Added on September 15, 2014 Ray Berg

Talkin’ Trash in Manchester—Part 1 of 4

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by Ray Berg and Alan Dyer

Introduction

Over a four-part series, the authors explore a feature common to both of their home sites – the presence of a large canyon with steep land, unusable for most practical purposes. Unusable as it may be, this feature provides an opportunity to gain some understanding of the lifestyle and practices of earlier generations.

Alan Dyer lives in the historic Italianate home built by Dr. Bennett Root in 1867 on Ann Arbor Street. It is situated above the River Raisin Mill Pond with a steep slope from the back of the property leading to the water. Ray Berg owns a home in Freedom Township constructed on property originally cleared and farmed in 1832 by James W. Hill, the first settler of Freedom Township. Among the owners of this land over the last 100 years were the Gumper, Alber, Hutzel and Eisemann Families. This property contains a deep canyon on its south side, formed over centuries by a free-flowing tributary of the River Raisin.

These features provided a convenient and acceptable place to dispose of trash in the 19^th century. Burials on private property were also common in the early-mid 1800s and this was done at both sites. Parts 1 and 2 of this series examine trash disposal sites in the rural areas around Manchester, and what their excavation can tell us about a bygone era. It concludes with information on burials prior to the establishment of cemeteries in the region. Parts 3 and 4 will examine the sanitary issues that arose from waste disposal in the urban setting of Manchester village in the last half of the 19^th century.

Middens

Regular trash pickup in the rural townships as we know it did not exist until the 1950s. In the mid-late 1800s and up until 1950, trash was simply disposed of by burning it, throwing it outside the door or window to decompose, tossing it down a hillside out of sight, or dumping it into an outhouse or old well shaft. In these cases, the organic materials would slowly decay over time, while glass, metal and hard woods would remain. This accumulation of materials over time led to formation of trash heaps, often referred to as “middens” by archaeologists. The word derives from the medieval English word midding. Originally of Scandinavian origin, it is defined as a dunghill or refuse heap.

Excavation of middens is common at historic sites like Jamestown, Virginia or President James Madison’s Montpelier family home (see Figure 1). These structures provide important information regarding the site’s development, the living habits and diet of the people who lived there, and the origin of articles used in everyday life. Such findings often contradict and rewrite the previous history of the area and its occupants.

Figure 1 – Midden Excavation at Montpelier Estate, Virginia

Berg’s property, two miles east of Manchester Village in Freedom Township, has a natural canyon which was used to dispose of trash (see Figure 2). Within this canyon, eight distinct large middens have been located, primarily on the north side. These middens typically formed when the owners used naturally formed ravines to dump their trash. As trash accumulated and layers developed, the midden contents slowly sagged down the hillside. Therefore, the oldest artifacts are found by excavating layer-by-layer to the lowest level of a midden near the top of the canyon. Excavation is best accomplished in the early spring, typically the first two weeks of March, before ground cover and other foliage grows and hampers digging.

This property had the following owners on the north side: James W. Hill (1831-1854), John Gumper (1854- early 1890s), and various members of the Michael Alber family (early 1890s- early 1960s). The south side owners included the Hutzel family during the 1880-1910 period, and the Eisemann family from the 1910s into the 1930s. All were crop farmers with small herds of cattle and sheep. The Alber family also developed the still-existing Alber Orchard and Cider Mill. Based on the age of the items recovered, most of them come from the Gumper, Alber and Hutzel families, although the bottoms of these midden piles have not yet been reached.

Figure 2 – Rural Canyon Containing Eight Middens, Freedom Township

In these rural middens organic materials, including paper labels on bottles, soft woods, fabrics, leather and foodstuffs, have long since decayed. What remains are glass bottles, metal, and hard woods, with early forms of plastic near the top of the excavation pile. Each successive layer excavated reveals objects that are older than those found in earlier layers.

Figure 3 shows a typical midden, which contains approximately 20 glass bottles, metal pails, crockware, and other unidentified metalware laying on its surface. Excavation revealed several additional layers that included objects going back to the 19^th century. A nearby active coyote den halted further excavation of this midden for the time being. Research on the upper level bottles placed many of them in the 1910s-1940s period. They were often marketed as “one-way” containers, sometimes due to their “medicinal” nature, and at other times because bottlers profited by their manufacture. In the latter case, this fact was often cloaked in the guise of saving consumers the “hassle” of returning them for a refund.

Figure 3 – Midden Contents at Surface Level

Investigations of other middens have yielded objects dating back to the 1880s. The most significant find is a sealed bottle containing a gold-colored liquid (Figure 4). While the paper label no longer exists, Internet research on the bottle’s glass-embossed lettering led to the identification of this patent medicine as Dr. Thomas’ Eclectic Oil. This bottle was produced by the Foster-Milburn Company around 1905. This “medicine”, sometimes marketed as “eclectric oil”, is a formulation of spirits of turpentine, camphor, oil of tar, red thyme and fish oil. Among many other claims, it supposedly cured toothaches in five minutes, lameness and deafness in two days, and the pain of burns or scalding in five minutes. This bottle was likely purchased by the Alber family about 1905 at the Haeussler-Kingsley Drug Store in Manchester, where the product was prominently advertised on the hitching posts near the front of the shop. Dr. Thomas’ Eclectic Oil is still available from the Northrop Scott Co. of Belleville, Ontario.