{"product_id":"antique-1910s-1920s-dr-j-b-lynas-and-son-logansport-indiana-set-two-jbl-toilet-articles-boxes-tea-label-miladys-toilet-brochure","title":"Antique 1910s-1920s Dr. J.B. Lynas \u0026 Son Logansport Indiana Set 🧴 Two JBL Toilet Articles Boxes, Tea Label, Milady's Toilet Brochure","description":"\u003ch2\u003e🧴 Who Was Dr. J.B. Lynas of Logansport, Indiana? Four Antique Pieces From a Door-to-Door Medicine, Tea and Beauty Company\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e Small JBL carton 2\" x 7\", Large JBL carton 10\" x 4\", Tea label sheet 7 1\/2\" x 4\", Milady's Toilet brochure 10 1\/2\" x 7 1\/2\" ~ Never used, little to slight wear at most.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFour pieces from one Indiana company, running from the 1910s into the 1920s, and I put them together because together they give you the whole sales call. There's the carton the goods came in, a bigger carton that doubles as a catalog, the sheet listing everything the company sold down to the spices, and the brochure a Lynas lady spread out on your kitchen table while she went through every jar. Each piece is drawn from my stack.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere's the part I love. These four talk to each other. A JBL Toilet Articles carton shows up pictured inside the brochure. The creams on the side of the big carton are the same creams on the brochure's pages. And the company even tells you how old it is, twice, on two different pieces of paper in this set.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🩺 The Doctor\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJames B. Lynas was born February 14, 1835, in Dearborn County, Indiana, started studying medicine at seventeen, and came to Logansport in 1861. The next year he married Sarah E. Reed. By 1866 he was making what he called family remedies: Catarrh Remedy, Hoosier Cough Syrup, Ready Relief, Rheumatic Liniment, White Mountain Salve, Egyptian Salve and Liver Pills. He took his diploma from the Eclectic Medical School in Indianapolis in 1874, built a proper laboratory on Fourth Street when the back room couldn't keep up, and kept adding flavoring extracts, soaps, lotions and perfumes. He died January 28, 1901. Look down the Household Remedies column on the tea sheet and you'll still find Ready Relief and White Mountain Liniment, the doctor's own medicines, carried on after him.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🏢 And Son\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe son was George H. Lynas. He incorporated the firm in 1904 as Dr. J.B. Lynas \u0026amp; Son with $100,000 in capital, George as president and his mother Sarah as vice-president and treasurer, and that \"\u0026amp; Son\" is printed on every piece here. In December 1906 the Logansport paper reported the contract for a four-story block on Market Street, and the letters J B L are still up at the top of that building today. Old-timers have long pointed to that sign as a downtown landmark. By the 1921-22 city directory the firm was listed as \"Medicine, Flavoring Extract and Toilet Article Manufacturers,\" with an apron factory running on the third floor and sold through the very same agents. George also ran a bread company called Kiddie Knead, and he headed the family firm until he died on December 13, 1926. His brother Will sold the business in 1938, and it was dissolved in 1965.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🐴 A Horse, a Rig and a Line of Goods\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis company lived on its agents. On April 1, 1913, a county history counted between fourteen and fifteen hundred people working for Lynas in nearly every state, with about sixty more signing on every month, and any article that didn't satisfy got replaced. The way Logansport tells it, the workforce had already hit six thousand by 1900, with offices in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, London, Paris and Tokyo. When they needed salesmen they went to the papers, and my favorite is a want ad in the Syracuse Journal, up in Kosciusko County, Indiana, in January 1912: big money \"as a country salesman right in your own county,\" and \"You only need a horse and rig to start.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e📦 The Two Cartons\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToilet articles was the polite old word for soaps, powders, waters and balms. The small carton is sage green with the JBL monogram in a dark oval, a woman's head trademark, QUALITY FIRST, and a little monogram medallion on the top flap like a wax seal. It's unused, and I've pictured it both flat and folded up. The large one is a flat, unfolded blank in a softer green, with a LANGTRY BALM band under the monogram and an art nouveau lady crowned with roses, and its side panels are a catalog in themselves: Creme Gloria, \"a delightful disappearing greaseless cream,\" Dr. Lynas' Massage Cream, Crown Hair Tonic, Quick Foam Shampoo, Hair Pomade, and Salben, \"our old reliable skin treatment.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn those years no name said beauty like Langtry. Lillie Langtry, \"the Jersey Lily,\" toured America coast to coast from 1882, the same year she became the poster girl for Pears soap, and Judge Roy Bean named his Texas saloon after her. It's awfully hard to read Langtry Balm on a box and not think of her.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe big carton also boasts of \"nearly one-half century's experience.\" Count from 1866 and that lands in the 1910s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🍵 The Tea Sheet\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo panels on one cream sheet. On the left is the \"Partial List of J. B. L. Products\": lemon and banana and Jamaica ginger flavors, a \"Maple-O,\" dyes, spices, soaps, eleven named perfumes and the household remedies. On the right is the label itself, a tea porter in white and a conical hat carrying two chests stamped JBL on a shoulder pole, cranes at his feet, TEA across the bottom. The box at the top is left blank, ready for whichever variety went in. This came out of a stash on the top floor of the Market Street building, the same building with the letters on it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e💌 Milady's Toilet\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnfold this and you've got six printed panels, and the opening letter says how they did business: \"Lynas toiletries are not sold in the shops. They can be purchased only from our personal representatives who call at your home, where you may select these intimate articles in privacy.\" That same letter says Lynas had been at it \"for over fifty years.\" So the big carton says nearly fifty, the brochure says over fifty, and the bobbed, waved hair on the cover puts this one in the 1920s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePage five is why I keep coming back to it. Thirteen customer letters, names and towns, Nebraska to Virginia. Mrs. Virgie Holman moved from Joplin to Commerce, Oklahoma, and asked about taking on the agency herself. And Daisy Carter of Evergreen, Alabama wrote in for more Creme Gloria because \"your agent here has died.\" That was a real woman on a real route, and her customers missed her.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🏞️ Logansport\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLogansport is the county seat of Cass County, where the Eel River meets the Wabash, named for the Shawnee warrior James Logan, and the Wabash and Erie Canal reached it in 1837. A little Indiana family company reached from there to farmhouses all over the map, one jar at a time. Frame these together in a vanity or a bathroom, or keep them in an Indiana history collection. There is no new press run coming. When the last of these are hanging in collections and galleries, they will be very hard to track down for sale.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Curated Gift Sets","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":68147897434344,"sku":null,"price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/hero_20fd56d4-906f-44a9-94b4-7c0c3d5cdc9a.jpg?v=1794166565","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1910s-1920s-dr-j-b-lynas-and-son-logansport-indiana-set-two-jbl-toilet-articles-boxes-tea-label-miladys-toilet-brochure","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}