{"product_id":"large-antique-homestead-mince-meat-label-farm-scene-decor","title":"Antique Brick's Old Homestead Mince Meat Label 🏚️ LARGE RECTANGULAR Farm Scene, Edgar Brick \u0026 Sons NJ, NOS 1920s","description":"\u003ch2\u003eWas Brick's Old Homestead Mince Meat Really \"Consistently Superior Since 1874\"? 🏚️\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 9 1\/2\" x 5\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/W3ktTkYWHlk\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eMost old labels brag about something nobody can check. This big one prints its own birth year in plain type, CONSISTENTLY SUPERIOR SINCE 1874, and the history behind it holds up. It's a New Old Stock Brick's Old Homestead Mince Meat label from the 1920s, printed for the Crosswicks, New Jersey firm of Edgar Brick \u0026amp; Sons and never used. The family that made it is worth the read, I promise you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🫙 What It Says\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eUnder the farm scene comes MINCE MEAT, then that 1874 line, then the recipe, which it says Old Homestead is prepared from: apples, sugar, raisins and currants, beef, candied peels and cane syrup, salt and spices, and brandy. After that the preservative, 1-10 OF 1% BENZOATE OF SODA, then it closes with PREPARED BY over the maker's name, Edgar Brick \u0026amp; Sons, Crosswicks, N. J.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🧪 Uncle Sam's Fine Print\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat benzoate line is the government talking. The 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act started making food makers own up to their preservatives, and by 1909 the rule allowed benzoate of soda at up to one-tenth of one percent, so long as the amount was stated on the package. \"1-10 of 1%\" is exactly that rule at work, so this label came after 1906. The trade puts these big Old Homestead labels in the 1920s. When Princeton dealer Joseph J. Felcone cataloged a lot of about a hundred unused Brick's labels, some forty of them were Old Homestead labels this same 5 by 9 1\/2 inch size, and he dated the lot to around the 1920s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏪 Seventy-Six Pounds\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEdgar Brick and Susan, his wife, settled in Crosswicks in the 1850s and kept a general store on Main Street. The mince meat on their shelves came from Philadelphia makers, Edgar thought it was nothing special, and in 1874 he made a batch of his own. He sold 76 pounds of it that first year. That's the 1874 on this label: not a slogan, the year one storekeeper decided he could do better.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSales kept climbing, and five years in he needed real room. In 1879 he bought two farmhouses nearby, moved them onto the property and joined them into one factory, which kept picking up additions for decades after. Put a mince meat called Old Homestead inside two old farmhouses and I'd bet that's no coincidence. By the turn of the 20th century, Edgar Brick \u0026amp; Sons was the largest mince meat maker in New Jersey.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLocal grocers knew what they had. A 1907 ad in the Mount Holly News ran, \"MINCE MEAT.—Brick's, there are two kinds, we have both,\" at 10 and 12 cents, and another line in the same paper promised, \"When you use Brick's Mince Meat you always have good pies. It is clean, sweet and reliable.\" Not a bad review.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e👨‍👦‍👦 The Brick Boys\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEdgar died in 1920 and the company passed to Arthur R., Josiah E. and Charles W., his three sons. Brick family members ran it for the next 48 years, and they grew it into something Edgar never saw. At the peak, during World War II, forty workers in Crosswicks turned out around three million pounds of mince meat a year, the biggest output of any mince meat maker in the country.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThey were a civic bunch, too. Edgar had been a Crosswicks fireman since 1864 and was named the fire company's first chief in 1882, and in 1922 his sons gave the company its first firehouse, plus a motor chemical engine, in his memory. In 1919 the new Crosswicks Community Association picked Josiah as its first president. Charles had the old mill on Crosswicks Creek in the 1920s, when new ice-making machinery went in and its ice went out to customers like the Hildebrecht Ice Cream Company in Trenton. The family helped bring electricity to the village, ran a mill and ice plant on the creek, and helped form the Chesterfield Township Historical Society.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🥃 Brandy on the List\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSee the last ingredient? Brandy. Prohibition started in 1920, almost right away people lobbied to keep foods like mince meat legal, and in 1922 a court ruled that culinary products could lawfully hold liquor. Brick's had its federal paperwork in order: their Banquet Hall label from the same years printed \"PROOF ALCOHOL BY VOLUME 14 PER CENT\" with Federal Prohibition Permit N.J. H-926. The story collectors like to pass around is that the brandy was a big part of why customers stayed loyal through the dry years. Take that one as legend, but it's a good legend.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🌾 Crosswicks\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eQuakers settled Crosswicks in 1677, which makes it the oldest of the three villages in Chesterfield Township, and the township's historical society counts Chesterfield among the first Quaker communities in the Delaware Valley. The name traces to the Lenape word Crossweeksung. The 1773 Friends meeting house still carries a cannonball in its wall from the skirmish of June 23, 1778, fought five days ahead of the Battle of Monmouth, and to this day nobody knows whether the British or the Americans fired it. In 1976 the village's historic district went on the National Register of Historic Places for its architecture, military history, religion and transportation. Felcone summed up the working side of the town in one line: Brick's mince meat was \"one of the major industries of Crosswicks\" in the decades either side of 1900.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏚️ The Last Chapter\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBy the 1960s mince meat was falling out of fashion. In 1968 the company stopped making it and went into alcoholic beverages, and in 1979 it closed, 105 years after Edgar's first batch, with much of the equipment sold off at auction. The Hamilton Uniform Company bought the factory in 1980 and ran there for many years before closing as well. When Preservation New Jersey put the building on its endangered list in 2017, it was sitting empty with sections of the roof collapsed, still standing in the Crosswicks Village historic district.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe recipe got a second life anyway. At the Chesterfield Township Historical Society's 2014 Heritage Day in Crosswicks, the mince meat for sale was made from a recipe based on Brick's.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🍎 Mince Meat, the Old Way\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eOld American mince meat was winter food put up in the fall: cooked beef, suet, apples, dried fruit, sugar and spices, with brandy or rum to preserve it, baked into pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Brick's still had beef in it, the way Americans liked it long after the British had mostly dropped meat from their mince pies. And if anybody tells you Oliver Cromwell outlawed mince pies at Christmas, that one's a myth, though a fun one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏷️ The Brick's Family of Labels\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBrick's sold mince meat under several names, including Old Homestead, Nonpareil, Banquet Hall and Beechwood, and Old Homestead itself came in more than one design, including a small oval with its own farm scene. A painted wooden firkin still wearing two Brick's Nonpareil labels came up at auction in 2024 out of a collection in East Windsor, New Jersey.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e📦 Condition\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNew Old Stock, never used.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🎁 Good For\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🖼️ Framing big. At 9 1\/2 by 5 inches it holds a wall by itself, and UV glass with an acid-free mat keeps it safe.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🍂 Fall and holiday kitchen decor, out every October and put away after New Year's\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🏡 New Jersey and Burlington County history collections\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e🫙 Grocery label collectors who like a label that tells you its own age\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"relatedBlock\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🔎 More From The Vintage \u0026amp; Antique Gifts Archive\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1910s-1930s-bricks-old-homestead-mince-meat-labels-crosswicks-nj\"\u003eAntique Brick's Old Homestead Mince Meat Labels 🏡 Edgar Brick \u0026amp; Sons Crosswicks NJ 1910s-1930s Litho Set NOS\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/rare-antique-1910s-1930s-old-homestead-mince-meat-strip-label\"\u003eAntique Brick's Old Homestead Mince Meat STRIP LABEL 🏡 Edgar Brick \u0026amp; Sons Crosswicks NJ, Letterpress NOS\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/large-version-antique-1910s-beechwood-mince-meat-label-treasures-gifts\"\u003eAntique Beechwood Mince Meat Label 🥧 LARGE VERSION, Edgar Brick \u0026amp; Sons Crosswicks NJ, Rum Recipe NOS 1910s\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40769704034469,"sku":"VAG-7034816200869","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.3310874706_ijj6.jpg?v=1785353519","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/large-antique-homestead-mince-meat-label-farm-scene-decor","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}