Bottled History

Sometimes items that I pick up remain complete mysteries to me, and other times I can (usually by way of Google) actually find some information about them. The item I'm featuring this week falls in the latter category.

A while back I found a bottle online that featured the Waldron Drug Store from Denison, Tx. The owner was a certain "J.F. Tinsman." Here are a couple of pictures...

As it turns out, this was enough information for Google to do it's magic. For example, I know that the store was open in 1906 because of an article explaining how Mr. Tinsman was pushing toothpaste at that point. It was also open in 1911, because that was the year that Tinsman got in a bit of trouble for selling a medicine for purposes that it was not intended for. This was actually pretty common back then, when advertising pushed the envelope on what medicines could actually do... Here are the articles:

So now we know quite a bit more about Mr. Tinsman. However, whenever you find out more answers, you get more questions. For example, we don't know where in Denison the drug store was. We don't really know when it opened or when it closed, or whatever happened to its owner. If anyone knows, feel free to comment!

Until next time, keep searching for treasure!