Civil War, usually consists of the
name of a company or product printed in raised letters on the sides or
base of the bottle. Isolated numbers and letters on or just above the
base are usually, but not always, mold numbers used by the manufacturer
for identification. Embossed letters are sometimes carved into the body
of the mold, but for smaller runs a plate mold, with a removable
lettered plate on one or more sides, was used.
Mold lines on bottles finished with a specialized lipping tool are
usually obliterated by faint horizontal striations extending to about a
quarter inch below the lip. The two-piece blow-back mold, however,
leaves mold seams to the very edge of the lip, and a lip surface that
has been ground smooth rather than shaped with a lipping tool.
A pontil mark is a circular scar left on the base by the iron rod used
to hold the bottle for finishing the neck and lip. Although there are
many different methods of empontilling, only two types of marks were
found on bottles from the Middleton Place privy. One is a “sand pontil
mark,” a roughened grainy area covering most of the base, apparently the
result of dipping the glasscoated pontil iron in sand before attaching
it. The other is a “blow-pipe pontil mark,” which results from
empontilling a bottle with the same pipe that was used to blow it. A
blow-pipe mark is a distinct ring of glass the same size as the bottle
neck.
Pressed glass is formed with a plunger in a mold on one or more pieces.
Pressed glass items are comparatively thick-walled, have smooth molded
lips, usually with mold seams, and often are distinguished by a short,
straight shear mark, like an isolated mold line, on the inside base.
This mark is from the severing of the “gob” of glass before it is
dropped into the mold. Bottles that are made on either automatic or
semi-automatic machines will have mold lines encircling the top of the
lip, as well as on the sides and base.
APPENDIX IV
ARTIFACT CATALOGUE FROM THE MIDDLETON PLACE PRIVY EXCAVATION
_Artifacts_ _No. of _Minimum
Fragments_ No. of
Whole
Items_
Ceramics
Porcelain
Undecorated Haviland & Co. plate 9 1
Undecorated saucer, D & Co., Limoges 5 1
Undecorated saucer 6 1
Undecorated plates 17 2
Undecorated platter 13 2
Gold-banded cup 9 1
“Cornflower” pattern tea or bread plate 4 1
Decal-printed tea plate or saucer, hallmark Alice / 5 1
Austria
Decal-printed Austrian teacup 11 1
British meat dish, hand-painted oriental design 16 1
Chinese export porcelain serving dishes 4 4
Creamware
Banded Wedgwood sauce tureen 1 1
Undecorated baker 1 1
Whiteware
J & G Alcock “Tyrol” pattern transfer-printed bowl 5 1
Blue transfer-printed mug, rural English scene 6 1
Fragment of blue transfer-printed cup or bowl, 1 1
bucolic scene
Undecorated ironstone or graniteware nappy 5 1
Undecorated ironstone or graniteware plates 23 4
Undecorated ironstone or graniteware cup 1 1
Molded white ironstone chamber pot 4 1
English majolica pitcher handle 1 1
Glass Tableware
“Four Band” style pressed glass tumbler 1 1
Fluted pressed glass tumbler 2 1
“Thumbprint” style pressed glass tumbler 5 1
Engraved tumbler, floral design 1 1
Wheel-cut champagne flute glass 2 1
“Almond Thumbprint” pressed wine glass 1 1
“Mascotte” pattern pressed wine glass 1 1
Pressed glass lid 2 1
Cut glass pitcher 9 1
Fluted cut glass decanters 8 2
Free-blown bowls 75 2
Bottles and Jars
Food Containers
Armour & Co. beef extract jar, white milk glass 1 1
Olive oil bottles, aquamarine glass 2 2
American preserve jar, clear glass 4 1
Alcohol Bottles
Palmetto Brewing Co. champagne beer bottle, 1 1
aquamarine glass
Export beer bottles, amber glass 2 2
South Carolina Dispensary Jo-Jo flask, clear glass 4 1
South Carolina Dispensary Jo-Jo flask, aquamarine 3 1
glass
South Carolina Dispensary cylindrical whiskey 2 1
bottle, clear glass
Unembossed Union flasks, amber glass 15 2
Unembossed Union flask, aquamarine glass 1 1
Rhine Wine sample bottle, amber glass 1 1
Dark Green wine or spirits bottles 21 4
Medicine Bottles
Panknin Apothecary plate-molded prescription 3 3
bottles, French Square shape, clear glass
Panknin Apothecary plate-molded prescription 4 4
bottles. Philadelphia oval shape, clear glass
Unembossed French square prescription bottles, clear 20 14
glass
Narrow-mouthed round prescription bottles, clear 2 2
glass
Narrow-mouthed round prescription bottles, 3 3
aquamarine glass
Narrow-mouthed round prescription bottles, light 1 1
green glass
Wide-mouthed round prescription bottles, clear glass 3 3
Unembossed Baltimore oval prescription bottle, clear 1 1
glass
Unembossed Philadelphia oval prescription bottles, 2 2
clear glass
Unembossed taper neck oval prescription bottles, 2 2
clear glass
Neck fragment from round or oval prescription 1 1
bottle, clear glass
Paneled pharmacy bottles, clear glass 26 3
Paneled pharmacy bottle aquamarine glass 1 1
Free-blown apothecary vials, aquamarine glass 8 4
Maltine Mf’g Co. bottle, double Philadelphia oval 1 1
shape, amber glass
Keasbey & Mattison Bromo-Caffeine bottle, round, 1 1
cobalt blue
Rumford Chemical Works Horsford Acid Phosphate 1 1
bottle, octagonal, blue-green glass
Bullock & Crenshaw decagonal vial, clear lead glass 1 1
Unidentified embossed French square bottle, amber 5 1
glass
Whitall Tatum quilted poison bottle, cobalt blue 1 1
Ointment or Cosmetic Jars
White milk glass patch box with lid 2 1
Aubry Sisters white milk glass screw top ointment pot 1 1
Pharmaceutical Accessories
Corks 2 2
Clear glass Lubin stopper 1 1
Clear glass medicine dropper 2 1
Ink, Glue, and Polish Bottles
Clear glass conical ink bottles, machine-made, 1 1
Carter’s Ink Co.
Clear glass cylinder ink bottle, machine-made 1 1
Amber glass conical ink bottle, blow-molded 1 1
Bell mucilage bottle, aquamarine glass 2 1
British brown stoneware blacking or master ink bottle 1 1
Tappan’s Relucent gold and silver polish bottle 1 1
Ink bottle cork 1 1
Lamp Glass
Student lamp chimney 2 1
“Pearl top” and crimped lamp chimney 19 4
Laboratory Glass
Pontil-marked beaker 2 1
Metal
Pewter Spoon 1 1
Brass curtain rings 7 7
Pill box with lid 1 1
Square-cut spike 1 1
Machine-cut nails 4 4
Hand-wrought nails 3 3
Hazel hoe 1 1
Coins
Liberty head quarters 5 5
Liberty head nickel 1 1
Personal Items
French toothbrushes 2 2
Lady’s leather shoe heel 2 1
White clay pipestem 1 1
Other
Isinglass stove windows 3 3
Delft tile fragment 1 1
Terracotta drainpipe fragment 1 1
Window glass 1 1
Slate tile fragment 1 1
TOTAL 473 164