Old Fruit Jars
More than a century ago fruit jars were popular with most of rural Brown County homesteads. Fruit jar orders could be filled at any local general stores. They could be purchased by the gross in wooden cases for around ten cents a jar. Today the old jars are admired by collectors and can have a premium value.
In the years post-civil war until around 1915 there were numerous glass factories producing fruit jars in Indiana. The Ball brothers from Muncie, Indiana produced a well-known brand but there were other glass companies— over 400 before 1900— with names like Boyd, Champion Syrup Company from Indianapolis, Dillon Glass Company from Fairmount, Root Glass Company out of Terre Haute, Star Glass Company from New Albany, and Swayzee’ s from Swayzee, Indiana— all making nice examples of fruit jars. It would take many volumes to list all the glass factories that produced storage jars.
Old jars came in all sizes, shapes, and colors. The four standard size measurements are half pint, pint, quart, and half gallon.
You can tell when a fruit jar was produced before 1906 because the lip of the jar has a rough texture from being ground down with a stone wheel. These jars were all hand-tooled, or manmade, from the beginning of the process to the end product. The jars after 1906 were made by an automatic fruit jar making machine. Machine made fruit jars have a smooth lip— collectors refer to this as a“ smooth lip variety”— and are uniform in shape, looking exactly the same.
Older fruit jars have beautiful color tones that enhance eye appeal of the glass. Color is considered“ king” and makes jars desirable with collectors. Colors such as amber, apple green, Ball blue, cornflower blue, emerald green, honey amber, olive green, sun colored
62 Our Brown County • May / June 2014 amethyst( SCA), and clear make the difference between a $ 2.00 fruit jar and one that is worth hundreds.
It used to be very hard to produce a clear glass fruit jar. One ingredient needed to make it clear is manganese. When the old clear glass jars with manganese are exposed to sun light the jars turn different shades of amethyst.
My wife and I use the“ Ball blue” fruit jars to store our dry goods. They are more plentiful to find than the older, pre-1906 jars and do not cost as much to replace if they break.
Brown County has good places to find the older fruit jars. The outdoor flea markets which run from April through October and area antique establishments are fun places to search. Some of the fruit jars pictured in the article were discovered this way with many decades of dust and dirt on them. After a good cleaning they display just as well as they did when they were first made over 100 years ago. •
~ submitted by Paul Sachmann
HARTFORD FESTIVAL continued from 50
In 1976, Hartford’ s lifelong love of the Mississippi River led him to record an album of river-oriented songs, Mark Twang.
From there, Hartford dedicated the rest of his career into further researching old-time music and its history, including working on a biography about Ed Haley, a West Virginia fiddler, and cutting a number of Haley’ s songs.
In what would be the final year of his life, Hartford received a Grammy for his contributions to the soundtrack of the hit movie“ O’ Brother Where Art Thou.”
A mentor for a generation of bluegrass players, Hartford died June 4, 2001, at 63 after a two-decade battle with non-Hodgkin’ s lymphoma. •
AWARENESS continued from 58 endeavor is made possible with funding from the Brown County Lions Club. Thanks to them for this opportunity to get kids out and active. It’ s great to know our civic clubs see value in these conservation field days. I only wish this annual one-day event involved other students and was offered more often.
Enjoy your spring. Get out and enjoy these beautiful Brown County hills. Teach a child something you know in nature. For parents, home schools, and leaders, here’ s a great resource for conservation education: < greenteacher. com >. •