Crock bottle help

[deano]

This is my first post in this section, I normally do detecting but the weather has been too wet to detect. As I was scouting a place to hunt the other day I spotted a bottle near a sight where they are digging the creek bank out for a new bridge. After looking around for a while I found a few more but this one is the most interesting. I would like to know how old it is and if it is a common bottle or what. It has no markings on it. This was found in the older part of our town, one of the glass bottles (Mellins Food Co.) dates to 1860 to 1880. Thanks for looking.
Deano
Crock bottle 2nd from right

[kurt-ks]

Very cool bottle Glad I got to meet you in Kansas,had a good time chatting with you and Dulac.Wish I was up there digging those bottles with ya.HH

[Harry Pristis]

[quote=deano ]
This is my first post in this section, I normally do detecting but the weather has been too wet to detect. As I was scouting a place to hunt the other day I spotted a bottle near a sight where they are digging the creek bank out for a new bridge. After looking around for a while I found a few more but this one is the most interesting. I would like to know how old it is and if it is a common bottle or what. It has no markings on it. This was found in the older part of our town, one of the glass bottles (Mellins Food Co.) dates to 1860 to 1880. Thanks for looking.
Deano
Crock bottle 2nd from right
It is a stoneware ale bottle, almost certainly made in Scotland or England. They are abundant. They date from the 1860s to TOC, but vast numbers were imported late in the 19th century.

Some Northeast collectors mistakenly refer to these unmarked bottles as "ginger beer bottles"; but, if one of these bottles ever contained ginger beer, it was a secondary use after the ale was consumed.

Here's a description of the stoneware bottles found on the Bertrand, a steamship that sank on the Missouri River in 1865: