Lady from Lawrenceville bottles up history 

Bea Affleck is not Ben’s mother nor is she related to him in any way. She is amused at how often people, when seeing her name on a reservation, assume it is a typo and are disappointed when the famous actor doesn’t show up for the appointed time. But Bea Affleck has her own identity apart from her celebrity sound-alike name.

Bea boasts a collection of bottles that spans four centuries. When I visited her in her Lawrenceville home, I expected to see thousands of random bottles, but she had no more than a few dozen bottles and jugs neatly displayed on two shelves in her living room. Her collection is far more a matter of quality than quantity.

But then growing up with antiques has made Bea a very discriminating collector.

“My grandmother had an antique shop called Odds and Ends when I was growing up in Akron, Ohio. I spent a great deal of time there,” Bea said.

Even though Bea was surrounded by antiques all her life, it wasn’t until about 20 years ago that she took an interest in collecting anything.

The bottle that started her collection was a gift from her mother. Embossed with “Warner’s Safe Cure,” the bottle has historic value in that the government imposed semantic standards in 1850 requiring such tonics to be called remedies rather than cures.

Another bottle with square sides she told me was used for ballast on ships in the 1700’s. The bottles were filled with water, or whatever potable the captain considered appropriate for his crew. As the liquid was consumed, it was replaced with sea water, thus keeping the weight of the boat constant.

Bea’s Wilson Fairbank Old Bourbon Whiskey bottle has a warning that states “For medicinal purposes only.” OK, so who was the bottle czar back then? But someone must have been watching because Bea said most of these bottles are found in outhouses where people would treat their medical problems in private, then throw the bottle down the hole.

Bea has several Moses bottles, molded in the likeness of human forms. They were first blown in 1876 and were used for 200 years as containers for Poland water, the same water we buy today in plastic containers.

Then there was the sour cream bottle. “I remember the milkman delivering these and there was a three cent deposit,” Bea said. 

I, too, remember when bottles were collected, cleaned and refilled, which seems to be a greener way of doing things than our high tech system of melting them down and remaking them back into the same thing. 

Though Bea’s name may sound like that of a famous actor, as I thought about the history lessons she presented to me, it seemed that her hobby better reflects a famous singer. It was Jim Croce’s musical wish to “put time in a bottle.” Bea Affleck does just that. 

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