POND’S EXTRACT The People’s Friend
Ponds Extract “Baby floating in a Pond” advertising trade card.
By Fred DeCarlo A look into the early days of this well-known patent medicine and how its roots stem from an ancient recipe from an Oneida Tribal medicine man. Many bottle diggers have found bottles with the simple embossing “Pond’s Extract.” It became widely used during the turn of the century and was at one time known as “The People’s Friend” and, eventually “The People’s Remedy.” Pond’s products are still sold today in the form of face creams and cleansers by Unilever worldwide. Here we will look at the early beginnings of this patent medicine, how it came to be, and some early pontil bottles I have excavated in central New York privies. [Fig. 1] Utica, circa 1855
The research project that was undertaken here started as many do: with a bottle and a story of local ties. The local connection here happened to be with my hometown of Utica, N.Y. [Fig. 1]. Many people collect bottles for various reasons. Some enjoy the glass, others rarity, some a specific variety, and so on. My love for bottles happens to be with local history. I enjoy researching a name on a bottle that is tied to my hometown. This desire is where Pond’s Extract had grabbed my attention. Many small articles and stories had been written, and tales of pontiled bottles existed, but I had never seen one when my interest in this so-called local bottle began. Who was the name behind the bottle? Theron Tilden Pond [Fig. 2] was born in central New York, just outside of Utica, in the year 1800. The earliest records I can find on Theron began in the later 1820s when he was listed as the captain of a packet boat in a newly formed company called the “Citizens Six Day Packet Boat Co.” [Fig. 3] The company advertised new, light, and substantially built packet boats that [Fig. 2] Theron T. Pond will deliver citizens from Utica to Schenectady in much less time than older boats. Theron’s packet boat days did not last very long as he moved to Auburn, New York, around a year later. Here he met his wife, Sarah, and they were married in 1831. Theron was listed in several advertisements in the 1830s as running a grocery store in Auburn. Theron went on from this endeavor and returned to Utica, NY, and 14
[Fig. 3 below] 1830s packet boat. Theron T. Pond was a captain of a similar boat in the late 1820s.
is recorded as owning a saddle, harness, and trunk manufactory and retail store on Genesee Street in Utica during the later 1830s and early 40s. This business he ran with a man named Samuel Gordon for
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