After a brief mention of John H. Sheehan for this blog on February 28, 1913, I had notanticipated visiting this Irish immigrant again 12 years later. My main subject then was Peter Vidvard, a Utica liquor dealer, Sheehan had married his daughter, joined in a brief partnership with Vidvard, and later left to open a drug store. But not, however, to give up selling spiritous beverages.
Sheehan offered a highly alcoholic remedy he called “Dandelion Bitters” calling it The Great Herb Blood Remedy. He boasted that his nostrum was a “Rapid and Sure Cure For Loss of Appetite, Habitual Costiveness [Constipation], Nervous and General Depression, Indigestion, Biliousness, Sleeplessness, Rheumatism, Kidney Complaints, and General Debility.” To advertise this broad spectrum remedy Sheehan issued a series of trade cards that deserve attention because these artifacts reflect elements of the late 19th and early 20th Century in American.
The first set of Dandelion Bitters trade cards shown here have much the same theme, cards based around pictures of early telephones. In 1881 the American Bell Telephone Company, working from the invention of Alexander Graham Bell,
registered profits of $200,000 (6 Million equivalent today) from the virtual telephone monopoly it owned. It leased telephones to customers and retained ownership of the instruments it owned. Although these trade cards all find something humorous to convey, the telephonic instruments employed differ in size and appearance, indicating a beginning of some variety.
The Bufford firm, celebrated for its drawings of trade cards and celebrated in my post of February 5, 2025, was the enterprise of John Henry Bufford. Born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Bufford apprenticed in Boston and by 1835 briefly moved to New York, where he opened a lithography business. Five years later he returned to Boston and formed a partnership with his brother-in-law in a new lithographic printing firm, for which he did most of the drawing. The business thrived for the next forty years. The message below was typical of the flip side of such cards.
The following two trade cards aparently were products of other (unnamed) print shops that provided Sheehan with two pictures of attractive children to advertise his bitters panacea: a winsome little girl who appears to be wearing a large flower on her head as a hat and and a sturdy little chap in a sailor suit with his dog. The message on the flip side tells us that Dandelion Bitters prevents “The usual Lassitude of approaching warm weather…By keeping the system in good order, the wastes of the body are freely carried off which keeps the Blood pure, preventing and curing Rheumatism.” Obviously knowledge of human biology was not a Sheehan strong point.
One last trade card, also with an unidentified artist and publisher, is not a bitters ad. It advertises “John N. Sheehan…Druggists, Utica, N.Y.” This image is billed as a “souvenir” and depict a weeping youngster dressed in what I believe is a South American musician’s costume. Although I have not seen a similar item I suspect the card may be part of a series of children in foreign costumes, meant to be collected.
Note: This short (extra) post would not have been possible without the Peachridge Glass website publication of the trade cards , dated February 3, 2015. The author is Ferdinand Weber, former president of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors, who graciously has allowed me to publish the Sheehan images. The Vidvard artcle was published February 28, 2013.
Addendum: In researching the Sheehan story, I found evidence that the druggist also apparently had a line of whiskeys that the proprietor sold in elaborately decorated ceramic jugs. I had never seen them before and think they also deserve attention.
