Photo By Aimee Malone | A piece of a glass chimney for a lamp discovered at Fort McCoy is shown. It's unusual...... read more read more
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The archaeologists who have been conducting investigations at Fort McCoy for decades use the artifacts they find in the field to tell the story of the history and prehistory of the lands which make up the installation.
These stories are limited by both what kind of artifacts are recovered, but also by the condition of those artifacts by the time they are recovered. More than 200 archaeological sites have been identified at Fort McCoy which contained artifacts dating to the last 150 years, and one of the most fragile types of materials commonly recovered is lamp chimney glass.
Kerosene lamps were standard features at homesteads and farmsteads in rural Wisconsin prior to the widespread availability of electrical power. According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, only one in six farms in Wisconsin had electrical service in 1930. President Franklin Roosevelt established the Rural Electrification Administration via Executive Order 7037 in 1935, which Congress supported with the Rural Electrification Act in 1936. In 1937, Richland Electric Cooperative became the first electrical cooperative in Wisconsin.
Archaeologists with Colorado State University’s Center for the Environmental Management of Military Lands in 2015 recovered one of the most complete pieces of chimney glass from a kerosene lamp from a farmstead site. Lamp chimney glass is easily distinguished from bottle glass, glassware shards, and window glass, primarily because its thickness is a fraction of that of the other types of glass shards that are found at such sites.
The specimen found is interesting not only for how much of it remains intact, but also because it bears a maker’s mark, which can help track down where the lamp chimney was made and when. The mark bears the words “White Flame,” which almost certainly refers to the White Flame Light Co. in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Victor Blandford started the company in the early part of the 20th century, with Blandford initially selling his wares to area farmers. His improvements to the Queen Anne oil lamp burner base increased the amount and brilliance of light it put out, and Blandford quickly established a manufacturing agreement with the Scovill Manufacturing Co. in Waterbury, Conn. White Flame Light Co. advertisements appeared in magazines such as Popular Mechanics and Farm Journal in the 1910s and 1920s, but by the start of the Great Depression in 1929, Blandford had left manufacturing for a career in real estate.
A review of deed and tax records indicates that the farmstead from which the lamp chimney glass was recovered was developed in the first decade of the 20th century. These records do not detail the construction of buildings specifically, but rather list “improvements” to a property. This means that we cannot know exactly when the first residence was constructed, but we can say that additional improvements, which continued through 1915, indicate that multiple buildings were constructed, one of which was a home.
This timeframe for the creation of the farmstead matches well with the timeframe of White Flame lamp production and is further corroborated by the presence of a pair of buttons found at the site with an eagle with a shield motif on the front and “SCOVILL MFG CO/WATERBURY” on the reverse. The Scovill Manufacturing Co. began as the Abel Porter and Co. in 1802 making buttons from sheet brass. By 1842, the company had become Scovills and Co. and was manufacturing silver-plated copper sheets used for daguerreotypes in the infancy of photography. The Scovill Manufacturing Co. eventually merged with the E. & H.T. Anthony Co. and rebranded as Ansco.
By the early 1950s, 90 percent of American farms had electrical service, and reliance on oil lamps such as those produced by the White Flame Light Co. dwindled.
All archaeological work conducted at Fort McCoy was sponsored by the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch.
Visitors and employees are reminded they should not collect artifacts on Fort McCoy or other government lands and leave the digging to the professionals.
Any person who excavates, person who moves, damages, or otherwise alters or defaces any historic or prehistoric site, artifact, or object of antiquity on Fort McCoy is in violation of federal law.
The discovery of any archaeological artifact should be reported to the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch at 608-388-8214.
| Date Taken: | 10.23.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 10.23.2020 15:12 |
| Story ID: | 381653 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 132 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Fort McCoy ArtiFACT: Glass top for chimney lamp, by Aimee Malone, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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