October 2005 Newsletter

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Upcoming Meeting - Oct. 6 th , 2005,

Doors Open 7:30 p.m., Meeting starts at 8:00 p.m.

Directions to the Town of Islip Recreation Center, Ronkonkoma Beach Pavilion at Lake Ronkonkoma off Rosevale Ave. (631) 467-3308

From the LIE: Exit 59, Ocean Ave North to Rosevale Ave. bear left to 1 st traffic light, turn right at light into park, left into parking lot, building is at the end on your right.

From Sunrise Highway: Exit 49 Lakeland (Sayville) continue north crossing Veterans Highway, merge w/Ocean Ave, continue north under LIE & follow the directions above.

And now few words from the President (or chief bottle nut notes)

Well, as I was writing this for the September newsletter, all of us were watching the Gulf Coast, as Katrina was approaching New Orleans. September was not a good month for the Gulf Coast, and I have many times thought of the people who used to, and still do, reside there.

Also, I want to thank each and every member who braved the drastic spike in gas prices to attend. It was heartwarming to see all of you there.

Hope that you enjoyed the piece on the Sayville Dairy bottles that I did, I know that 3 months is a long time to complete an article, but I will admit it has taken me at least 20 years to gather the knowledge that I shared with you in those three months. I just hope that I will be lucky enough to complete my collection of Sayville Dairy bottles in my life time! I have some big holes to fill, and it will not be easy.

September was quite a busy month for me too. I had a wonderful time as I set up at two outdoor antique shows here on the Island, first in Cold Spring Harbor, and later way to the West in Great Neck.

First for Cold Spring Harbor. I had the great pleasure to meet a number of the club up there, let's see, there was John Feldman, Frank Bennett, and George Fisher pop into my mind. I also had the fortune to meet several collectors that I had not meet before, I knew some of them only by their eBay names, for others it was for the first time, and to become involved in a research project on Huntington pottery too. What a great day.

Then I did a show in Great Neck. Wow, that was fun, and I met a ton of bottle collectors there. The crowd was much different than that at Cold Spring Harbor, as it was a street fair setup, so you had a large percentage of the public browsing about. Perhaps the most interesting man I met that day, I do not recall his name, but he was retired from the sales department at Owens-Corning glass. He used to manage the sales for the Eastern United States for the glass maker. He was not a collector, but he was just so thrilled to see someone collecting and selling bottles! He really made my day, and I think I made his.

Now this Sunday, October 2 nd , I gave a program at the Sayville Historical Society, on bottles from Sayville. Well received as always, and it was very nice to see the people there who have helped me with some of my questions on Sayville bottles over the years. My First Aid kits from the Indispensable Kit Company of Sayville were a big hit, as were the Sayville milk bottles.

Since I have all this stuff packed up, I figured this: How about I do something for the club on Sayville bottles? I do not know if I have ever done this particular program before for the club, so if you would like to see it, just come on down to the meeting on Thursday October 6 th !

Also, for your reading enjoyment, I have this month a piece on a little known, but very early Sayville Pharmacy, which was known as, what else, The Sayville Pharmacy. It is not very well known, as no embossed bottles are known to have been used; only paper labels, thus it would be tricky for you diggers to turn one up! This Pharmacy predates Thornhill's Pharmacy which still operates today, and was closed for good I believe in the late 1950's or the early 1960's.

Looking forward to seeing you on Thursday! Mark

A quick P.S. from your editor apologies for the lateness of this newsletter, between a family emergency and work I fell behind. Hopefully you shall have all remembered there was a meeting and showed up, if not smacks and se you next month. Without further ado onto Mark's article on the Sayville Pharmacy. Laura

A Brief History of the Sayville Pharmacy

Now, I know what many of you are thinking right now, oh, a piece on Thornhill's Pharmacy. Ha, wrong, I fooled you! This is about the other drug store in Sayville the Sayville Pharmacy, which was established by C. F. DeVries, shortly after the Civil War.

Now, to start at the beginning, always a good place to start. I have seen several references over the years to a Pharmacist, who at some time shortly after the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865, traveled around the country searching for a town that while not having a pharmacy, had a substantial enough population to support one. These references have indicated that Sayville was chosen in the late 1860's. There is only one problem with what I learned to date here, and that is no name is given for the Pharmacist, so there is some speculation involved.

The Sayville Pharmacy was located in the block of structures on the South side of Main Street, where the road forks to become South Main St. and Montauk Highway. Sparrow Park is located at this fork today, in front of Dick's Gulf service station. Some have referred to this block as the Brown Block, after the Brown family, who has owned it for many years.

Now, it is hard to find much remaining of the Sayville Pharmacy, as to my knowledge, no embossed bottles were ever used, they relied on paper labels. I am very fortunate to have today a fine set of paper labels numbering some two dozen all marked "C. F. DeVries/Druggist & Pharmacist/Sayville Pharmacy", or a variation of this. I also have a paperboard coupon for a free fountain pen, and it mentions that C. F. DeVries/Sayville pharmacy was an agent for Park & Tilford candies.

A fine article appeared in my local historical society's newsletter some years back, titled "The Medicine Man 1910" and featured memories of the Sayville Pharmacy as written by Mort Brown, and for the following paragraphs I have used it extensively for reference.

The shop was small, perhaps 20 feet wide, with half a dozen steps leading up to the front door located in the center of two large windows which displayed the show globes, filled with colored water, that reflected colored lights throughout the interior of the shop. Inside the shelves went from the floor to the ceiling, and there were many cabinets and showcases filled with displays of belts, bandages and bottles. Patent medicines lined the shelves, and bottles and more bottles were neatly arranged on dusty shelves, many of the labels having faded with the passage of time. There was a dusty old mounted owl high on a shelf beside a display of mortar and pestles of various sizes. The entire shop had an odor of antiquity that pervaded the stuffiness, but the cure alls were what would catch your attention. For example there were Dankey's Magic Pain Extractor; Pink Pills for Pale People; Pulomina Syrup; Seaweed Tonic; Vegetine, the great blood purifier; and Herrick's Pills, Plasters and Powders. Dr. Hammond's Nerve and Brain Pills and Dr. Rose's Arsenic Complexion Wafers both seemed very interesting! There were pills for curing liquor, tobacco and morphine addiction, electric liniment, blood pills and a worm syrup. Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable compound was boldly displayed on the shelved much to the dismay of the more modest women folk who were very hush-hush about it.

While the sign over the front door read "C. F. DeVries/Pharmacist", the quaint little old man who shuffled around behind the counters was widely known to all as Polly DeVries. While you would never call him Polly personally, how the name came to be is lost to the passage of time. His advice was sought by all for its common sense, and his suggestions were felt to be as good, or better than those of the doctors.

While Polly DeVries was unmarried, he did live with two spinster sisters who were typical of the day. They were neat and tidy with poise and well bustled and corseted. One of the sisters was a midget, perhaps just two feet tall, but perfectly proportioned. Everyone who knew her liked her, although she was rarely seen in public.

However, time waits for no one, and time eventually claimed the old pharmacist. As such, the business was sold and the new owner proceeded to modernize the shop. Basically everything was thrown out in the trash. However, the new owner was shocked to learn he had in his haste destroyed many strange old bottles, and boxes of expensive and valuable drugs that he then had to replace at considerable expense. He regretted for many years the loss of what he had so impulsively destroyed.

Ok, now at this time, I return, and I wish to thank Linda Conron of the Sayville Historical Society for her help in locating this article in the Society archives.

The business name remained the same, Sayville Pharmacy, but the owner was now Erich Tietze, Pharmacist. I believe the pharmacy changed hands c.1921-1922. Funny thing here, there used to be a fine, and fairly deep dump in Sayville, which dated to the early 1920's that I dug at extensively in my youth. The dump measured around 50 feet X 50 feet by 6 feet deep. A home stands smack dab on top of it today, and it has a full basement to boot. I remember that the one corner of the dump was a treasure trove of medical items, bottles, jars, decayed leather bags, glass ware all related to the medical professions. For years I thought it was a clean out of a doctor's office, but now I wonder if this was the material from the Sayville Pharmacy. It covered an area of oh, 6 feet by 6 feet and a good 4 foot thick, and this was after it was dumped, busted and given 70 years to settle and decay. I guess it would make around 3 or 4 good wagon loads. While I can not prove it, it is quite a coincidence!

Erich Tietze would operate the Sayville Pharmacy into the 1960's, and when he was in the process of closing up the shop, he was approached by a gentleman from the South, who was interested in purchasing much of the contents for a museum he was setting up. A deal was struck, and the material moved south until the late 1990's when the owner of the museum passed away, and the contents were auctioned off on eBay. I was lucky enough to acquire a great deal of material from the Sayville Pharmacy ranging from paper booklets to prescription files to bottles with the paper labels still on them. I learned this when I asked the seller, how did so much Sayville material come to be in South Carolina? That is when she told me about the museum buying the store in the 1960's.

 

Above are some of the paper labels from the Sayville Pharmacy showing C.F. de Vires as Druggist and Pharmaceutist. Hey I never knew Gin was a pharmacologic item.

I thought that you would enjoy seeing one of the old prescriptions from the Sayville Pharmacy. If you look carefully, you will see the date on this one is August 10 th , 1933, in the heart of the Great Depression.

And next take a look at the price charged for the prescription, a double quantity for 1.30, but the customer must have either taken half, or been short of funds, as the notation of 75 cents appears at the very bottom.

Now, I have no clue what some of the symbols mean, or what the materials are or do, perhaps Ron will be able to share with us some insights into the world of the pharmacist.

This is only one prescription out of hundreds that I have from the Sayville Pharmacy, and all of them date from the 1930's.

Very interesting to look at and flip through, I recognize many early names from Sayville and the surrounding communities. Some of the prescriptions are from doctors as far away as NYC and CT!

Above, we have a booklet produced for Talbott's Poultry Medicines that features a stamp from the Sayville Pharmacy under the For Sale by. It is in very good condition and is very interesting reading.

Below are two in tact paper label bottles I have from Tietze. To the left the Glycerin bottle has some of contents in tact. To the right a label under glass with original glass label in tact and paper labels on the back. Note the Prescription Specialist and "blank Store of Reliable Service"

Some important notes from your editor - the December Newsletter will be the last one that Mark and I shall be doing. It has been a pleasure and a challenge to bring you an "award winning" newsletter but the time has come for us to move on and for others to step up to the keyboard. We hope some one will as without a newsletter you do not have a heartbeat for a club. We will be happy to help anyone who wishes to take this position over, please give us a call if interested. It is also that time of the year to be thinking of new officers as without them a club can not run. Laura