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SSeptember eptember--O October ctober2021 2021
BBottles ottlesand andEExtras xtras
The Texas Blue Blob By Brandon DeWoolf
The “Texas Blue Blob” all clean in the sunshine
A
lthough Texas is not necessarily known for having particularly early bottles, several early Texas bottles can be found here by a persistent digger. This is the story of the early days of one of the first bottling works in Texas and the digging of one of those special bottles that came from there.
Philip Canterbury Philip Canterbury was born around 1798 in Massachusetts and died May 30, 1872, in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was an orphan, with both of his parents passing away when he was very young. The first listing for him is as the owner of a coffee auction house in New Orleans in 1846 at 116 Chartres. At some point in the 1840s, he married a widower named Bridget Fox; they had one child who died young. Philip appears on the 1850 Census in New Orleans as a soda water manufacturer, in the 1851 New Orleans directory as a soda water manufacturer at 18 Circus St. (now South Rampart) and in 1852, he appears as the owner of the Bachelor Hotel in Biloxi, Mississippi. Indications are that Philip arrived in Galveston around 1855 from New Orleans (he shipped one slave from New Orleans to Galveston on March 28, 1855). Shortly after arriving in Galveston, he owned or managed a soda water business located at the corner of Winnie Street and 26th Street. In 1859 and 1866 he is listed by himself in the city directories, in 1868 he is listed as Canterbury & Cordis (sic), and by 1870 he does not show up in the Galveston directories and appears to have moved back to New Orleans.
