Tea has been a popular afternoon practice in Europe, especially in England, for centuries. The practice of sitting down for hot tea with some sort of finger food (tea cakes, dainty trifles, etc) did not become a popular practice in America until the early to mid 1800s. This practice was surrounded by showing off your… Continue reading The Tea Time Teacup
Annularware patterns on creamware or pearlware pottery comes in lots of different types, such as banded, cabled, marbelized and mocha. All of these types of annularware patterns had their popularity peaks but all were around in the late 1700s to mid 1800s (except mocha which was around until the late 1890s). We find different examples… Continue reading The Busted Bowls
Talk about mayhem…over 320 hand-painted clay marbles were found at the site of B.S. Hawley’s store! I was losing MY marbles counting them all. There are many different variations of linear patterns on the marbles (1, 2, 3 and 4 lines, some crossing and some not). Some of the marbles were badly burned so their… Continue reading The Marble Mayhem
Ok so they are probably German not Turkish BUT they do portray a Turkish man with a turban and mustache! Over FOUR HUNDRED of these green glazed ceramic pipes were found on B.S. Hawley’s store property (holy moly!). Since the pipes were burned in the fire and buried under dirt for almost 150 years, the… Continue reading The Trampled Turkish Pipes
In 1843-1844 B.S. Hawley placed extensive detailed ads for wholesale and retail sale of “Drugs, Medicines, Paints, etc. etc.” for sale at 24 Water Street, the location at which Nelson Hawley & Co. advertised in 1839. These ads were far more extensive and detailed than any other merchant at any time. These ads covered a… Continue reading The Indexed Inventory
On April 13th, 1844 the Commercial Advertiser republished an article from an extra printed on the previous Tuesday that B.S. Hawley’s store was destroyed on the night on April 8th. The article is as follows… ” Between 11 and 12 o’clock last night, our citizens were aroused from their beds by a tremendous and deafening… Continue reading The Great Conflagration!
Many people ask me about my thesis site and instantly ask what artifacts were found. Of course these artifacts are important but what we can’t forget is what context those artifacts were found in. The context of these artifacts was a store in Apalachicola which burned down in 1844. Why is this store important? Because… Continue reading The Hawley Headstone
Evidence of 600+ glass bottles were found at the B.S. Hawley store site. About 300 of these bottles were whole (but empty!). The other 300 were calculated as the minimum number of vessels based on the bases and lips of broken bottles found. These glass bottles held everything from perfume to medicine to alcohol to… Continue reading The Fragmented Flasks
Overall, B.S. Hawley’s store yielded evidence of 55 gray salt glazed stoneware jugs. Some of the jugs were stamped with maker’s mark and others were bare. All of the jugs appear to be either two, three or four gallons in size. The pictures below show some of the better specimens that were able to be… Continue reading The Jumbo Jugs
You know me, I love the more personal objects on a site. What did they wear? What were their cosmetic items? Perfume? Well check out these BRUSHES. The first picture is of a wooden hairbrush that was broken in the fire. The top part with drilled holes for bristles lays at about 8.5 cms. The… Continue reading The Burnt & Broken Brushes
