LYNDEBOROUGH – The Historical Society was recently given four F.B. Richards glass bottles. Experts have determined that one of them, which once held castor oil, is made of Lyndeborough glass. The other three are smaller, made of clear glass, and held essences of rose, orange, and “Jamacan” ginger.

The bottles will be placed in one of the display cases upstairs at Citizens’ Hall.

The Lyndeborough Glass Company produced bottles of various kinds, including a medicine bottles, from 1866 to 1886.

Joseph A. Tarbell purchased the essence and extract business and moved it to Lyndeborough in the 1870s.

Mr. Tarbell was born in Mason in 1844, grew up in Lyndeborough, and moved to a farm in Hancock after the Civil War. He lived there only a few years before buying the business, which he first operated in West Wilton before returning to South Lyndeborough.

The town history of 1905 says he “conducted a flourishing business as merchant and manufacturer. In extracts alone he is said to have done a business amounting to six, or eight thousand dollars per annum,” a large sum for the times.

His products were sold by a teamster salesman throughout New Hampshire, Vermont and northern Massachusetts.

In 1881, Mr. Tarbell sold the business to his brother-in-law, Fred B. Richards, and moved back to Hancock. In 1910, wanting to do something for his home town, he donated the town library.

Richards was still in the business in 1905. According to the history, he was regarded by townspeople as “upright in business relations, and they have honored him by electing him a representative to the General Court one term, and to other positions of public trust from time to time.”

Fred Richards and his wife Susannah lived on what is now Locust Lane and had four children. He died in 1943 at the age of 91.