07/28/2026
Here’s an interesting article about the history of the building the restaurant is located in.I knew when we purchased it that the original builder got the money from the gold rush but there’s more interesting information in the article!
📜 Back in the Day: The Old Canton Medicine Bottle
You just never know what you’re going to stumble across when you’re picking through boxes from an old estate sale. I was digging around the other day and I found this old glass medicine bottle. I wiped the dust off it, and right there, crisp as day, were the embossed letters: Newman & Davison, Pharmacists, Canton, PA.
Well that got my wheels turning. I had to know the story behind it.
Turns out, this little bottle takes us right back to 1875 when G. Ernest Newman and B.J. Davison teamed up to open a premier drug store right here in downtown Canton. The shop was in the historic Newman Block at the southwest corner of Lycoming and Sullivan Streets. That building has a wild history of its own. It was built back in 1852 by a guy named Walter Newman, who actually struck it rich in the 1849 California Gold Rush! ⛏️ He brought his bags of real gold dust right back here to Bradford County and used it to build that business block, which stands today as the oldest business block in town.
Inside the shop, Newman and Davison were quite the team. Documented town history tells us that Newman was a true pioneer of local comforts—he actually installed Canton’s very first soda fountain right there in the pharmacy and churned his own ice cream out of real country cream for folks! Meanwhile, Davison ran the drug side, meticulously mixing up the medicines and tonics that went into bottles just like the one I found.
Like a lot of old partnerships, these two eventually went their separate ways. Davison moved to open his own individual pharmacy across the street, but Newman stayed put for a while. In a cool twist, Newman eventually moved his pharmacy operation down into a section of the building that used to be a bank, utilizing the heavy leftover iron bank vault for storage!
Now, if you want to know exactly where that old pharmacy line ended up, you just have to look at our modern downtown.
Decades down the road, that pharmacy line became one of the very first stores in the entire United States to sign up with the legendary Rexall Drug Company. It later moved into the spot that many of us remember for years as the old Ben Franklin five-and-dime store. Today, that very same historic spot is home to the American Rescue Workers Thrift Store on West Main Street.
Because Newman and Davison were only partners for a short window of time starting in 1875, these bottles are a super rare piece of Canton history. It’s pretty amazing to hold something in your hand that survived all those years, reminding us of a time when gold dust built our downtowns, local guys were mixing up medicine by hand, and the spots we shop at today were the heartbeat of old Bradford County.
👇Have you ever stumbled across any old bottles that say Canton Pa that made you do a little research 🧐
About these stories: My 'Back in the Day' series is rooted in documented history, but its heart comes from the front porches of our community. I combine researched facts with the first-hand accounts and experiences shared with me by our local elders—preserving the stories that didn't always make the headlines, but deserve to be remembered. Thank you for reading.
