Seneca Boston-Florence Higginbotham Collection
Burnett Glass
Burnett’s Standard Flavoring Extracts were a food flavoring extract made and sold by Joseph Burnett & Co. in Boston, Massachusetts from the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century. Joseph Burnett, the founder of the company started as an apothecarist and eventually moved over to producing and selling predominately household and food items. The flavoring extracts produced came in a variety of flavors including lemon, orange, ginger, nectarine, peach, celery, vanilla, almond, rose, gloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon. These flavors were advertised for flavoring various baked goods, soups, sauces, and gravies. The bottle shown is one such flavoring extract bottle, dating between 1910 through the 1920s.
Seneca Boston- Florence Higginbotham House Iron
Many today will recognize this as an early iteration of a common household appliance, an iron for pressing fabric materials. In the mid to late 1800’s irons such as this one would be placed flat side down over a heat source. Once the flat bottom was warm enough, it would be removed from the heat source and placed onto the cloth for ironing out wrinkles. This iron was recovered from the Seneca Boston-Florence Higginbotham House in Nantucket during excavations carried out in 2008 by UMass Boston.
Woven Milk Glass Basket
This basket can be found in the Westmoreland Catalog in 1904. It is labeled as the “The Westmoreland Specialty No. 1 Bushel Basket” and came with two lid choices, including a basket cover and a “peep cover” with chicks hatching. The peep cover would have cost just a few cents more than the bushel basket cover. Both baskets came in a variety of colors, including some that were painted. They also were sold in a version where on the side of the basket a scene depicted farm animals or farm life. This bushel basket’s intended use was as a small sugar container, likely to hold small amount for coffee or tea. Photos of various versions and the catalog can be found in the link below.
Butterfly Transferprint Plate
The above whiteware plate is a transfer-print design from the late-19th century, more specifically 1890 forward, in a light brown “Summertime” pattern. It remains unbroken after having been thrown away in a house cleanout event of the early-19th century.
The black and gray dots that can be seen on the plate are stickers that were placed there to help with 3-D scanning and are not a part of the plate.
Iron Padlock and Key
This padlock is a unique find as the key was found with it inside the lock! Not much is known about it, but it appears to date from between 1852 and 1932 according to surrounding artifacts that have been dated. That means that it dates to when Charlotte Boston Groves was the owner of the Boston-Higginbotham House.