APPALACHIA BOTTLING COMPANY

The Appalachia Bottling Company was originally owned by H. F. Whitehead who on October 1, 1906 sold the business to the firm of Johnson & Hale (1) who ran a grocery concern in Appalachia which was most likely in business for a while prior to this acquisition. Archelious H. Hale is listed as a clerk in a dry goods store in the 1900 census. The firm of Johnson & Hale was dissolved on October 2, 1907 with A. H. Hale buying out his partner's interest.(1) Johnson continued to employ his trade of watch making and repairing.(1) Hale would rename the store the Spot Cash Store which dealt in "Staple and Fancy Groceries and Country Produce", he would take on a partner named S. A. Collier who would take over the store August of 1908.(1)

Knowing that there is a store associated with this particular bottling works, I feel safe in assuming that the bottling plant attached to a store which appears on the February 1908 Sanborn map, which I originally thought might have been the location for J. F. Hash & Sons, may in fact be the location of the Appalachia Bottling Company. It was located where Main Street crosses the Powell River, in fact it was sitting on the river bank between Main Street and the L&N Rail road tracks. By 1913 this building is a drug store and boarding house.

Hale would sell his bottling company to George Barsa in October 1908, and move to London KY to start up a new bottling plant there (1), where he still is according to the 1910 census. I'm speculating that Hale used the equipment he purchased at auction on May 16, 1908, which was the entire plant of the Cumberland Bottling Company (1), and moved this equipment to London KY to start a new operation there. George Barsa is still listed as a bottler in the 1910 census. It is entirely possible that George Barsa could have eventually sold the bottling company to J. F. Huneycutt sometime in the early teens, but I have found no period evidence of this yet, it is just speculation.

This seems to be where the building that held the bottling company once stood in 1908

Part of a bottle from Appalachia Bottling Company

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