Antique Medicine Bottles Dr Cannon's Medicine Chest

ANOTHER "PATENT MEDICINE ARTICLE" FROM THE PAGES OF

ANTIQUE BOTTLE AND GLASS COLLECTOR MAGAZINE

THE MAGAZINE OF THE ANTIQUE BOTTLE COLLECTING HOBBY

Many collectors look for old bottles embossed with their family name. My "Cannon" bottle was the subject in Medicine Chest, September, 1988. I've never been a genealogist, but one Christmas we were given a large, black "Family Bible" to begin collecting dust on the coffee table. Between the Old Testament and the New, were pages for the family tree with two pages for the husband and two for the wife, so I located the "family genealogists" and began to gather information.

Our younger son is named Daniel Stockton Cannon, and my father was Stockton Cannon (1906-1988). My grandmother was Florence Permelia Stockton (1869-1908), and my great-grandmother was Gabriel Bumpas Stockton (1820-1883). Naturally I have also looked for "Stockton" bottles, and presently own two: Stockton's / Port Wine / S W Monogram / Bitters, amber, rectangular, 9 1/4 inches tall, and Stockton Drug Co. / 265 Main St. / Stockton, Cal., clear, rectangular 4 1/4 inches tall.

Gabriel Bumpas Stockton's grandfather was Douglas Hayden Stockton, a relative of Richard Stockton who was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. I'm not sure that my parents knew this when they named me. Gabriel's father was Douglas Hayden Stockton II (1800-1836) and his mother was Emily Bumpas Stockton (1802-1882). Her father, Dr. James Bumpas (1769-1836) was a physician, as was his brother Gabriel (1768-1868). Also, Douglas and Emily had son in the healing profession, Dr. James Madison Stockton (1832-1913), Gabriel's younger brother. These are the only three physicians I know of in my family tree before I became one. We had mostly teachers, preachers ranchers and merchants.


Florence P. Stockton	Gabriel Bumpas Stockton

The Bumpas Family From Person County, North Carolina., 1972, complied by Anne Shirley Bumpas and James Richard Townsend, tells that James' and Gabriel's parents were Edward and Martha Bumpas, and that these sons were born in Person Co., N.C. They moved to South Carolina around 1798, and Drs. James and Gabriel Bumpas headed a colony of 50 or more from South Carolina about 1809, to become early settlers of Giles County, Tennessee. James spent the remainder of his life in Tennessee, but Gabriel died in Alabama. James' wife, Sarah Franks Bumpas (1776-1865), was born in South Carolina. Along with her many family duties, she prepared herbs and other medicines needed in her husband's practice.

Three of the Bumpas daughters married and moved to Texas with their husbands; Emily and Douglas H. Stockton II were among them. Several years after James died, Sarah also decided to move to Texas where she lived with her daughter Harriet and William Chappell in Washington County. General Sam Houston was a neighbor and close friend who spent many evenings in this home talking with Wm. Chappell and "Mother Bumpas" (Sarah) about the problems of the Union and Texas' threat to secede. Sam was very opposed to the 1861 secession of Texas.

Carlyn Ring in For Bitters Only, 1980, considers Stockton's Port Wine Bitters bottles to be scarce.

Bill and Betty Wilson in 19th Century Medicine in Glass, 1971, state that William W. Stockton learned the wholesale liquor and wine business as a young man, working in his father's store in Santa Clara, Ca. When he inherited the business in 1882, he expanded the liquor department and sold the bitters on a local scale for a few years before giving sole agency to the large wholesale grocery house of Albert Man & Co. in San Francisco. They distributed it more widely, but the brand was never a good seller. In 1887, Stockton moved to San Francisco, where he suffered a series of setbacks due to illness, and operated a small cordials manufactory for a while. He died in 1900. Frank R. Quinn of the San Francisco public Library could find no additional information. The Santa Clara Co. Historical Genealogical Society wrote the N.H. Stockton and his brother Stephenson Pernell Stockton both had established vineyards in Santa Clara Co. They did not know which was the father of William W. Stockton.

They did find that Stephenson P. Stockton was born in 1830 in Alabama. Douglas Hayden II and Emily had 9 children, all born in Lawrenceburg, Tenn., from 1820 through 1836, but no sons with initials N.H. or S.P.

The Stockton-San Joaquin County Library supplied information about the Stockton Drug Company. Peter H. Dentoni (1879-1937) and Joseph M. Campodonico (1876-?) founded the store on November 23, 1906. My bottle is bimal, which is evidence that the drugstores used bimal embossed prescription bottles well into this century. Mr. Campodonico's Central Pharmacy in San Francisco had been burned out by "the fire of 1906", probably meaning at the time of the devastating earthquake there on April 18, 1906. My father was born the next day in Texas, and that's how I remember the date of the earthquake. The last Stockton City Directory entry for the company went out of business of changed its name after that time. The address given was N.E. Cor. Main and Sutter St. They were listed as wholesale and retail.

Stockton was named by its founder, Captain Charles M. Weber, in honor of Commodore Robert Stockton of the U.S. Navy, and was chartered as a city in 1850.

My wife's great-great-great-grandfather on her father's side was Adlai Osborne (1744-1815). This same individual was also the presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson's great-great-great-uncle. My wife's father is very strongly republican and was not particularly impressed when we told him about this relationship.

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Stockton's Port Wine Bitters	Stockton Drug Co., Stockton, Cal.