Parkesburg, Pa., history told by the bottles

Some people know Gerry Treadway as a teacher who imparted woodworking skills at Unionville High School for 35 years.

Others know him as the character who dresses up as Uncle Sam and marches in parades on patriotic holidays.

Still others know him as the unofficial historian and one-man historical society of Parkesburg, a quiet village in western Chester County.

But to folks who are passionate about old bottles, especially those with local ties, Treadway is the dean of this peculiar pastime and an astute collector whose authority is based on decades of diligent research.

Treadway's focus is bottles with a Parkesburg connection. Over the last half-century, he has collected more than 150 pieces - malt-liquor bottles, milk bottles, apothecary bottles, whiskey bottles - all bearing the name Parkesburg, either embossed or printed on labels. The collection ranges from bottles made as long ago as 1852 to plastic prescription containers from the nearby Wal-Mart Supercenter.

"I've always liked bottles," Treadway says. "If a bottle could talk, it would be very interesting to hear what it has to say, where it's been, and what it's done."

For Treadway, every old bottle has a tale to tell, and piecing together that story is the true delight.

"It's like a treasure hunt," says Treadway, 74, who has published the stories of many of his bottles in a book with the straightforward title Parkesburg Bottles.

For instance, bottles bearing the name A. Jimason led him to investigate the life of Alexander Jimason, who probably worked as a machinist in the Parkesburg repair shops of the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad, where he devised and patented a locomotive valve shield, before becoming a bottler.

Through county records, Treadway discovered that Jimason died in 1876, at age 56, and was buried in York County. When Treadway went looking for Jimason's grave, he found it in New Park, Pa., in a Presbyterian churchyard - only yards from where his own parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents rest.

It took Treadway about six years to produce the book, which he constantly revised and corrected as information came to light. His wife, Barbara, who is sympathetic to his hobby ("it keeps him happy"), typed the manuscript into the computer. His son, Bryan, who teaches graphics at Unionville High, did the layout and design.

Treadway researched the book by searching records at the Chester County Historical Society and in the county archives and by interviewing old-timers in town. ("Most of them are gone now," he says. "If I hadn't talked to them, their recollections would be lost forever.")

The bottles he describes illuminate the lives of some of the town's most enterprising citizens and capture its history during a time - from about 1850 to the Depression - when Parkesburg, with its railroad shops, iron company, opera house, trolley line, pioneering radio station, and minor-league sports teams, was thriving and "on the edge of a lot of new things happening."

Glass bottles emerged as the new technology in the 1850s, replacing ceramic containers. Parkesburg had throughout its history at least two or three pharmacists, who used glass bottles for all manner of drugs and homeopathic remedies, and in the 1890s at least three bottlers of malt liquor and "vinous spirits," which were brewed, distilled, and fermented elsewhere but bottled locally.

Thanks to a plentiful supply of such refreshment, Saturday nights in town were often rowdy, as farmers, railroad workers, and iron company employees converged to blow off steam and, emboldened by booze, assert their manhood. Says Treadway: "There was a lot of hell-raisin'. A bunch of drunks would butt a few heads, and some folks would get locked up."

After the milk bottle was invented in 1889, local farmers soon adopted it to distribute their dairy products. Between 1895 and the 1960s, 18 dairies operated in the area, and Treadway has examples of many of their bottles. He displays these and other prized finds in the dining room and kitchen of his Victorian brick twin and in beautifully crafted mahogany showcases in the basement.

Treadway became interested in old bottles when he bought his first one at a public sale in the early '60s. At an auction a few years later, he bid less than a dollar for a tray of junk glassware and discovered that it contained six drugstore bottles from Parkesburg pharmacist Harry E. Smith, embossed and labeled. It was kindling that ignited his enthusiasm for bottles with an explicit Parkesburg link.

Over the years, Treadway has found old bottles at public auctions, flea markets, and yard sales. "I always have my antenna up," he says. He has retrieved them from attics, barns, and abandoned wells, cisterns, and outhouse pits. He has discovered them in the woods and along creek banks and at excavation sites. One man gave him a bottle he found in a partition. Others have offered him bottles saved by forebears. Treadway welcomes them all, though those with identifying markings are most desirable.

In days of yore, town dumps were repositories mainly for ashes, cans, and bottles. Like an archaeologist, Treadway knows that ancient trash pits are troves of buried treasure. When a building in town is being razed or remodeled or a lot is excavated, Treadway is invariably there, snooping and scouting.

"Bottle collectors love to dig," he says. "That's the ultimate thrill - to dig someplace and find old bottles."