Vintage NOS 1960s Brunswick Chocolate Soda Bottle Cap 🍫 Madawaska, Maine

Chocolate Soda From the Top of Maine? 🍫 Vintage NOS 1960s Brunswick Bottle Cap, Madawaska, Maine

Size: 1 1/4"

Chocolate soda from the very top of Maine! These are New Old Stock caps from Brunswick Beverage Co. of Madawaska, right up at the top of the state, unused and never crimped onto a bottle. A cap from a small bottler way up in the St. John Valley doesn't turn up every day, and chocolate is one of my favorite flavors to find.

🍫 What's on it

ENJOY across the top, BRUNSWICK in a black scroll banner with "T.M. Reg." tucked under it, and CHOCOLATE at the bottom, all in black on a pale yellow-green cap. Around the skirt it reads "Brunswick Beverage Co. Madawaska, Me. 04756." Clean white liner inside. Like every uncrimped crown, it measures 1 1/4 inches across.

📅 How old is it?

That ZIP code, 04756, can't be any older than July 1, 1963, when ZIP codes began, so this cap was printed in the 1960s or after. Brunswick bottles dated as late as 1973 turn up, so the company was still going strong into the seventies.

👨‍🌾 J. Cyril Beaulieu, the man behind Brunswick

Brunswick Beverages was the second business of J. Cyril Beaulieu, and he's a great story. He was born on October 13, 1916 in St. Modeste, Quebec, and graduated second in his class from the St. Hyacinthe School of Agriculture in 1937. At 22 he came across to Grand Isle, Maine, barely speaking any English, and started the Grand Isle Creamery, which became the St. John Valley Creamery. He was Grand Isle's very first fire chief, from 1947 to 1951. After the war he moved and grew the creamery in Madawaska, and in 1952 he added Brunswick Beverages.

Brunswick got famous all over "the Valley," especially for its cream soda, and the line ran to chocolate, root beer, cola and more. The bottles say it plainly: "Bottled with carbonated spring water by J.C. Beaulieu, Prop., Madawaska, Me.," with his JC monogram on the label and the same Brunswick scroll you see on this cap.

He did plenty besides soda. He helped found the Birch Point Golf Course and build St. Michael's Chapel, belonged to the Knights of Columbus and Rotary, and Governor Edmund Muskie appointed him to the St. Lawrence Seaway Commission. He went into the Maine Franco-American Hall of Fame in 2005, got a Lifetime Achievement Award from Governor John Baldacci in 2007, and passed away on January 8, 2012, at 96.

🗺️ Madawaska, Maine

Madawaska sits on the St. John River at the northeast corner of the country. Four Corners Park there marks it as the most northeastern town in the lower 48, and right across the Edmundston–Madawaska Bridge is Edmundston, New Brunswick.

The town's roots are Acadian. At the end of June 1785, about twenty Acadian families led by Joseph Daigle worked their way up the St. John from Fredericton and landed on the south bank near where St. David's church stands today. Daigle put up a cross where they made camp, and the Acadian Cross still marks the landing site. The border with Canada wasn't even settled until the Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842, which gave Maine most of the disputed ground, and Madawaska was incorporated in 1869. French is still spoken all through the Valley, which makes a Quebec-born soda man fit right in.

🏡 Display

Perfect for a cap collection, a Maine or Acadian display, or anybody from the St. John Valley. Chocolate caps are a fun one to hunt, and this one comes with a whole family story.