Antique 1930s Herlong's Treasure Crate Label 🍊 Leesburg, FL, Pirate Chest Decor!

Who Packed Herlong's Treasure Citrus? 💰 Herlong's Treasure Brand, A. S. Herlong & Co., Leesburg, Florida

Size: 9" x 3 1/2" ~ Little to no wear.

A treasure chest spilling over with gold coins, and a branch of ripe oranges hanging over it. For a Florida citrus man, that was the real treasure! This is an antique 1930s Herlong's Treasure Brand crate label from A. S. Herlong & Co. of Leesburg, Florida, never pasted on a box, and it's cut in a long strip with clipped corners like a little banner.

🔍 What's on it

The label reads Herlong's TREASURE BRAND, a treasure chest of gold coins under four oranges, and in script beneath it A·S·Herlong & Co. (not Inc.) and Leesburg, Florida.

I love that "(not Inc.)." Somebody made a point of printing, right on the label, that this was a company and not a corporation.

🍊 Albert Sidney Herlong

Albert Sidney Herlong was born in 1886 in Ward, Saluda County, South Carolina, and came to Florida as a young man. He moved to Leesburg from Center Hill in 1920, and two years later he started A. S. Herlong & Company as a citrus packer, broker, shipper and grower. The firm was already doing business under that name by 1926, when The Citrus Industry listed "A. S. Herlong & Co., Leesburg" among the shippers signing contracts. In 1931 a welding trade journal listed its welded steel citrus plant in Leesburg, 74 feet wide and 215 feet long.

That big, busy packing house stood along the railroad tracks, across from the train depot in downtown Leesburg, and the firm packed under a whole string of brands: Mammy, Griffin, Snow Baby, Belle of Florida, and Herlong's Treasure. In 1935 Herlong was appointed to the brand-new Florida Citrus Commission, and he later became one of its leaders. He also chaired the board of the Citizens National Bank of Leesburg, and he's in the Florida Citrus Hall of Fame. He had a hand in a good bit of Lake County business besides his own packing house, too. He sat on the board of the Tavares & Gulf Railroad, whose line ran south out of Tavares down the west side of Lake Apopka, and on the boards of the Foremost Fertilizer Company right there in Leesburg, which his son Byron ran as president in the 1950s, and the B & W Canning Company over in Groveland. He died in Leesburg in 1963. His son, Albert Sydney "Syd" Herlong Jr., graduated from Leesburg High School, became a Lake County judge, and served twenty years in Congress, from 1949 to 1969.

The old A. S. Herlong packing house was sold to Beacon College in 2017, and word around Leesburg then was that it was coming down.

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this antique advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! That long banner shape looks great framed over a doorway or a kitchen window, and it's a perfect gift for a pirate lover, or anybody from Leesburg or Lake County.

Crate Labels are a reminder of a bygone era but the amazing lithography process is unparalleled even to this day in my opinion. Museums and Art Institutes have galleries dedicated to them and more and more collectors are seeking these out to preserve their history. Once the limited supply for sale is gone and on display with collectors or in galleries then they will be very difficult to acquire.