I'm Ken Smith and I'm a collector of antique, Texas stoneware, utilitarian stoneware and pottery. I love collecting it because it really gives you a slice of life about how people stored things, how people lived back in the 1800s and early 1900s. What I've got here today is between a quart and a half a gallon whiskey jug that reads Hanewich, or Hanewich Fine Liquors, Bryan, Texas. We date this jug somewhere in the range from 1890 to 1910. It was probably made in Limestone County, Texas, up east of Waco, which was a large area that, or had a large pottery manufacturing business during that time.
Interestingly enough, there's some little quirks about this jug. In the word fine, the E is actually backwards. And if you notice on the word, Bryan, the A is a lowercase A, as opposed to all capitals, like in the rest of the wording on the jug. So, it's just some little idiosyncrasies about this, when they were putting the stamp together. The stamp is cobalt. Cobalt leaves a blue stamp. Manganese is another thing that they used when they would do this kind of jug or this kind of advertising. It usually leaves a brown mark.
I don't have any information about Hanewich Fine Liquors, here in Bryan, Texas. I've been doing research. The closest thing that I've been able to find is that there was at least one family with the name Hanewich that immigrated into the Port of Houston and roughly late 1800s, early 1900s. And they immigrated from Russia. So, that's all that I've been able to find about this. But I keep digging, trying to see what we can find out, and trying to learn the history of these jugs, and what they meant for the city of Bryan.