From Kaskaskia to Sangamo: July 2012

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The Ancestor of Pepsi in Antebellum St. Louis

As I've been working on a report on a massive collection of artifacts from a Irish neighborhood in St. Louis, dating to the 1840s and 1850s, I thought I'd post a few more examples of relevant artifact types. Then I will return to the frontier and colonial periods of the region.

The first soda water bottle made for a St Louis merchant.
Made between 1845 and 1847.

Commonly recovered from archaeological mid-nineteenth century features in St. Louis are early soda water bottles. Soda water was first bottled in St. Louis in 1845, by druggists Rudolph and John Adams. A newspaper advertisement placed by the druggists in the spring of that year actually explained to local consumers that their product was “bottled by machinery in such a manner as to retain the fixed air perfectly, which renders it a beverage quite as delightful as being drawn from the fountain itself ”.

Being the earliest form of the bottled, flavored soda pop that is so ubiquitous today, these products were also marketed for their health effects during the mid-nineteenth century (probably most often as relief for stomach complaints).

About the "Illinois Country"

The “Illinois Country” was the name used by the French to refer to a large region located south of Lake Michigan, surrounding the confluences of the Mississippi, Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio Rivers. The name referred to the indigenous residents of the region – the Illinois Tribe – who moved to the region around 1600. The central portion of this region became the State of Illinois in 1818.

French traders and priests were aware of the Illinois region by the 1640s. The French Canadian priest Father Jacques Marquette established a mission among the Illinois in the 1670s, and the legendary explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle built the first fort in the region in 1680.

The Illinois Country became a French colony in 1717, and was home to several French trading and agricultural villages, as well as Fort de Chartres on the Mississippi. The British arrived in 1765, and British merchants affiliated with Benjamin Franklin were selling their wares in the old French towns when George Rogers Clark captured the Illinois County for the Americans in 1778.

Illinois was the scene of rapidly expanding frontier agricultural settlement by 1800, and the last frontier settlements reached northern Illinois by the 1840s. The well-known “Sangamo Country” frontier (in central Illinois) was home to a young Abraham Lincoln.

Historical archaeology has been practiced in Illinois since 1918 – some of the earliest in the country. Both research-based and salvage-oriented excavations have examined dozens of sites spanning the French, British, and early American periods.