July 1996 Recent Dig Yields Wood Covered CD 724.3 Insulators

This is the story about the discovery of a group of wood-covered Chester Wade type insulators CD 724.3. Six specimens were unearthed in the early summer of 1995 in the heart of downtown Toronto, which proved to be the six best preserved examples known to the hobby. Prior to this find, the best CD 724.3 with its outer hardware was dug by the legendary Banks brothers.

TORONTO YORKTOWN SHOW

by J. H. Hayes

At the Toronto Yorktown 7 Show & Sale on November 14, 1976, a little more information was added to our knowledge of the origin and existence of insulators.

Norm Banks and his brother Gord of Burford, Ontario, brought in a wood covered black glass insulator like the new Wade I reported in the April Insulators magazine. The most interesting feature about this insulator, although most of the wood had rotted away, was the iron band around it. This band is exactly the same as the one shown on page 265 of History, Theory and Practice of the Electric Telegraph by George B. Prescott, 1866, Boston (See reproduction.) .

Further reference was made in March 1973 Cross Arms magazine, page 22. This reference indicates that the insulator was made by Charles T. and J. N. Chester of New York. It is interesting that one of these should be found in Canada. It may have been made under license, or, as in the case of many others, imported. Nevertheless, it would appear that what I thought in April to be a Canadian insulator is more likely a Chester. One factor to consider, however, is that when you hold this Wade-type insert beside a Baby Battleford, from the bottom view you can't tell which is which.

I agree with Jack Hayes’ theory in the 1976 article from Insulators, Crown Jewels of the Wire that these small “Canadian” Wades were imported or made under license, perhaps by the same glass house that made the Baby Battlefords (CD 738.4). I also suppose that these were experimental units. It is incredible to see the work involved in making each tin-covered insulators. First, of course, a glass insert was poured in the manufacture. Then, a block of cedar was lathed and drilled to fit around it. Then it was covered in tin, held in place by a tack, the head of which was covered by a blob of solder. (see photo #1) Then, the two wire rings which served as wire groove were soldered to the tin. WHEW! From the picture above along with the Wades that were dug, I conclude that three different styles were experimented with. #1. Wood covered with wire rings on the wood. #2. Wood and tin covered with wire rings soldered on. #3. Wood and tin covered with a type of snap-on clamped iron belt as pictured above. From the relatively short time of use they got, we can conclude that they were not found to be a very practical unit for insulation.

All that remains of the cover is the iron ring which served as a wire groove and a few splinters of the cedar wood which encloses the glass insert. This find established that these small Wades were indeed covered. We now know that some not only had wooden covers, but that the wood was sheathed in a galvanized tin cover as well. (see Photo 1.) What follows is an account of the amazing coincidences leading to the acquisition of these historical beauties.

Photo 1. The tin-covered Wade with its glass insert alongside.
The solder covered tack holding the cover on is clearly
visible just above the wire rings on the right side.

I was playing a club in Canmore, Alberta where the band stays in a "band house" rather than a motel. Usually there is a permanent resident who lives there to insure that the band doesn't wreck the place. I noticed that this fellow's room had shelves full of bottles and medicines that were obviously dug. Naturally I got to talking with him and showed him pictures of my insulator collection. He mentioned the name of a friend of his in Toronto with whom I was acquainted. He was a serious bottle digger who had dug insulators in the past. I was told that he had dug a very strange looking threadless a week before. Needless to say I called long distance that night and asked him to hold it for me to look at. I could scarcely wait the three weeks until the tour was over and I could return home!

Upon my return I called this fellow again and was told he had dug ten more threadless, six of which had wooden covers! I was one excited boy! I'll never forget the feeling of walking into his place and seeing, fresh from the mud, six CD 724.3's with wooden covers, two of them with tin around them, one broken insert (see Photo 2 and Photo 3), along with the “weird” threadless -- a CD 782, and to top it off, a blackglass Foster Bros. and a CD 740 in light green. This digger had previously found lots of CD 742’s and CD 740’s at the Skydome dig years before, so he knew the Wades were very unusual. His plan was to put them up for auction at a large glass auction house. Well sir, I spent the next few days re-mortgaging the house, calling my folks for a loan, and arranging my finances to enable me to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

It took a couple of sessions of negotiation to arrive at a price for the lot. Finally, he agreed to sell, but since he was still digging at the site, he refused to tell me where they were found. Fair enough, but I definitely wanted some provenance on these historical rarities! He assured me that when the dig was done, he would tell me exactly where they were located. The only clue he gave me (with a wry smile) was that they were found “underwater.”

Photo 3. The three best specimens and an insert the day I got them fresh from
the dig. The lathe-turned wooden sheath and tack are most visible on the
specimen at the far left.

It just so happened that I had my eyes on a downtown excavation that began before I left on my western tour. The foundations of a building were being dug just south of the old St. Lawrence Market, adjacent to the Esplanade, at the site of the old Jarvis and Church Street docks on Lake Ontario back in the pre-1880’s when landfill began to extend Toronto’s boundaries out over the lake. The Grand Trunk Railway ran along the edge of the lake, right on the Esplanade, to facilitate easy loading on and off ships. Workers were finding many bottles, crocks, and other relics at this site, and diggers (including me) were sneaking in at night. Well, a week after I got the insulators I was hanging around the site watching truckloads of till being removed when I spotted the digger from whom I got the Wades. At that time he told me that this was the place where he had unearthed these gems. Obviously when the railway’s telegraph line was removed, the insulators were taken to the docks and thrown in the lake. Years of mud and silt covered and preserved them. When I was digging at the foot of these docks, (see Photo 4.) I encountered bales of hay fairly together and horse manure that still smelled “barn fresh”. I found a few Hutchinson sodas, some inks and mustard crocks, a shard of a paneled cornflower blue soda, but no more insulators. It is always amazing to be probing through landfill dumped over a forty year span more than a century ago. History comes alive as you find old soup tureens, shoes, railway spikes and square nails, clay pipes, broken china and other remnants of a time long ago. I could imagine a couple of sailors finishing a ginger beer on the deck of a schooner and casually tossing them overboard, only to be dug from the mud 100 years later. By the way, my digger friend found a couple of pockets of extremely rare cobalt sodas as well!

Photo 4. A picture of the dig site. The Esplanade is just behind the wooden
fence in the background. The insulators were found about every 20 feet along
that wall, one insert and cover at each location, which seem to indicate one
insulator per pole was used. Large logs in foreground are the bases of
dock structures.

As a footnote to this story, when I returned from our vacation later that summer, I got a call from a friend of the digger (another bottle collector). He had wandered into the construction site one day and spied a Wade insert on top of a mound of dirt. A worker gave it to him. One month later, a bottle dealer friend called me and said that a digger had been working the dump where the soil removed from the Toronto site was being transferred and had come up with a straight sided threadless. I arranged to meet him and lo and behold, another Wade! But here’s the heartbreak to this find. When the digger first found it, he told my friend that it was in a old tin can packed with rotten wood, So, he carelessly tore off the “garbage” around it to get the glass free!

Of the total number (ten CD 724.3 Wade) , six had covers of wood and/or tin, five complete and one rotted away at the dome. Seven of the inserts were deep green in color, the remaining three in a see-through amber, a previously unlisted color! One amber was dead mint, another had a small chip in the skirt, and the third was in several pieces. Although I didn’t actually dig these insulators, it was very exciting to be part of this great find and to be able to dig at this site where it was so easy to visualize how the Wades wound up in the lake. With quite a number of old brick buildings still lining the Esplanade, I could imagine the Grand Trunk’s pole line as it stood at the edge of the lake. (see Photo 5 and Photo 6.)