Lilly Ice & Bottling Works

1914—1976(?)

Lilly Ice & Bottling Works chartered the year after Pemberton Ice & Bottling Works closed, with a capital of $35,000 and included the following incorporators: Prince E. Lilly as President and namesake of the business, John A. Hornbrook as Vice President, and L. Lewis as Secretary (“New Charters”, 1914). Their stated business was to manufacture ice cream, interestingly, and they did not mention bottling soft drinks at this time save for their name. Prince E. Lilly was formerly an incorporator of Pemberton Ice & Bottling Works just 3 years prior (see the article below). While a 1926 article giving the history of Lilly Ice & Bottling Works claims the business began in 1912 (“Lilly Ice & Bottling Works”, 1926), this is not corroborated by other newspapers or Dun & Bradstreet.

Evidently, Lilly was a small business until 1916, when a number of Winding Gulf businessmen purchased the outfit from the current owners and installed more machinery and expanded the building further (“Radical Changes”, 1915). Around this time, Homer R. (Tom) Sawyers served as manager of the firm, as L. Lewis’ son, D.H. Lewis, took over Sawyers’ position as manager in 1917 (“Lewis Becomes Manager”, 1917). By 1926, it is said that the father-son pair “practically own” the entire business (

Lilly Ice & Bottling Works seemed to have dabbled in several industries: ice cream, ice, soda, and, perhaps the oddballs, agricultural products, flour, and explosives. Advertisements from 1923 inform us of their livestock feed business—their new “feed department” that year sold a variety of livestock feeds (Lilly Ice & Bottling Works, 1923). And a financial statement of Raleigh County for the 1923 fiscal year indicates that the county purchased $376 of explosives from the company (“Financial Statement”, 1924)—or $7,000 inflation adjusted.

Advertisements indicate that they bottled a beverage called Quizz (Lilly Ice & Bottling Works, 1917), Parfay and Wiedemann near-beer (“Lilly Ice & Bottling Works”, 1926), Schlitz (Lilly Ice & Bottling Works, 1934), Jumbo Cola (Lilly Ice & Bottling Works, 1935), and Berghoff beer (Lilly Ice & Bottling Works, 1936), Virginia Club Ginger Ale and Pepsi (see bottles below), and many others. The advertisement for Berghoff beer also notes that, at this time, Lilly had a plant in Charleston as well. Four years later in 1921, the Coca-Cola Company sued Lilly Ice & Bottling Works, claiming that the company was manufacturing soda while using the Coca-Cola trademark without its consent (“Injunction Sought”, 1921). I can only imagine that this is in response to Lilly bottling Pepsi-Cola at this time, as one variant of that bottle is marked with “1921” on the bottom. And I, again, can only assume that Lilly stopped bottling Pepsi immediately out of fear of the Coca-Cola Company. With this suit being filed on July 21, 1921, that leaves only 7 months of bottling Pepsi in that bottle. Hence, perhaps, its rarity.

Lilly Ice & Bottling Works likely closed around 1976, though I cannot find an official date, as the company became wrapped up in several lawsuits.