Wednesday, May 13, 2009

The Turner Brothers

Which product did James, Malcolm, Archibald, Thomas and Robert Turner fill their "Turner Brothers" square quart size bottle with ?

The Turner Brothers were listed as soda water manufacturers as early as 1850 in Buffalo New York. By 1853 they had opened a branch depot in San Francisco and were listed as syrup and cordial manufacturers. By 1858 they are pushing their Ginger Wine, Forest Wine Bitters and a Vegetable Bitters in newspaper advertising. Even though the Turner's manufactured many products, most Western collectors believe that the Turners bottle contained the Forest Wine Bitters product. It would be my guess that the bottle was used for all of the products that they marketed. Just slap a different paper label on the old square for whatever the contents and you were good to go!





3 comments:

  1. I dug a KILLER Turners a number of years ago, and let a fellow collector talk me out of it. He just HAD to have it "for his collection". Funny, he sold it for a very nice profit shortly thereafter. Sometimes, but not always, we learn by our mistakes.

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  2. OldCutters,
    I have dug several broken Turner's at Monte Cristo, but still don't have an undamaged example in my collection. The Turner's on my shelf has a crack in the back shoulder area that was caused when it was hit by a quarter during the coin toss to see who wound up with the bottle.....
    g.0.

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  3. OH NO, GO! Was it a coin toss, or a attempt to toss the coin into the bottle?

    Monte Cristo!? Dangerous place to hang out, I hear. The "Nazis" are on the lookout for pillagers like you guys. Well, at least you can hear 'em coming for miles and take appropriate action.LOL

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