Courtesy Photo | Whole battleship-shaped mustard dishes produced by the Flaccus Bros. Co. are shown....... read more read more
Subscribe
Before Fort McCoy was an active military installation, the landscape had many homesteads and farmsteads. Archaeologists have been investigating what is left over from these sites for decades and have recovered some very unique dishes.
In 2015, investigators with Colorado State University’s Center for the Environmental Management of Military Lands were excavating what remained of a home once owned by a man named David Hughes when they recovered several pieces of milk glass with very detailed features.
When these specimens were taken back to the lab for further analysis, researchers determined that they were pieces of a mustard container in the shape of a battleship.
A man named George Flaccus designed and patented the distinctive mustard dish in 1898, amid a swell of patriotic fervor that swept the nation during the Spanish-American War. Flaccus had patented a catsup bottle shaped like Uncle Sam earlier in the year, and both were sold by the Flaccus Bros. Co. The company was most renowned for its use of
elaborately embossed fruit jars in packaging their goods.
Research into tax rolls and deed records shows that Hughes owned his homestead for approximately 50 years, beginning in 1890. The milk glass mustard dish and other finds back up this dating.
The milk glass battleship mustard dish was likely manufactured within 10 years after 1898 because Flaccus Bros. Co. ceased operation in 1908. An Oshkosh B’Gosh button was present at the site that dates to sometime after 1895, when the company was founded. A “Champion X” spark plug was recovered, which would have been made before 1915 and used in a Ford Model T. A spent Winchester “New Rival” shotgun cartridge from the site was manufactured sometime between 1920 and 1929. Excavations recovered part of a Pepsi bottle that had a design that was used after 1945, which likely indicates that it became part of the site’s archaeological record while Army specialists were performing a survey of the installation grounds in the late 1940s and early 1950s that catalogued
existing structures.
All archaeological work conducted at Fort McCoy was coordinated by the Directorate of Public Works
Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch.
Visitors and employees are reminded they should not collect artifacts on Fort McCoy or other government lands and leave the digging to the professionals. Any person who excavates, removes, damages, or otherwise alters or defaces any historic or prehistoric site, artifact, or object of antiquity on Fort McCoy is in violation of federal law.
The discovery of any archaeological artifact should be reported to the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch at 608-388-8214.
(Article prepared by the Colorado State University Center for the Environmental Management of Military Lands.)
| Date Taken: | 02.27.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 02.27.2020 12:39 |
| Story ID: | 364042 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, US |
| Web Views: | 108 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Fort McCoy ArtiFACT: Battleship mustard dish, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
