Past/Present
- A little over a week ago we received a comment from Nigel Britton in the History of Brown Sauce section. Mr Britton is the great great grandson of Edwin Samson Moore and Edward Eastwood. It was Edwin Samson Moore who, with the financial backing of Edward Eastwood, founded the Midland Vinegar Company at Aston Cross (Birmingham), United Kingdom. It was the Midland Vinegar Company who later introduced Garton’s HP Sauce in 1899. Mr Britton’s comments mark the first contact we’ve made with anyone related to HP Sauce and we thank him for his comments!
- Today, we received a number of picture submissions for the gallery from Tony. Thanks Tony!
- My friend Tom recently discovered a couple of vintage glass HP Sauce bottles at a local antique dealer located in the Johnston Terminal at The Forks here in Winnipeg. Yesterday we took a trip out there and sure enough there were in fact 3 bottles (2 of which I took home with me – I’ll take a return trip sometime next week for the 3rd).
- Over lunch Tom -being a collector himself, told us that when people were settling the Red River Valley region in the 1800′s, settlers would first build a sod house (a house made of earth), then over the course of the next few years they would build a more permanent structure nearby. Once the new house was built, the old house would act as a shed or as a building for farm animals with the means of disposing of garbage typically consisting of dumping refuse behind a grove of nearby trees.
This is the place to look if one is to wander around old homesteads searching for old treasures. Although the houses may be long gone, it’s often possible to find the trees which would’ve been used as the dumping area by using old photographs as reference. Any tell tale signs of a disposal site may be long gone nowadays, but by using a metal detector one could find metals such as tin or iron remaining in the soil. The items made of metal may be long gone but things such as glass or pottery would remain. It’s sites like this where the two bottles purchased at the antique dealer are likely to have originated from.
Imagine being a Canadian immigrant in the late 1800′s or early 1900′s. You and your family have finally arrived from overseas to begin your new life from next to nothing on a plot of land out on the open prairie. The food available to you would most likely have come from your own family farm. Spices would have been either unavailable or unaffordable for the longest time. Imagine then how exotic a bottle of HP Sauce would’ve seemed to you!
