Antique 1910s J B Lynas Tea Label: Logansport ✨ IN Advertising

Size: 7 1/2 x 4" ~ little to slight wear. Never would notice on display, but please see pictures and judge for yourself. They vary a little one to the next.

🍵 What This Sheet Shows

Two panels on one cream sheet. The left lists a "Partial List of J. B. L. Products" — a real catalog snapshot: flavoring extracts (lemon, banana, Jamaica ginger, cinnamon, orange, peppermint, strawberry, vanilla, even a "Maple-O"), dyes, spices, a full line of toilet articles and soaps, eleven named perfumes, and a run of household remedies down to Blood Tonic and White Mountain Liniment. The foot line reads "DR. J. B. LYNAS & SON, — Logansport, Ind.".

The right panel is the tea label itself: a bamboo-look frame around an oval vignette of a tea porter in white, conical hat, carrying two blue chests stamped JBL on a shoulder pole, in front of a red wall with faux-Chinese lettering panels, clouds and a setting sun, two cranes at his feet, "TEA" across the bottom in shaded block letters. The box at the top of the frame, where a variety name would normally go, is left blank on this sheet — other printings of the same design fill it in with OOLONG or IMPERIAL and add a third panel of tea-buying copy. This is the plain stock version, ready for whichever variety went in the box.

👨‍⚕️ Dr. J. B. Lynas

James B. Lynas was born in Dearborn County, Indiana, on February 14, 1835, and came up through the Eclectic Medical School in Indianapolis, earning his diploma in 1874. He had already begun mixing family remedies for his patients by the mid-1860s, and the demand outgrew a back room fast enough that he built a real laboratory to keep up with it. He married Sarah E. Reed in 1862; she outlived him, dying in 1911. He himself died on January 28, 1901.

🏢 Dr. J. B. Lynas & Son

His son George incorporated the firm in 1904 as "Dr. J. B. Lynas & Son" with $100,000 in capital — George president, Sarah Lynas vice-president and treasurer — and in 1906 moved it into a new four-story building on Market Street, still carrying the letters "J B L" at the top today. By 1913 the company had between fourteen and fifteen hundred agents working nearly every state, adding roughly sixty more a month, selling not just the original J. B. L. medicines but spices, teas, sachet powders, toilet articles and perfumes off the same list this sheet prints. The whole operation ran on those agents and a replace-it-if-you're-not-satisfied guarantee — the firm's own line was that its trademark was "a guarantee of absolute purity" — with no newspaper advertising at all.

🫖 A Building Full of Labels

George ran the company from 1901 until his death in 1926, alongside a bread business of his own called Kiddie Knead. His brother Will sold the family firm in 1938; it was dissolved in 1965. This label turned up in a stash found on the top floor of the Market Street building — the same floor where George ran an apron factory, seamstresses at work above the shop. The letters J B L are still up there today.