Antique 1920s Homestead Eatmor Cranberries Barrel Label ✨ NY, NJ, CHI

Who Packed Homestead Eatmor Cranberries? 🏡 Homestead Brand Eatmor Cranberries of New Jersey, American Cranberry Exchange

Size: 10" x 6 3/4" ~ Little to no wear.

Step back in time with this antique 1920s Homestead Eatmor Cranberries of New Jersey Barrel Label, a piece of history packed for the American Cranberry Exchange out of New York and Chicago. This label carries the legacy of a bygone era, connecting you to the rich history of cranberry farming in America.

The picture is a real beauty: a cluster of weathered, shingled old farmhouses tucked under big shade trees, with a winding path, a split-rail fence and green lawns, all in an oval under Eatmor Cranberries in big red letters. HOMESTEAD BRAND runs down both sides in red panels.

🏷️ Every Word on the Label

• Eatmor Cranberries of NEW JERSEY
• HOMESTEAD BRAND, down both sides
• ONE FOURTH U.S. STANDARD BARREL
• PACKED FOR THE AMERICAN CRANBERRY EXCHANGE, NEW YORK, CHICAGO
• PACKER'S NUMBER, with an empty box for the grower's number

The back is blank, with the design showing through faintly in reverse.

🍒 Eatmor and the American Cranberry Exchange

The American Cranberry Exchange came together in the spring of 1911, when the Growers' Cranberry Company and the National Fruit Exchange, which the Wisconsin, New England and New Jersey cranberry sales companies had formed in New York in 1907, were consolidated under one name. Joseph J. White of Whitesbog was the first president of both Growers' and the Exchange. It sold cranberries from Wisconsin, New Jersey and Massachusetts under the Eatmor brand, first used in July 1916, and the cranberries were marketed in ladies' magazines such as Better Homes & Gardens and Good Housekeeping. By 1936 the Exchange was bragging that nineteen years of Eatmor advertising had lifted the average price of a barrel of berries from $6.08 to $9.95.

Eatmor was more than a name, too. It meant a grade: berries at least 90 percent colored, no more than 125 to a cup, and fit to travel for fifteen days. The Exchange moved to New Bedford in 1951, became Eatmor Cranberries, Inc. in 1953 and was dissolved in Chicago in 1957.

📦 The Quarter Barrel

That ONE FOURTH U.S. STANDARD BARREL line is part of the story. The standard cranberry barrel came in through a New Jersey congressman's bill in 1915, and the quarter-barrel box came along in 1926, so every label like this one belongs to the years after that. Among the Exchange's New Jersey quarter-barrel labels, the ones with just STANDARD BARREL and no country line, like this Homestead, look to be the earlier form, and the Boston Public Library dates the sibling labels of this set to the 1920s.

🌲 Cranberries in the Pine Barrens

The economic success of the first growers in the region prompted other residents to start the cranberry business in New Jersey. Early pioneers included J. A. Fenwick and Joseph J. White near Pemberton, and the Budd family, and White showed that Pine Barrens soil was just right for bogs. His daughter Elizabeth C. White went on to grow the first cultivated blueberry crop with the botanist Frederick Coville in 1916, sold as Tru-Blu-Berries. And collectors have been saving these labels for a long time: back in December 1946, a writer in Cranberries magazine noted that the old barrel labels were already rare enough to be collected and put in the Middleboro Public Library.

🖼️ Display

Crate Labels are a reminder of a bygone era and a testament to the unparalleled lithography process. 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.

Imagine this amazing vintage advertising hanging as home decor in any room of your home instead of a museum!