You can find history under your feet, and you don’t have to dig for it!

Against all odds in this hustle-bustle city, there’s a street over by Piedmont Park that is still surfaced with brick pavers. Most are plain, but a few were made by Copeland-Inglis, of Birmingham, over in ’bama.

Only a tiny bit of rudimentary googling, and I found this 1910 photo of John R. Copeland’s house in the Norwood neighborhood, and the note that Mr. Copeland was President of Copeland-Inglis Shale Brick Company. Elsewhere I found a note about the house’s owner, and a tidbit about the building’s history:

Birmingham city directories indicate that the Copeland family moved out in the late 1920s, and the house was then divided into six apartments. It remained an apartment house for decades.

Speaking of molded items with their maker’s names incorporated, I think I’d drink more beer if the bottles still had the manufacturer’s name and city molded into the bottles. Several times when I was doing archaeological surveys in the Upper Peninsula, I found old bottles with this info, from breweries in Manistique, Marquette, and Munising.

Of course, earlier today I was flipping channels and saw someone showing off a “DeSoto Beer�? can, probably found by metal-detecting (I hope they had the land-owner’s permission). Apparently the company lasted only a year or so, down in Tampa.

Anyway, back to the present…. But check what’s under your feet once in a while, okay?

This entry was posted in anthropology, archaeology on Sunday, 3 September 2006 at 4:41 pm.
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