DUPRS_0047 - Alderney Dairy Co. Bottle Base

DUPRS_0047 - Alderney Dairy Co. Bottle Base

A broken glass shard of irregular shape.

The artifact is in one piece, a broken glass shard of irregular shape. It was plainly once circular, and formed the end of a cylindrical shape. Most likely this is the bottom of a bottle. It is marked with an ‘F’ in the center and along the edges ‘T.F’M’G Co., ‘PAT’, and ‘9’0 are clearly seen. The rest of the information they formerly conveyed, as well as their context, has been lost with other bottle pieces.

Alderney Dairy Company,

Selective Surface collection, east Stanley Park, Historic Chatham Township (modern Summit, New Jersey)

Drew University, Department of Anthropology, Drew University Passaic River Survey

Circa 1880.

Aisha Arain

Glass

‘T.F’M’G Co.’ is a marking typical of the bottoms of milk bottles produced by the Alderney Dairy Company, once located at 26 Bridge Street, Newark. Both Alderney and T.F’M’G have long ago passed into obscurity; the exact date was undeterminable, however it is likely that the Alderney company based in the greater Newark area closed down some time prior to 1938. Very little information seems to remain of the old Alderney company outside of old photographs of their milk bottling facilities. The business may have shut down due to the Great Depression or just the flow of business. The bottle shards would seem typical of a bottle in the style of the complete bottle produced by Alderney Dairy, Newark in 1889.
The bottle shards were found in an area that has long been used as a garbage dump (the designation of the site area as a park hasn’t stopped this practice completely; plenty of modern trash may be found next to items which may be over a hundred years old), so I believe the item’s significance is one of an everyday object, something quite common in the time of its manufacture and use. The bottle must have been considered disposable enough to discard at some point; either intentionally as a whole bottle once used, or as a consequence of breaking the bottle in some other way. If it were more precious, repair could have been attempted.