Antique Brick's Old Homestead Mince Meat Label 🏚️ LARGE RECTANGULAR Farm Scene, Edgar Brick & Sons NJ, NOS 1920s

What Does a Label Reading "Consistently Superior Since 1874" Actually Tell You? 🏚️

Most vintage advertising makes a claim you can't check. This label makes one you can. "Consistently Superior Since 1874" isn't a marketing flourish invented by a copywriter reaching for gravitas — it's a real founding date, and the company behind it really did become, decades later, the largest mincemeat manufacturer in the United States. That's the rare thing about this piece: the tagline printed on the paper and the documented history behind the company actually agree with each other.

This is an original, unused, New Old Stock (NOS) paper label for Brick's Old Homestead Mince Meat, produced by Edgar Brick and Sons of Crosswicks, New Jersey. It never touched a jar — no adhesive bleed, no moisture damage, no century of pantry handling. It comes to you exactly as it left the printer.

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🫙 Reading the Label

This is a rectangular label on cream paper stock, framed by a clean navy double-line border. At the top, in bold navy script, Brick's and Old Homestead announce the brand across two flowing lines. Centered below, flanked by a pair of small ornamental flourishes, sits an illustrated vignette: a white farmhouse with a red roof, a matching red-roofed barn, a windmill turning against the sky, cattle grazing near a rail fence, and open green fields beyond — a working farm, rendered with the confident, slightly idealized hand of early-twentieth-century commercial lithography. Below the vignette, MINCE MEAT is set in bold navy block letters, with the tagline "Consistently Superior Since 1874" directly beneath it — the company naming its own founding year, right on the product.

Under that, in small navy type, the full ingredient declaration: "Old Homestead Mince Meat is prepared from apples, sugar, raisins, currants, beef, candied peels, cane syrup, salt, spices, brandy. Prepared with 1/10 of 1% Benzoate of Soda." And at the bottom, in red: PREPARED BY EDGAR BRICK & SONS, CROSSWICKS, N.J. No ambiguity about who made it, where, or what's in it — this label tells you everything a label from this era was designed to tell a buyer standing in a general store.

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🏭 Edgar Brick & Sons: 76 Pounds to the Largest in the Country

Edgar Brick arrived in Crosswicks in the 1850s with his wife Susan and opened a general store on Main Street. The store carried mincemeat shipped in from Philadelphia — until Edgar decided his customers deserved better and made his own. In 1874, the year this very label credits, he sold his first batch: 76 pounds, out of the store.

Within five years the operation had outgrown that setup, and in 1879 it moved into a proper factory — built by physically joining two local farmhouses together, which is where "Old Homestead" gets its literal meaning. The company kept growing from there. By the peak years of World War II, Edgar Brick and Sons employed forty workers and was producing roughly three million pounds of mincemeat a year — the largest output of any mincemeat manufacturer in the United States.

Edgar Brick died in 1920. His three sons — Arthur, Josiah, and Charles — took over and ran the company at that same scale for decades. By the 1960s, American mincemeat consumption was declining nationally, and in 1968 the company pivoted to alcoholic beverages and stopped making mincemeat entirely. It closed for good in 1979 — 105 years from a 76-pound first year to the largest mincemeat operation in the country, exactly as this label's own tagline promised in 1874.

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🗺️ Crosswicks, Burlington County, New Jersey

Crosswicks is one of the oldest communities in Burlington County — founded in 1677 by Quaker settlers, the oldest of Chesterfield Township's three villages. The name survives from the Lenape word Crossweeksung. Its historic district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, recognized for its significance in architecture, military history, religion, and transportation.

The Crosswicks Creek running through the township was a genuine commercial waterway in the region's early history, and the Brick family made direct use of it, establishing a mill and an ice plant along its banks. The 1879 factory building — the two joined farmhouses — still stands in the historic district. After the company closed in 1979, the building was purchased in 1980 by the Hamilton Uniform Company, which operated there for years before eventually closing as well.

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🖼️ Display Ideas

• 🪟 Frame it as standalone folk art: the navy border and farmstead vignette read beautifully under glass in a simple black or antique wood frame.
• 🏡 Anchor a New Jersey heritage wall: pair with other Burlington County ephemera — postcards of Crosswicks or Bordentown, a period county map — for a genuine regional history grouping.
• 🍽️ Style into a harvest kitchen vignette: prop in a small easel frame beside antique pie tins and vintage canning jars for autumn and Thanksgiving display.
• 📚 Mount archivally: UV-protective glass and acid-free matting protect the paper while displaying the full ingredient panel and maker's line.
• 🎨 Use as a graphic design reference: the script-and-block type pairing and navy-on-cream palette are a genuine piece of early-1900s commercial lettering.
• 🍂 Rotate seasonally: bring it out for October–November display and store safely the rest of the year.

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🎁 Who Collects These

Food and grocery ephemera collectors are the natural audience — this is a documented, dated (right on the label), regionally specific piece with a full ingredient panel, exactly what serious paper ephemera collecting rewards. New Jersey and Burlington County local history collectors value it as primary-source evidence of the region's food-processing economy. Farmhouse and cottage decorators are drawn to the vignette and the warm, legible layout. Holiday and Americana collectors connect with mincemeat's deep tie to Thanksgiving and Christmas baking. And for anyone assembling a set across Brick's brand family — Old Homestead, Nonpareil, Banquet Hall, Beechwood — this rectangular Old Homestead variant is a distinct piece worth having alongside the brand's oval version.

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

What does "New Old Stock" (NOS) mean, and why does it matter here?

NOS means this label left the printer's shop, was stored as surplus inventory, and was never applied to a jar. It has never been through the moisture, adhesive, and handling that an applied label endures — the ink and paper you see are exactly as the printer produced them, not a survivor of a century of kitchen use.

Does the "Since 1874" on the label match the documented company history?

Yes. Edgar Brick founded the company in Crosswicks in 1874, selling 76 pounds of mincemeat in his first year out of his general store. The company grew from there into the largest mincemeat manufacturer in the United States by its World War II peak. The date on this label is not marketing exaggeration — it's the company's real founding year.

How does this rectangular label relate to the oval "Brick's Old Homestead" label also in this shop?

Edgar Brick and Sons issued more than one label design for the Old Homestead product line over the years — this rectangular, navy-bordered version with the full ingredient panel, and a separate oval version with a gold-cartouche farm vignette. Both are genuine period Old Homestead labels from the same company; they're simply two different print runs/designs, which is common for a regional brand that operated across several decades.

What is mince meat, historically, and why did New Jersey producers make it?

Traditional American mincemeat was a preservation food: a cooked, spiced mixture of chopped beef, suet, apples, dried fruit, sugar, and often brandy or rum, jarred for the winter and used in holiday pies. This label's own ingredient panel — apples, sugar, raisins, currants, beef, candied peels, cane syrup, salt, spices, brandy — is a direct record of that recipe. Burlington County's orchards and livestock farms made it an ideal region for producing it commercially.

Can this be framed, and what approach works best?

Yes — the rectangular format frames easily and reads well at most scales. A simple black or antique wood frame complements the navy-on-cream palette. UV-protective glazing and acid-free matting are the standard for protecting paper ephemera from light and acid damage over time.